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THE FORT IN KIEFT'S DAY.
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PETRUS STUYVESANT.
WE may be sure that the news of a new governor was received with the wildest delight by the oppressed people, and that long before his appearance in New Netherland, his personal history, character, and ap- pearance were known and had been freely canvassed. He was a native of Friesland, the gossips said, son of a clergyman there. Educated to the profession of arms, most of his life had been spent in the service of the West India Company, in those brilliant battles, sieges, naval combats, and descents against the Span- ish in the West Indies and South America, which, if they had ever found a competent historian, would form one of the most brilliant episodes in American colonial history. As governor of Curacoa, Stuyve- sant had undertaken to reduce the Portuguese island of St. Martin, and, losing a leg in the action, had re- turned to Holland for medical advice. There the West India Company had seized on him as the proper person to bring order and prosperity to their mismanaged colony. His portrait shows him to have been a marked character,-strong, intellectual, ener-
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getic, austere, an autocrat by nature and training. The colonists therefore derived little comfort from his appointment. It was regarded as meaning that the company would still continue its despotic form of government. But any thing was preferable to that under which they had suffered for ten years ; and when, on the 11th of May, 1647, Stuyvesant's fleet was reported below, the whole populace, ex- Director and all, hastened to the landing to welcome him. It was quite a gallant fleet of four large ves- sels, and it bore a noble company-the Director, his wife, a beautiful and accomplished lady ; Mrs. Bayard, the governor's widowed sister, and her three boys ; the Vice-Director, and Council, which had been ap- pointed in Holland as a check to the Director ; sol- diers and colonists. They had been on their way since the Christmas before, having steered south to Curaçoa and the West Indies on some business of the Director's. As the party came to land, the people waved their hats and handkerchiefs, and the guns of the fort thundered a salute. Kieft then made an address of welcome, to which the new magistrate re- sponded in a way that did not at all please his hear- ers. His air and bearing, they observed, was that of a prince come to reign over conquered subjects. " I shall be in my government as a father over his chil- dren, for the advantage of the privileged West India Company, the burghers, and the country," he told them. The new Director was inaugurated on the 27th of May, and his speech on the occasion con- firmed the ill impression produced by his former re- marks. Said an eye-witness : " He kept the people
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standing, with their heads uncovered, for more than an hour, while he wore his chapeau as if he were the Czar of Muscovy." The same day Stuyvesant an- nounced his council, which had been appointed, as we have seen, in Holland. Lubbertus Van Dinclage to be Vice-Director, and La Montague, Adraen Key- ser, and Captain Bryant Newton, an Englishman, who had been twenty years in the company's em- ploy, to be counsellors. The former secretary, Van- ·Tienhoven, was retained. Hendrick Van Dyck was made Schout-fiscal. Two new offices had been created -an English secretary and interpreter, and a master of equipage. A court of justice was also established, with Van Dinclage as presiding judge, and the Direc- tor acting as a court of appeals-a concession to the people,
· Stuyvesant's name has become classic through the pages of Knickerbocker, and the portrait of him there given comes much nearer the truth of history than those of his predecessors in office. His long reign of seventeen years was marked by some events of great importance, though all were overshadowed by his last act, the surrender of the city to the English. We will consider these events in their order, with special reference to their influence on the fortunes of the city.
