USA > New York > New York County > Manhattan > The pioneers of New-York. An anniversary discourse delivered before the St. Nicholas Society of Manhattan, December 6, 1847 > Part 5
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I may seem to carry my views of State pride and State feeling to extremes. But I do so advisedly ; for these constitute the vital principle and informing spirit of STATE RIGHTS ; and I hold it moreover to be but a narrow view of the benefits of the Federal System of our Great Union which would limit its influence merely to political action.
A true nationality is only formed upon the realities among the people corresponding with the genius of the government; and in these United States a great nationality is not to be built up by ob- literating our local esprit du corps, and merging our sense of local rights, our keen perception of local privileges, and our local story, and our local pride, in one great clumsy structure of theoretical homogeneousness. Learned gentlemen may preach till the end of time that this country is " Puritania," but they cannot make it so while every election for a town constable reminds us that our fed crative system (whether of town, county, state, or general govern- ment) offers all the mechanism for developing cach lineament in detail, so as to give completeness to the whole fabric of national
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greatness. The aggregate of the traits and proportions thus pro- duced will stamp our national character ; nay, has already stamped it, and he who would truly study the imprint must look to each separate die. Let him look to that which New York has wrought for herself-look to each graven line, traced by whatever hands, be- tween the dates of 1614 and 1847, and he will find her character as distinctly marked as that of any State in the confederacy. And yet no State in the Union has absorbed more foreign matter, nor moulded it more intimately to the genius of her own institutions. Her original founders, in their own country, "acquired power in the struggle for existence and wealth under the weight of taxation ;" surely the determined race which thus built up the Northern Venice in defiance of every principle of political economy, must have planted in this State some vigorous clement of nationality which equally bids defiance to the strongest conditions for subverting any local character, and permeates as now its still incoming population !
The philosophic statesman who, nearly forty years ago, drew the parallel which I have been more than once tempted to carry out in this discourse, observes, that "He who visits the nations which Tacitus and Cæsar have described will be struck with a resemblance between those who inhabit particular districts, and those who dwelt there so many centuries ago. Notwithstanding the wars and conquests which have laid waste, depopulated, and repeopled Europe; notwithstanding the changes of government, and those which have been wrought by the decline and by the ad- vance of society and the arts ; notwithstanding the differences of religion, and the difference of manners, resulting from all these circumstances ; still the same distinctire traits of character reappear. Similar souls are animated by similar bodies." And if the spirit of New-York's early founders still lives in their descendants, it is because those European planters found the homestead principle already rooted here in the hearts of the only aboriginal tribes of America, who acknowledged the influence of WOMAN, even as the German tribes, described by Tacitus, made that influence the cor- ner-stone of their nationality.
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" Our ancestors," said the Iroquois Chiefs to the Governors of New York, " loved their land. And why ? Because they loved their women and children! Our ancestors considered it a great offence to reject the counsels of their women. They were esteemed the mistresses of the soil."*
These are the same people who told the European diplomat that came among them, " We are born frec-we depend neither upon France or England." And told him this in a speech whose biting irony, splendid imagery, and solid reasoning, marks it as one of the most consummate pieces of ancient or modern oratory. A speech as sublime for its invective, as that of another Iroquoist is touching for its pathos ; and that eloquence, indigenous to the soil of New-York, will hereafter, as formerly, plead trumpet- tongued from the lips of her children against our faithlessness, if we permit her peculiar story to be overlaid by that of any other State.
When next therefore you hear " the principles of our Puritan ancestry " appealed to in a New-York legislature, as authority here, repel with indignation the arrogant assumption over your own original sovereignty. And when again you are told from a New- York rostrum, that " the Pilgrim fathers of Plymouth Rock" first opened this continent and introduced freedom, religion, and civili-
* Clinton's discourse before the New York Historical Society, 1811. The names of " the principal women" of the Iroquois or Five Nations, are always appended to their land treaties. See Colden, and the Archives of this State. The fact of the admitted influential condition of the women among the aborigines of New-York, is worth noting at this time, when certain European philosophers are busy in tracing modern civilization not to Christianity, but, the position of women among the ancient Germans.
t " Logan, tho Mingo chief." The English called the Iroquois Mingoes, and Mr. Jefferson's famous Indian orator was a countryman of Garangula, upon whose eloquence De Witt Clinton has commented as above. "Red Jacket," at once so persuasively eloquent and so epigrammatically sarcastic, was of the same stock ; and Clinton insists that " you may search in vain for a single model of eloquence among any other nation of Indians except the Iroquois; the faint glimmerings of genius, which are sometimes to bo found in their speeches, are evidently derivative and borrowed from the Iroquois."-Clinton's Discourse.
