CHAPTER XXX.
```'Hail, mighty city! High must be his fame
````Who round thy bounds at sunrise now should walk; *
```Still wert thou lovely, whatsoe'r thy name,
````New Amsterdam, New Orange, or New York;
```Whether in cradle sleep in sea-weed laid,
````Or on thine island throne in queenly power arrayed."
`````Mrs. Sigourney.=
[9792]
ISTORICAL associations of the deepest interest, colonial and revolutionary, cluster around the city of New York and its immediate vicinity. Here was planted one of the earliest of the European settlements in the New World; and during the march of progress for more than a century and a half, from the advent of the _Half Moon_[[1609]] before Manhattan, until the departure of the last vestige of foreign dominion from its shores,[[1783]] the events of its history bear important relations to the general structure of our republic. Here, when the colonies lifted the strong arm of resistance against an unnatural mother, the military power of the latter first raised a permanent standard. Here was the central point of that power during almost the entire period of the conflict which ensued; and here it lingered longest when the conflict was ended. Here the last great act of the drama of the Revolution was performed, when the first President of the United States was inaugurated, and the machinery of our Federal government was put in motion. Liberty in America was born at Plymouth, cradled in Boston, and baptized in Philadelphia; in New York it was inaugurated _Pontifex Maximus_, and its Liturgy--the _Constitution_--accepted as the expression of the common sentiment of a free people.
Volumes have been written concerning the colonial history of New York; I shall devote only a few pages to the same theme, in addition to that which has already been given in this work. We have glanced at colonial and revolutionary events north of the Hudson Highlands; let us now open the chronicles of the city and vicinity.
A few months after the return of Henry Hudson to Europe, with intelligence of his discovery of the beautiful island of Manhattan ** and the river bearing his name, some Dutch traders sailed up the bay and planted their tents near the spot where now flourish the stately trees of the Battery. Hudson, being in the employment of the Dutch _East India Company_, the States General of Holland claimed political and territorial jurisdiction over a vast extent of country more than that watered by the river discovered by Hudson. Ship followed ship with adventurers from Holland, and as deep in the wilderness as Albany they planted trading stations. A Dutch West India Company was formed,[[1621]] clothed with all the elementary powers of government, and furnished with a charter giving them territorial dominion over the shores of two continents, without the least regard to the
* While the Dutch possessed the city, after its recapture in 1673, it was the duty of the mayor to walk round the city every morning at sunrise, unlock all the gates, and then give the keys to the commander of the fort. The walls or palisades extended from the East River, across Broadway to the corner of Grace and Lumber Streets, along the line of the present Wall Street. From the most westerly point, they continued along the brow of the high bank of the Hudson to the fort, near the present Battery.
** According to Heckewelder, this Indian word signifies _place of drunkenness_, a name given to the spot fourscore years before, when Verrazani landed there, and at a council of the natives gave them strong liquor and made them drunk. The place and the local tribe were afterward called Manhattan and Manhattan.
[[[The Patroon System.--Government Established.--Trade of the People.--Governor Stuyvesant.]]]
{783}existing settlements of the English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The history of this company is instructive, but we must forbear.
A new system was adopted in 1629. _Patroons_ came, * and women and children were brought to form the basis of a permanent colony. The new domain was called New Netherlands, and the settlement on Manhattan, the germ of the present city of New York, was named New Amsterdam. The chief trade of the people was in the skins of the bear, otter, and raccoon; and soon the New Englanders complained that Dutch trappers were seen even as far eastward as Narraganset Bay. Tales of the beauty and fertility of the New World were poured into the ears of the Dutch and Germans.
Their neighbors, the Swedes, caught the whisper, came over the sea, and seated themselves upon the banks of the Delaware. Jealousy begat feuds, and feuds engendered conflicts, and Christian people spilled each others blood in the sight of the heathen.
