Chapter 43

Henry Hudson's Discovery--Block Winters on Manhattan Island--The Dutch Take Possession--The Iroquois Friendly--Immigration of the Walloons-- Charter of Privileges and Exemptions--Patroons--Manufactures Forbidden --Slave Labor Introduced--New Sweden--New Netherlanders Want a Voice in the Government.

When Henry Hudson managed, notwithstanding his detention in England by King James, to send an account of his discoveries to Holland, the Dutch were swift to avail themselves of the opportunities thus offered to extend their trade to North America. The traders who first sought Manhattan Island and Hudson's River, or the "Mauritius" as the Dutch called the North River, were not settlers. Among them was the daring navigator, Adrian Block, from whom Block Island is named, who gathered a cargo of skins and was about to depart, late in the year 1613, when vessel and cargo were consumed by fire. Block and his crew built log-cabins on the lower part of Manhattan Island, and spent the winter constructing a new ship, which they called the "Onrust" or "unrest"--an incident and a name significant now in view of the commercial pre-eminence and activity of the metropolis founded where those men built the first habitations occupied by Europeans. Block sailed in the spring of 1614 on a voyage of further discovery in his American built ship. He passed through the East River and Long Island Sound and ascertained that the long strip of land on the south was an island. He saw and named Block Island, and entered Narragansett Bay and the harbor of Boston. His report led the States-General to grant a charter for four years from October 11, 1614, to a company formed to trade in the region which Block had explored, the territory "lying between Virginia and New France," being called the New Netherland. When the charter expired, the States-General refused to grant a renewal, it being designed to place New Netherland under the jurisdiction of the Dutch West India Company as soon as that company should have received the charter for which application had been made. This charter, granted June 3, 1620, conferred on the Dutch West India Company almost sovereign powers over the Atlantic coast of America, so far as it was unoccupied by other nations, and the western coast of Africa. The Company was organized in 1622, and its attention was at once called to the necessity of founding a permanent colony in the New Netherland in order to preserve the country from seizure by the English, now established in New Plymouth to the north, as well as Virginia on the south. Dutch traders had not been idle during the period between the lapse of the old charter and organization under the new and the West India Company found its operations greatly facilitated by the labors of the pioneers. The storehouse on Manhattan Island had been enlarged, a fort had been erected on an island near the site of Albany, and the Iroquois had learned that in the Dutch they had an ally who would assist them with arms at least against their enemies on the St. Lawrence. The West India Company began wisely the work of settlement. They invited the Walloons, Protestant refugees from the Belgic provinces of Spain, to emigrate to New Netherland. They were most desirable settlers for a new country, as industrious as they were intelligent and religious, and well versed in agriculture as well as the mechanical and finer arts. Having abandoned their homes for conscience' sake they could be trusted to do their duty loyally to their adopted State, and to advance to the best of their ability the interests of the Company.

Thirty families, including one hundred and ten men, women and children, and most of them Walloons, were in the first emigration. Four of the families, young couples who had been married on shipboard, and who, perhaps, concluded that they would get along better apart from the older households, chose to settle on the Delaware, four miles below the site of Philadelphia, where they built a blockhouse and called it Fort Nassau. Eight seamen went with them and formed a part of their colony, which grew and prospered. Others of the emigrants went to Long Island; some founded Albany; some settled on the Connecticut River, and several families made their homes in what is at present Ulster County. The Company sent over Peter Minuit as Governor in 1626, who bought from the natives their title to Manhattan Island, paying therefor trinkets and liquor to the value of twenty-four dollars. Governor Minuit built a fortification at the southern end of the island, and called it New Amsterdam. The States-General constituted the colony a county of Holland, and bestowed on it a seal, being a shield enclosed in a chain, with an escutcheon on which was the figure of a beaver. The crest was the coronet of a count.