The Director's first act taught the people that no concessions might be expected from him. Cornelis Melyn, the president, and Jochim Pietersen Kuyter, a member of the council appointed by the people in Kieft's day, having lost heavily in the Indian war, petitioned that an inquiry as to its causes might be
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made, and that the testimony of citizens under oath, might be taken for use in an investigation of the case before the company in Holland. Stuyvesant ap- pointed a commission to decide on the merits of the petition ; but considering it a dangerous precedent for the people to call any acts of their rulers in ques- tion, he went before the commission and told them that in his opinion "the two malignant fellows were disturbers of the peace, and that it was treason to complain of one's magistrates, whether there was cause or not." The petition was therefore refused. But the matter was not allowed to rest here. Kieft, secure of the favor of the governor, had the two burghers arrested on a charge of " rebellion and sedi- tion." Their trial followed quickly, Stuyvesant him- self occupying the bench with the newly-appointed judge, Van Dinclage, by his side. It was a remark- able trial in its way-one in which justice was out- raged and humanity had little place. There were no lawyers to be had, and the prisoners pleaded their own case-and made an able defence. They proved the truth of the charges against Kieft, and that in pre- ferring them they were not moved by vindictive feelings. They admitted having complained to the company, as they believed they had a right to. All had been done openly. Yet in the face of the law and evidence the prisoners were declared guilty. Hanging them was for a time seriously considered. The right of appeal was denied. " If I was persuaded that you would bring this matter before their High Mightinesses, I would have you hanged on the high- est tree in New Netherland," said Stuyvesant, as he
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pronounced their sentence, which for Melyn was banishment for seven years and a fine of three hun- dred guilders, and for Kuyter banishment for three years and a fine of one hundred and fifty guilders. This act of Stuyvesant, regarded from any stand- point, must be pronounced most impolitic and unfor- tunate. He meddled in a quarrel which did not con- cern him, and which might well have been referred to the company at home. He angered the people, and he did not save his prerogative; for his action violated both the law and traditions of the father- land, and brought on him a stinging rebuke, when, in 1649, Melyn returned restored to his full rights, and bearing a summons to the governor from the States- General and Prince of Orange to appear before them and answer for his conduct, either in person or by his attorney. But we anticipate. At the time of the trial the ship Princess was about to sail for Hol- land, and the banished men took passage on her. With them sailed Domine Bogardus, Kieft and his ill-gotten fortune, and a large company-in all over one hundred souls. The Princess, however, never reached her destination, for a fierce storm overtook her and drove her violently on the rocky Welsh coast. Kuyter and Melyn, with some eighteen others, escaped. Kieft, Domine Bogardus, and the rest of the ship's company perished. Kieft's fate excited little sorrow either at home or in his former government ; it was generally accepted as a fitting retribution. Said De Vries in Holland, on hearing of his death : "I told William Kieft in 1643 that I doubted not that vengeance for the innocent blood
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he had shed in his murderings would sooner or later come on his head." Soon after his coming, Stuyve- sant called a public meeting, which named nine men to advise and assist him in the government. His next step of importance was a journey to Hartford (not Boston, as Diedrich Knickerbocker records) to confer with the authorities there on boundaries, run- away slaves, the attitude of the Indians, and other vexed questions. The Director went by vessel in military state, with a retinue of servants, trumpeters, and men-at-arms, and four days after setting out reached the Connecticut capital, where he was re- ceived with equal state by Governor Winthrop and the dignitaries of New England there assembled. After a week spent in discussion, it was agreed to sub- mit the questions at issue to arbitrators; and after remaining several days longer, fêted and feasted by his very good friends, the Director-General returned as he had gone to his seat of empire. But he soon found that he had acted unwisely : his somewhat re- fractory subjects were jealous of his friendship with the English ; and the fact that he had entrusted the interests of New Netherlands to the two English arbi- trators was made the cause of fresh charges against him at home. It was charged that the Director looked for support to his English rather than to his Dutch subjects, which was perhaps true, for the monarchical English were no doubt much more to the Director's taste than the republican Dutch.
In the fifth year of Stuyvesant's reign, April, 1652, a great event occurred. New Amsterdam was made a city-endowed with municipal rights.
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Two hundred and thirty-five years have passed since then, and for that reason the reader will wish to know all that can be known of this first city charter. It was modelled after the ancient charter of Amster- dam, which provided for the election by the people of a schout, four burgomasters, nine schepens, and an advisory council of thirty-six men. The first four- teen comprised the board of city fathers, and made the laws and ordinances governing the city. They were the " Fathers of the Burghery," guardians of the city poor, of widows and orphans, principal church-wardens, and farmers of the excise, and they held in trust and managed the city's funds and fran- chises. No burgher could be seized for debt unless it was done in their presence ; no sentence of death could be pronounced without their consent, or executed without they were present. They were custodians of the city seal ; all official documents were drawn in their name, and they had authority to preserve the peace of the city even to the calling out of the burgher guard. They also constituted a city court for the trial of civil and criminal cases. Both boards were of great antiquity, the board of schepens dating back to the year 1270, and that of burgomasters to the fourteenth century.