When government for the new colony was ordained, Peter Minuits was sent as director general,[[1625]] and during his administration, and that of his successors, Van Twiller and Kieft, the settlements increased, yet trouble with the Swedes and Indians abounded. *** The governors were weak men, as statesmen, and possessed no military talent. Not so the successor of Kieft, Petrus Stuyvesant, a military commander of renown; a man of dignity, honest and true. He conciliated the Indians;**** made honorable treaties respecting boundaries with Necticut, and by a promptly executed military expedition[[1655]] he crushed the rising power of the Swedes on the Delaware, (v)
and warned Lord Baltimore not to attempt an extension of his boundary line too far northward. Yet, with all his virtues, Stuyvesant was an aristocrat. His education and pursuit made him so; and wherever the feeble plant of democracy, which now began to spring up in New Amsterdam, lifted its petals, he planted the heel of arbitrary power the people of Conupon it. Watered by Van der Donck, and a few Puritans who had strayed into the Dutch domain, it flourished, nevertheless, and at length it bore fruit. Two deputies from each village in New Netherlands, chosen by the people, met in council in New Amsterdam[[November 1653]], without the governor's permission. This first popular assembly offended the chief magistrate, and for five years animosity was allowed to fester in the public mind, while Stuyvesant opposed the manifest will of the people. They finally resisted taxes, scorned his menaces, and even expressed a willingness to bear English rule for the sake of enjoying English liberty.
* See vol. i., p. 391. The chief patroons, or patrons, who first came, were Killian van Rensselaer, Samuel Godyn, Samuel Bloemart, and Michael Paw. Godyn and Bloemart purchased lands on the Delaware, Van Rensselaer at Albany, and Paw in New Jersey, from Hoboken to the Kills. Livingston, Phillips, Van Cortland, and others, came afterward.
** This year a company of Walloons came from Holland and settled upon the land around the present Navy Yard at Brooklyn. There, on the seventh of June, Sarah Rapelle, the first white child born in New Netherlands, made her advent.
*** Dishonest traders changed friendly Indians to deadly foes. Conflicts ensued, and, to cap the climax of iniquity, Kieft caused scores of men, women, and children, who had asked his protection against the Mohawks, to be murdered at midnight, on the banks of the Hudson, at Hoboken. This act awakened the fierce ire of the tribes far in the wilderness, and caused the settlers vast and complicated trouble.
**** Because of his honorable treatment of the natives, and their attachment to him, the New Englanders charged him with a design to exterminate the English by Indian instrumentality.
* (v)See vol. i., page 386.
[[[New Netherlands seized by the English.--Disappointment of the People.--Governor Stuyvesant.--New Jersey.]]]
{784}A crisis approached. Charles the Second, without any pretense to title, gave the territory of New Netherlands to his brother James, duke of York.[[March 1664]] The duke sent an English squadron under Richard Nicolls to secure the gift, and on the third of September, 1664, the red cross of St. George floated in triumph over the fort, and the name of New Amsterdam was changed to New York. * It was an easy conquest, for the people were not unwilling. Stuyvesant began to make concessions when it was too late, and his real strength, the will of the people, had departed from him. Although they disliked him as a ruler, they loved him as a man, and in his retirement upon his Bowerie farm, ** near the city, he passed the remainder of his days in quiet, honored and respected by all.
Nicolls, the conqueror, assumed the functions of governor. *** He changed the _form_ of laws, but the despotic _spirit_ remained. The people were disappointed, and felt that they had only changed one tyranny for another. Nicolls filled his pockets from the people's purses, departed, and was succeeded by Francis Lovelace, who developed new schemes of taxation, that the people should "have liberty for no thought," as he expressed it, "but how to discharge them." The people _did_ think of something else, and were on the verge of open rebellion, when the clouds of national war overshadowed local difficulties. England and Holland were at variance, and in July, 1673, a Dutch squadron sailed up the Bay of New York, and, without firing a shot, took possession of the fort and town. The easy con-
* The fort was built of Holland brick, and was finished in 1635. It stood on high ground on the site of the row of brick houses southeast of the Bowling Green, and was capacious enough to contain the governor's house, a small church, and to accommodate three hundred soldiers. It was called Fort Amsterdam. On its surrender to the English, it was called Fort James; during the Dutch occupation again, in 1673, it was called Fort William Hendrick; then again Fort James; on the accession of William and Mary, it was called Fort Orange; and finally, it was named Fort George, when Anne, who married Prince George of Denmark, ascended the English throne. It retained that name until it was demolished in 1790-91.