In 1629 the Dutch West India Company gave to the settlers a charter of "privileges and exemptions," and sought to encourage immigration by offering as much land as the immigrants could cultivate, with free liberty of hunting and fowling under the direction of the Governor. They also offered to any person who should "discover any shore, bay or other fit place for erecting fisheries or the making of salt pounds" an absolute property in the same. To further promote the settlement of New Netherland the company proposed to grant lands in any part of the colony outside the island of Manhattan, to the extent of sixteen miles along any navigable stream, or four miles if on each shore, and indefinitely in the interior, to any person who should agree to plant a colony of adults within four years; or if he should bring more, his domain to be enlarged in proportion. He was to be the absolute lord of the manor, with the feudal right to hold manorial courts; and if cities should grow up on his domain he was to have power to appoint the magistrates and other officers of such municipalities, and have a deputy to confer with the Governor. Settlers under these lords, who were known as patroons--a term synonymous with the Scottish "laird" and the Swedish "patroon"--were to be exempt for ten years from the payment of taxes and tribute for the support of the colonial government, and for the same period every man, woman and child was bound not to leave the service of the patroon without his written consent. In order to prevent the colonists from building up local manufactures to the detriment of Holland industries and of the Company's trade, the settlers were forbidden to manufacture cloth of any kind under pain of banishment, and the Company agreed to supply settlers with as many African slaves "as they conveniently could," and to protect them against enemies. Each settlement was required to support a minister of the gospel and a schoolmaster. The system thus established contained the seed of evil as well as of good. African slave labor, already introduced in Virginia, where the climate was some excuse for its adoption, worked injury to the New Netherland, where all the conditions were favorable to white labor, and tended to create a servile class. The negroes, both bond and free, were for many years a most obnoxious element in the colony, viewed with apprehension and suspicion even down to the beginning of the present century by the general body of white citizens, and often subjected to most cruel and unjust persecution and punishment on charges that were either baseless or founded only in malice. The restriction on domestic manufactures was another barb in the side of the colonists, and that policy continued by the English successors of the Dutch, had much to do with exciting the War for Independence. The patroons also were an aristocratic element foreign to the prevalent spirit of North American settlement, and their feudal rule, although liberal and patriarchal in some instances, became less tolerable as years rolled on, and the people comprehended the absurdity and injustice of mediæval institutions on American soil. It is fortunate that the patroon system, unlike slavery, was ultimately uprooted without revolution.

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Americans should be proud of the fact that Gustavus Adolphus, the great king of Sweden who died on the field of Lutzen in the cause of religious liberty, gave his approval to the project for planting a Swedish colony in America, and by proclamation, while in the midst of his campaign against the Catholic League, recommended the enterprise to his people. Eighteen days later the champion of Protestantism fell in the hour of victory, and a noble monument erected by the German people marks the spot where he gave up his life that Germany might be free. The scheme was carried out by the regency which took charge of the kingdom, and Governor Minuit, recalled from New Netherland, sailed from Gottenburg in 1637 to plant a new colony on the west side of Delaware Bay. The colonists arrived at their destination in the spring of 1638, and Minuit procured from an Indian sachem a deed for a region which, the Swedes claimed, extended from Cape Henlopen to the Falls of the Delaware, where Trenton is now, and an indefinite distance inland. The Dutch protested and threatened, but Minuit built a fort on the site of Wilmington, and called it Fort Christina, in honor of the young queen of Sweden, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. The colony prospered, and a number of Hollanders settled there with the Swedes. Minuit died in 1641, and the Swedish government proceeded to place the colony on a permanent footing, and called it "New Sweden." The colony was unable to hold its own against the Dutch, and surrendered in 1655 to an expedition led by Peter Stuyvesant.

While New Netherland remained under Dutch rule the people had no voice in the choice of those officers whose duties were more than local in character. The governor was an appointee of the West India Company, and responsible solely to it; though the latter was subject to a certain amount of control from the States-General. That the people desired the privilege of electing their general officers, is shown by a petition sent in 1649 to the States-General from the Nine Men. A request was made in this document for a suitable system of government, and it was accompanied by a sketch of the methods of written proxies used by the New England colonies in selecting their governors. On the other hand, a letter sent two years later by the magistrates of Gravesend to the directors at Amsterdam, stated that it would involve "ruin and destruction" to frequently change the government by allowing the people to elect the governor, partly on account of the numerous factions, and partly because there were no persons in the province capable of filling the office. Nor did the Dutch colonists possess any voice in the making of laws. There was no regular representative assembly, although we find that there were several emergencies when the advice of the people was asked by the governors.[1]

[1] See "History of Elections in the American Colonies." Columbia College Series.