In granting to New Amsterdam this great dignity the company limited the number of burgomasters to two, and of schepens to five, and stipulated that they should be elected by the citizens as in the city of Amsterdam. Governor Stuyvesant pro- claimed the new city on the 2d of February, 1653, at the feast of Candlemas, but instead of allowing
THE STADT HUYS, 1642.
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the people to choose their own officers as the com- pany had directed, he proceeded to appoint them, and he gave the city fathers to understand that their existence would not lessen his authority, but that he should preside at their meetings when he deemed it necessary, and advise them in matters of importance. It was a privilege very distasteful to the autocratic governor, and he did all he could to restrict the people in their enjoyment of it. The two burgo- masters named were Arent Van Hattan and Martin Cregier, the latter a man of importance in the city, captain of the burgher guard and landlord of a popular tavern situated opposite the Bowling Green. The five schepens were Paulus Van der Grist, commander of the Gellert, Stuyvesant's flag-ship, Maximilian Van Gheel, Allard Anthony, a wholesale merchant, Petro Van Couwenhoven, and William Beekman, the ancestor of the Beekman family in New York, who had come over in the same ship with Stuyvesant, and who later rose to distinction in the government. The old stone tavern built by Kieft was remodelled, cleaned, and furbished up and set apart as a Stadt Huys or City Hall, and here the city fathers held their sessions. So on that far-off Feb- ruary day the city came into being. It contained about fifteen hundred inhabitants, some three hun- dred houses, a few of stone, but most of them rude wooden structures, no trade of its own, and scarcely farms enough to supply it with the necessaries of life. Two years now passed without incident. In the December of 1654 Stuyvesant decided to make a voyage to the West Indies. His jurisdiction also
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included the islands of Curaçoa, Buenaire, and Aru- ba, and he wished to see how affairs were progress- ing there ; he thought, too, that he might be able to arrange for a trade with the Spanish possessions in that quarter. News of this voyage created quite an excitement in the little city. The Common Council called a special meeting, and resolved that, " Where- as, The Right Honorable Peter Stuyvesant, intend- ing to depart, the burgomasters and schepens shall compliment him before he takes his gallant voyage, and shall for this purpose provide a gay repast on Wednesday next in the Council Chamber of the City Hall." The dinner came off and was a grand affair, with a long list of edibles, Jamaica rum, potent Hollands, and rare old Madeira in abundance. Under its influence the austere governor mellowed, and, in a happy speech, presented the city with its long-delayed seal. The city fathers crowded round to examine it. It bore the arms of old Amsterdam- three crosses saltier, with a beaver for a crest, and above on the mantle the initial letters C. W. I. C., meaning the "Chartered West India Company." A wreath of laurel encircled the legend, " Sigillum Amstello Famensis in Novo Belgio " (Seal of Amster- dam in New Belgium).
The governor returned in July of the same year to find awaiting him a message from Holland that inflamed all his military ardor. It was an order to drive the Swedes from the South River, where, as we have seen, they had been planted by Director Minuit in Kieft's time. Never had " he set about executing an order from Holland
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with greater alacrity. His trumpeters were sent out to beat up town and country for volunteers. Three armed vessels had been provided by the directors. The city fathers furnished one. Three more were chartered, and on Sunday, September 5th, "after the sermon," seven vessels, with a force of seven hun- dred men on board, including the Domine Megapo- lensis, sailed out into the ocean. There were two Swedish forts and settlements on the Delaware- Trinity and Christina; the latter near the present site of Wilmington, the other a few miles below. On Friday the fleet appeared before Fort Trinity, and the trumpeters were sent to demand its surren- der. Captain Schute, the commander, asked time to consult with Governor Risingh at Christina, but this was denied; then he asked for an armistice till next morning, which was granted. When morning came he demanded as conditions of surrender that he should be allowed to march out with his body-guard of twelve men, fully accoutred and colors flying, the other soldiers to retain their side-arms, and the commander and other officers their private property. Stuyvesant willingly granted these terms, and on Saturday the Dutch troops took possession. Next day Domine Megapolensis preached a " sermon of thanksgiving," in return for the bloodless victory. Stuyvesant, like a good general, pushed on at once to invest Fort Christina, where Governor Risingh with the balance of the Swedish force, comprising some thirty men, was entrenched. Again the trum- peters sounded their demand, but Governor Risingh showed a disposition to parley and to argue the mat-
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ter. He recited the whole history of the Swedish occupation, and proved that the present attack was a gross outrage on a people with whom the Nether- lands were at peace, and only to be justified on the plea that "might makes right." The parley lasted for several days; at length Stuyvesant, finding him- self worsted in the argument, became angry, and threatened to assault the fort and "to give no quar- ter," unless the Swedes promptly surrendered. On the 25th, therefore, their colors were lowered, and the Swedish empire in the New World ceased to exist. Governor Risingh, however, succeeded in making generous terms for himself and people. They were to "march out with their arms, colors flying, matches lighted, drums beating, and fifes playing." The cannon were to be sent to Sweden, if desired. Such Swedes as wished to remain were to be pro- tected in their rights of person and property.