** Governor Stuyvesant retired from active life after the surrender to the English, and lived in quiet dignity upon his "Bowerie" estate, a short distance from the eity, during the remainder of his life. * Stuyvesant was a native of Holland, born in 1602, and was forty-five years of age when he came to rule New Netherlands. Soon after his arrival, he married Judith Bayard, daughter of a Huguenot, by whom he had two sons. After the capture bv the English, he went to Holland (1665) to report to his superiors, and this was his last ocean voyage. With his little family he enjoyed the repose of agricultural pursuits, within sight of the smoke of the city, which curled above the tree-tops along the "Bowerie Lane." Upon his farm (on the site of the present Church of St. Mark's), he built a chapel, at his own expense, and dedicated it to the worship of God according to the rituals of the Reformed Dutch Church. He lived eighteen years after the change in the government, and at his death was buried in his vault within the chapel. Over his remains was placed a slab (which may still be seen in the eastern wall of St. Mark's), with the following inscription: "In this vault lies buried Petrus Stuyvesant, late captain general and commander-in-chief of Amsterdam, in New Netherlands, now called New York, and the Dutch West India Islands. Died in August, A.D. 1682, aged eighty years."
*** The dismemberment of the New Netherlands speedily followed the English Conquest. James sold to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, the domains included within the present limits of New Jersey. Many privileges were offered to settlers, and the new province flourished. Berkeley finally sold his moiety to a party of Quakers, among whom was William Penn. The province was divided into East and West Jersey. The latter was assigned to the Quakers. In 1682, the heirs of Carteret sold his share to Quakers, among whom, again, was William Penn, and all the territory became an asylum for the persecuted. The ownership of the Jerseys proved a bad speculation, and in 1702 the proprietors surrendered them to the crown. They were united, and for a while were under the jurisdiction of the governor of New York, yet having a distinct Legislative Assembly. New Jersey was separated from New York in 1738, and remained a distinct province until she assumed the position of a sovereign slate in 1776.
* Governor Stuyvesant's house was built of small yellow brick, imported from Holland, and stood near the present St. Mark's church, between the Second and Third Avenues. I saw his well in 1851, in a vacant lot between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets, nearly on a line with the rear of St. Mark's. A fine brick building now (1852) covers the spot. A pear-tree, imported from Holland in 1647, by Stuyvesant, and planted in his garden, yet flourishes on the corner of Thirteenth Street and Third Avenue, the only living relic which preserves the memory of the renowned Dutch governor. I saw it in May, 1852, white with blossoms, a patriarch two hundred and five years of age, standing in the midst of strangers, crowned with the hoary honors of age and clustered with wonderful associations. An iron railing protects it, and it may survive a century longer.
[[[Leisler Chief Magistrate.--His Persecution and Death.--Suppression of Piracy.--Captain Kidd.]]]
{785}quest was the work of treason, yet, as the royal libertine on the throne of England doubtless shared in the bribe, the traitor went unpunished. New Jersey and the settlements on the Delaware yielded, and for a short period (from July, 1673, until November, 1674) New York was again New Netherlands. *
During the period of twenty-four years from the English Conquest, until the Revolution, when James was driven from the throne, democratic ideas rapidly expanded, and democratic principles worked powerfully in New York. When, early in 1689, the people heard of the overthrow of the bigot James, and the accession of William and Mary, they appointed a Committee of Safety, and with almost unanimous voice approved the act of Jacob Leisler, the commander of the militia, in taking possession of the fort in the name of the new Protestant sovereigns.
Nicholson, the royal governor, departed, and with the consent of the people Leisler assumed the reigns of local rule until the king should appoint a successor. This whole movement was the spontaneous act of the people, in their sovereign capacity of self-governors. The aristocracy were offended; denounced Leisler as a usurper; and when Governor Sloughter came, they represented the popular leader as an enemy to the king and queen. Never was a man more loyal than Jacob Leisler; never was an accusation more false. His enemies resolved on his destruction, and succeeded.