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zation here, on the soil which you tread-plant yourselves upon your own peculiar story, and let the barriers of history repel the offensive encroachment.
If the question be that of priority of physical enterprize, point to Fort Orange at the head of the navigation of the Hudson in 1614, and tell them that the naval flag of New-York was first hoisted in a barque built here in 1618, by the people who then owned the mastery of the seas .*
If the question be of political freedom, appeal to the ancient charter of the Hudson river colonists, and the movement in this city in relation to " the stamp act," ten years before the famous " Boston tea party."f
If of religious freedom, point to the article in our New Neth- erland land patents, securing perfect liberty of conscience.
If the question be of religion itself, as the sanction of our fran- chises, recall the sixth of September 1645, proclaimed by the governor-general of New Netherland as " a day of general thanks- giving to God Almighty, to be observed in churches of crery persuasion throughout the province, in pious acknowledgment of the blessings which he has been pleased to bestow upon this country.";
* 1773, March 8th, The assembly entered at large on their journals a state- ment of the right of the colony of New-York with respect to its eastern boundary on Connecticut river : asserting priority of possession by the Dutch. "They (the Dutch) had in 1612 a town and fort (near New-York,) and in 1614 a town and fort (near Albany.)"-Dunlap's Appendix.
While this discourse is passing through the press, a newspaper, published in New-York, observes, (amid some grossly disparaging remarks, launched in the most virulent spirit of exclusive Anglo-Saxonism, against the founders of this city,) that the Hollanders, even in the meridian of their maritime power, were subdued here by the English. This impression of New-York having finally become by conquest an appendage to the British crown, is one of the questionable assumptions in our popular history-as it is generally written. The province of New- York treacherously seized upon in time of peace by the English in 1664, was recovered by the Hollanders in 1673, and remained under a Dutch governor (Anthony Colve) until finally passed over to the sovereignty of England, in exchange for Surinam, by the treaty of Breda.
t See note at the end.
# O'Callaghan's History of New Netherland.
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THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY CHICAGO -
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And lastly, if the question be of civilization, and the onward spirit of the age, point to the genial and gentle habits of that people, who, stern in their patriotism as they were free-hearted in their sports,* furnished three martyrs to political liberty (in 1691,) neither of whom were Puritans; each of whom represented a prominent type of our population.
" I stand here in the name of the freeholders of New-York," said MILBOURNE, one hundred and fifty years ago, in the convention at Albany. "I pronounce the charter of the English King null. The people of New-York have the power to choose their own officers, and every incumbent should be subjected to a free election."
Milbourne died for that sentiment, then so new, so startling, and so boldly uttered.
I rule here, said LEISLER, in the name of the people of New- York, and by the same right which has called William of Orange to the throne of England-the voice of my countrymen. The only council which I acknowledge is the committee chosen by the free and open election of the freemen of this province in their respective counties.
Leisler perished on the scaffold for that rule, and GOVERNEUR, the third of these patriots, barely escaped with his life.t
These three gallant men, the Netherlander, the Englishman, and the Huguenot, offer conjointly a glorious type of the Repub-
* " Whereas," says the record of the burgomasters and schepens of Manhattan, " the winter festivals are at hand, it is found good that between this date and three weeks after Christmas, the ordinary meetings of the court shall be dispensed with." The spring festival was similarly honored by grave and aged citizens, setting aside the solemn concerns of public and private business, to take a share in the sports, as the following official May-day announcement will sho v :-
" With the customary bell-ringing at the City Hall was published the renewed order concerning the planting of the Maypole, and the damage which may be done in consequence of the general sports. By these words it is made known that any damage which may ensue from the general rejoicings, shall be made kuown to the burgomasters at the City Hall immediately thereafter, when measures shall be taken to furnish reparation."-Paulding's Affairs and Men of New Amsterdam.
t See " The administration of Jacob Leisler," in Sparks' American Biography, vol. iii., new series.
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lican ancestry of New-York. But how have New-Yorkers pre- served their memory ? Why that first triumph of an independent political spirit, that first well ordered success of The People, which gave a two years democratic rule to this State one hundred and : fifty years ago, is it not still fondly cherished in Tammany Hall, which was built over the grave of one of the martyrs ?
Ask the sachems of that patriotic institution !
It is treasured at least among your city archives upon the same : roll which gives the name of Peter de la Noye, the first man that was ever clected by the freeholders and freemen of Manhattan to the mayorality of New-York ?
Ask our living civic fathers !*
It lives then, if no where else, where the statue of the first and last Merchant Governor of New-York, the man whom the people elevated to power because he resisted the payment of illegal duties - at the Custom House, it lives where the effigy of that public spirited merchant dignifies the otherwise traditionless halls of your modern Exchange ?