Thus without bloodshed New Sweden fell, but in the first flush of victory a courier arrived with such terrible news that the governor forgot his triumph, and hastened back with all possible speed to his capital. The Indian was again on the war-path, and a gen- eral massacre of the Dutch was threatened. This was the story the courier told. A few days after the fleet had left, ex-Sheriff Van Dyck surprised an Indian woman in his orchard stealing peaches one morning, and shot her dead on the spot. The murder pro- voked her tribe to vengeance. Knowing that the governor and militia were away, they rapidly gathered the warriors of all the river tribes, the Con- necticut and Long Island Indians, into an army, and
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suddenly appeared before the city, nineteen hundred strong, in sixty-four canoes. It was just at day- break, September 15, 1655, that the savages spread through the city, breaking into a few houses on the pretence of looking for enemy Indians, but, prob- ably to satisfy themselves that the murderer, Van Dyck, was in the city. The burgomasters and schepens went around among them in a kindly way, and asked to see their sachems, and when they had gathered them in the fort, prevailed on them to call their forces out of the city. The Indians retired to Nutten (now Governor's) Island, but soon after dusk returned, hastened to the house of Van Dyck, and killed him. Schepen Van der Grist, who lived next door, hurried out and was stricken down by an In- dian with an axe. At once the hue and. cry of mur- der was raised. The few remaining soldiers, with the burgher guard, sprang to arms, and, after a brisk action, drove the savages off, killing three and wound- ing others. The Indians, enraged at this punish- ment, hastened to Hoboken and Pavonia, where they killed every person they could find, and ravaged the plantations ; thence they hurried to Staten Island. and other parts of New Jersey, where the same scenes were enacted.
In three days one hundred men, women, and chil- dren were murdered, and as many more made cap- tives. Twenty-eight fruitful plantations were wholly laid waste, and property to the value of eighty thousand dollars destroyed. Quite as bad in its results was the general feeling of terror and insecu- rity that prevailed, driving farmers from their bow- eries, and retarding settlement of the country.
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Stuyvesant, on his return, acted much more wisely than Kieft had done on a similar occasion. Instead of retaliating, he called the Indian chiefs together, and by kind words and presents succeeded in placat- ing them and restoring confidence.
The last years of Stuyvesant's reign were marred by cruel religious persecutions, which seem the more cruel because they were in open violation of the company's instructions as well as the traditions of father-land. " Allow all the free exercise of their re- ligion in their own houses," said the company, but the Director would recognize only the Dutch Re- formed Church. He sent back to Holland the Rev. Ernestus Goetwater, a Lutheran minister, who was sent over in 1656 by his co-religionists to found a Lutheran Church in his city ; and he fined and im- prisoned Lutheran parents who refused to have their children baptized in the Dutch Church. By and by he did much harsher things than these. One day, hearing that a Baptist clergyman in Flushing who had not been licensed by him had administered the Sacrament and baptized some converts, he ordered him brought before him, and fined him one thousand pounds and banished him from the province. The Quakers, however, met with the harshest treatment. Many of these peculiar people had been banished from New England about this time, and had taken refuge in New Netherlands, where they met the hearty reprobation of the clergy and the Director. Domine Megapolensis complained that the scum of New England was drifting into New Netherlands. Domine Dresius boldly asked the Director why he
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harbored persons who were driven from the other colonies as worse than a pestilence. By and by Robert Hodshone, an Englishman, a leading Quaker, began preaching in Hempstead. One day, soon after, while walking in his garden, he was seized and brought before a magistrate of Hempstead, one Richard Gildersleeve, who bound him over for trial, and hastened to acquaint Stuyvesant with the facts.