Ask your Chamber of Commerce !
For many years the Leislerian party of New-York contended for principles, which every one now acknowledges to be the prin- ciples of the State. But so thoroughly did Toryism succeed in stamping them with obliquy at the time, that the voice of truth has been ever since unheard ; and with our archives full of irrefragable testimony to the noble spirit of Leisler's movement, and its entire sympathy with our present views of political right, the tale told by his foes has become part and parcel of our history, because Leisler's party was regarded as the New- York, and not the English party.t
And now let me pay a full-hearted tribute to that land where intelligence so faithfully ministers to patriotism, by collecting each shred of her peculiar story in town or hamlet, and hoarding up the
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* In the Corporation Mannal, published yearly, the names of the officials under the first popular government of New-York, are to this day omitted. The words [" usurpation of Leisler,"] in brackets, marking the only noto of record of the most interesting political period in our provincial history.
t See Chandler'A Criminal Trials.
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memories of each name and service of her sons who, even in the humblest sphere, have contributed aught to the glory of the com- monwealth. Had the progess truths for which Milbourne perished -had the eternal principles of right and wrong, whose distinctions Leisler died in upholding-had these been promulgated in New England, and scaled with the blood of a New England man, does any one doubt that the names of the brave martyrs would have stood at this moment foremost in American history as the joint embodiment, the first breathing types of principles taught eighty- six years afterwards in the Declaration of Independence ?
Strange, most strange is it, that the story of these memorable worthies of New- York, so wholly, so peculiarly her own, should come up on the page of two leading New England historians, to prove that they are not worth remembering, or if worth remem- bering, that they acted under a Puritanic influence .*
I respect, I reverence the zeal with which our intelligent neighbors preserve their own annals ; but it is full time that they should so write them, as not to overlay and obliterate ours.
And the descendants of the Pilgrims here domesticated, are identified with our: elv 's in maintaining the local associations and distinctive history of this State, unless they mean their children of
* Hutchinson, and Bancroft. The German mode of writing history to illustrate a theory, a mode which Mr. Bancroft has followed with such signal ability, can do no harm in Europe, where they only re-write an old story from printed works which are in every public library. Bat in this country, where history as yet, and for some time to come, is to be prepared from original documents, a system of the kind can hardly be beneficial to the cause of truth ? In adorning the new walls of the new British Parliament House their historic characters of the civil wars on either side, and the portraits of living men as directly opposed in political principle as Wentworth and Hampden, are alike preserved, as all forming a part of England's story. Should similar liberality of feeling ever grow up in this country, the faithful loyalty of Bayard, of Livingston, and other opponents of the democratic party of Leisler's time, will be honored even by those who disapprove their political prin- ciples ; and the military valor of New- York, as illustrated by the brave De Lanceys of a subsequent generation, receive its just meed, without any reference to the failing cause which they esponsed, not in treason, as Arnold did, but in the blind and mistaken belief that it was the cause of " The Right."
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a generation hence, shall yield to the New Englander of that day, the provincial obeisance which American colonists before the Revolution are said to have conceded to the Englishman as the highest type for social imiation.
The future history of New-York, in which men of other lineage than theirs are taking their full share, will be no history of " the Puritan Anglo-Saxon." And her present and her past story, to the whole tissue and spirit of which the'r children's children will be heritors, is no more to be merged in that of New England, than it is in that of Virginia. The same spirit which now teaches the father to exalt the land of his birth over all other regions of America, will prompt the child to drag down that exaltation, if based upon the depreciation of his native soil. For no New- Yorker, whatever may be his extraction, will consent that his willing tribute to Pilgrim worth shall be construed as a concession to Puritan superiority, or permit that his sympathetic reverence for the founders of a sister State, shall be perverted into an acknow- ledgment that any associations are paramount here which are borrowed at second-hand from another Commonwealth.
There spreads the banner of New-York, and mark you well her ensignia! The rising sun, the lifting cagle, the watch-word " Excelsior!" That sun shot his earliest beams from the bosom of our own waters ; and wherever the eagles of the great Republic have flown, ours has swept upon no feeble wing. Brothers of St. Nicholas, you at least will remember, that that bird of New-York which still bears " Excelsior" in his beak, was fledged on his own soil-he never began his soarings from Plymouth Rock. He dressed his plumage in our own lakes, and his pinions were nerved in the air of our own mountains.
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NOTE.
In the autumn of 1765, while several English men-of-war were lying in the harbor, and after the fort had been put in a complete state of defence by the Royal governor, " the stamps," conveyed in a merchant ship, arrived in the harbor of New-York. The king's stamp officer fearing the temper of the people, notwith- standing the means which had been adopted to overawe them, refused to receive the papers, much less to enter upon their distribution. Upon his refusal, they were transferred, first to a ship of war, and subsequently to the governor's quarters in Fort George. But the people discovered the secret of their landing, and on the instant, band-bills appeared on every corner, threatening all persons who received or delivered a stamp. On the 31st of October the merchants held a meeting, and resolved not to import goods from England. The next day the people hung the governor in effigy, in what is now the Park. On the same evening they repaired to the fort, and found the soldiers on the rampart ready to receive them. Nothing daunted, they marched to the gate, knocked and demanded admittance. This was of course refused. They then collected in the Bowling Green, and there, within pistol shot of the fort, built a bonfire, upon which they immolated the effigies of the governor along with his chariot, in which they fixed the effigy. In the next newspaper appeared an emphatic semi-official announcement, that the governor " had not issued, and would not suffer to be issued, any of the stamps now in Fort George." The people were not satisfied ; they declared that the stamps should be delivered out of the fort or they would take them away by force. Finally, " after much negotiation," they were delivered to the mayor and common council, and deposited in the City Hall.
We know that even at this early day, (says the Historian, speaking of this political movement of our citizens,) New-York was of considerable importance in the eyes of the British ministry, and was looked up to in a commercial point of view by the neighboring colouice. There was a military force kept up there. It was the head quarters of Ilis Majesty's American Army. Yet in 1766, it was boldly proclaimed under the very guns of the fort, that the British Parliament possessed not the shadow of a jurisdiction over America. Nor did an apprehension of the men-of-war in the harbor, prevent the New-Yorkers from dragging one distributor of stamps from his hiding-place on the opposite side of the East-River. They even compelled him to sign a resignation of his office before a public magis- trate. In the same record are accounts of the dashing movements of " the Liberty . Boys," which MARINUS WILLETT, ALEXANDER MCDOUGALL, and other patriots subsequently less distinguished than these men of mark, carried through with so
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much spirit. While to show the temper of our people in all circles of society, we find a committee of one hundred leading citizens address the Lord Mayor and Common Council of London, declaring that " Americans will not be deceived by conciliatory measures"-" The minions of power in New-York may inform the administration that New-York is as one man in the cause of liberty." This address was signed by Isaac Low, chairman, John Jay, Francis Lewis, John Alsop, Philip Livingston, James Duane, E. Duyckman, William Seton, William W. Ludlow, Cornelius Clopper, Abraham Brinckerhoff, Henry Remsen, Robert Ray, Evert Bancker, Joseph Totten, Abraham P. Lott, David Beeckman, Isaac Roosevelt, Gabriel H. Ludlow, William Walton, Daniel Phoenix, Frederick Jay, Samuel Broome, John De Lancey, Augustus Van Horne, Abraham Duryee, Samuel Ver- planck, Rudolphus Ritzeman, John Morton, Joseph Hallet, Robert Benson, Abra- ham Brasher, Leonard Lispenard, Nicholas Hoffman, P. V. B. Livingston, Thomas Marston, Lewis Pintard, John Imlay, Eleazer Miller, jr., John Broome, John B. Moore, Nicholas Bogert, John Anthony, Victor Bicker, William Goforth, Hercules Mulligan, Alexander McDougall, John Reade, Joseph Ball, George Janeway, John White, Gabriel W. Ludlow, John Lasher, Theophilus Anthony, Thomas Smith, Richard Yates, Oliver Templeton, Jacobus Van Landby, Jeremiah Platt, Peter S. Curtenins, Thomas Randall, Lancaster Burling, Benjamin Kissan, Jacob Lefferts, Anthony Van Dam, Abraham Walton, Hamilton Young, Nicholas Rosevelt, Cor- nelius P Low, Francis Basset, James Beeckman, Thomas Ivers, William Denning, John Berrien, Benjamin Helme, William W. Gilbert, Daniel Dunscomb, John Lamb, Richard Sharp, John Morin Scott, Jacob Van Voorhis, Comfort Sands, Edward Fleming, Peter Goelet, Gerret Kettletas, Thomas Buchanan, James Des- brosses, Petrus Byvanck, Lott Embren. Though all of these names are not found upon the Whig side after the Declaration of Independence, yet it must be res.em- bered, that it was the community which they now represented, it was THE MERCHANTS OF NEW YORK who were the first to enter into the famous non-importation agreement, which, being followed by the other colonies, did more than any other movement to produce the repeal of the stamp act. And that success gave heart to the country for bolder movements .- See Dunlap, vol. i., and Appendix, vol. ii.
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