The latter, all zeal, ordered his schout-fiscal to pro- ceed that evening with a guard of musketeers and se- cure the prisoner and his effects. This was done. The soldiers seized Hodshone, bound and tied him securely, face down, to the rear end of a cart. Two women, one with a babe at the breast, who had been arrested for sheltering the preacher in their houses, were then placed in the vehicle, and the cavalcade took its slow way to the city. We can imagine the laughter and rude jests it elicited, as it wound though the streets to the common gaol, where the prisoners were thrust into separate dungeons. In a few days the Director and council met in the City Hall to dispose of Hodshone's case, and pronounced sentence-a fine of two hundred and forty dollars,and in default of payment, two years' hard labor with a negro at the wheelbarrow. Having neither money nor friends to discharge his fine, the prisoner was chained to the barrow with the negro malefactor ; he was quite as obstinate as his persecutors, how- ever, and refused to work, saying that he knew not how to do manual labor, and could not endure it if he did. The poor man was imprisoned, cruelly beaten, hung up by the thumbs, and otherwise ill-
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treated, but would not yield. At last, on the appeal of Mrs. Bayard, the Director's sister, he was set at liberty. This severity excited the general horror of the people, and although many more arrests were · made, the governor did not again proceed to such extremities.
Thus for years, slave to a despotic governor, vassal to a private corporation, controlled by a people with no genius for colonization, the city struggled for ex- istence, and was outstripped in the race by every one of the several English colonies on the north and on the south. But in the year 1664 there came a turn of fortune's wheel, and New York also became an English colony. England, as we have tried to make prominent in the preceding pages, had never relin- quished her claim to the territory covered by New Netherlands. In the year 1664, believing that the fruit was ripe, she stretched forth her hand and plucked it. Events all through the reign of Stuyve- sant had been leading up to this consummation. Charles I. of England had been deposed and be- headed. Oliver Cromwell had governed as Protector, and after his death, by a natural reaction, the mon- archy was restored and Charles II. ascended the throne of his father. Charles was a weak, pleasure- loving king, and the management of foreign affairs fell into the hands of his ministers and of his abler brother, the Duke of York. From this moment aggressions began upon the little strip of Dutch territory in America, which were intended to sweep it out of existence. In 1662, because a man whom he very much liked-John Winthrop the younger-
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desired it, Charles granted to Connecticut a charter which gave her jurisdiction over the territory bounded east by Narragansett Bay, north by the Massachusetts line, south by the sea, and west by the Pacific Ocean, with all the islands "thereunto belonging." Lord Baltimore, proprietor of the colony of Maryland, claimed the Dutch possessions on the South River under his charter, its northern boundary being the fortieth parallel. In 1664, how- ever, ignoring these prior grants, Charles gave to James, Duke of York, the entire territory claimed by the Dutch, and that energetic nobleman at once set about taking forcible possession of his property. He had no love for the Dutch, by whom he had once been libelled without being able to obtain satisfac- tion. Besides, personal interest was involved. He was Governor of the Royal African Company, an association of merchants which traded to the Gold Coast, and which had been nearly driven from the field by the superior business talent of their Dutch competitors. He was also quite ready to provoke a war with Holland, in which he might distinguish himself, and thus fix the attention of the nation upon himself, for he already had his eye on the throne. Nor were the ministers of King Charles at all backward in aiding the prince in these ambitious designs. Four men-of-war, the Guinea of thirty-six guns, the Elias of thirty, the Martin of sixteen, and the William and Nicholas of ten, were borrowed of the king, and four hundred and fifty soldiers-men of the line, under command of Colonel Richard Nicolls, a veteran officer-were placed on board of
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