Leisler and his son-in-law, Milborne, were arrested, tried under a charge of treason, and condemned to be hung. Sloughter withheld his signature to the death-warrants until the leaders of the aristocracy made him drunk at a dinner party. He then signed the fatal instrument, and before he was sober, Leisler and Milborne were suspended upon a gallows[[May 16, 1691]] on the verge of Beekman's Swamp, near the spot where Tammany Hall now stands. These were the proto-martyrs of popular liberty in America. **
Governor Sloughter, a man "licentious in his morals, avaricious, and poor," *** died of _delirium tremens_ two months after the death of Leisler, and was succeeded by Benjamin Fletcher, another weak, dissolute man; "a soldier of fortune." Fletcher became the tool of the aristocracy, and with their aid attempted to establish Episcopacy in New York, and make it the legal religion of the province. The popular Assembly was too strong for them, and defeated the scheme. Earl Bellomont, **** who succeeded Fletcher in 1698, was a better and a wiser man. Death removed him just as his more liberal policy was about to bear fruit,[[1701]] and Edward Hyde (afterward Lord Cornbury), a libertine and a knave, cursed the province with misrule for seven years, when the people successfully demanded his recall. From that period until the arrival of William Cosby as governor, in 1732, the royal representatives, unable to resist the will of the people, expressed by the popular Assembly, allowed democratic principles to grow and bear fruit. Rip van Dam, "a man of the people," was acting governor when Cosby came. They soon quarreled, and two violent parties arose; the Democratic, who sided with Van Dam, and the Aristocratic, who sup-
* For interesting papers connected with this event, see Documentary History of New York, iii., 80-99 inclusive; also Valentine's Manual of the Common Council of New York, 1852, p. 415-435 inclusive.
** Jacoh Leisler was a native of Frankfort, in Germany. He came to America in 1660, and after a brief residence in Albany, he became a trader in New York. While on a voyage to Europe, he, with seven others, was made a prisoner by the Turks, to whom he paid a high price for his ransom. Governor Dongan appointed him one of the commissioners of the Court of Admiralty in 1683. In 1689, while exercising the functions of governor, he purchased New Rochelle for the persecuted Huguenots. His death, by the violence of his enemies, lighted an intense flame of party spirit, which burned for many long years. Abraham Gouverneur, Leisler's secretary, was condemned at the same time, but was pardoned. He afterward married the widow of Milborne, and became the ancestor of the large and respectable family of Gouverneurs in this country, and its collateral branches.
*** Chief Justice Smith.
**** It was during the administration of Bellomont, that efforts were made to suppress prevailing piracy. The governor, Robert Livingston, and others, fitted out an expedition for the purpose, intrusted the command to the famous Captain Kidd, and were to share with him in all the profits arising from the capture of piratical vessels. Kidd was hung as a pirate in 1701, apparently the victim of a political conspiracy.
[[[Attempt to Muzzle the Press.--Triumph of Democracy.--The Negro Plot.--Death of Sir Danvers Osborn.]]]
{786}ported the governor. Each party had a newspaper at command, * and the war of words raged violently. The governor finally ordered Zenger, the publisher of the paper opposed to him, to be arrested on a charge of libel. After an imprisonment of thirty-five weeks, Zenger was tried and acquitted by a jury. The excitement was intense, and, as on other occasions, the heat of party zeal stimulated the growth of democratic ideas. **
The remarkable event in the history of judicial proceedings, known as _The Negro Plot_, occurred in the city of New York in 1741. The idea became prevalent that numerous negro slaves in the city had conspired to burn the town, murder the white people, and set up a government under a man of their own color. A panic appeared to subvert all reason and common sense, and before it was allayed, four white people were hanged; eleven negroes were burned, eighteen were hanged, and fifty were transported to the West Indies and sold. All the local histories contain accounts of this affair in detail.
During the administration of George Clinton (of the family of the Earls of Lincoln), from 1743 till 1753, disputes ran high between the government and the people. Clinton's haughty demeanor, exactions, and injudicious assumption of privileges, disgusted the people, and they treated him with scorn. Clinton menaced them with punishments; they defied him, and boldly pronounced his conduct "arbitrary, illegal, and a violation of their rights." Yielding to the democratic pressure, Clinton left the province, and was succeeded by Sir Danvers Osborn, on whose goodness and integrity the people relied for quiet and just rule. Four days after his accession[[Sept. 12, 1753]] to office, he went down into the suicide's grave, *** and his deputy, Janies Delancey, officiated as governor. The "Seven Years' War," now kindling in Europe, and its counterpart in America, the "French and Indian War," absorbed public attention, and the local politics of New York became, in a measure, a secondary consideration with the people. **** In that war, the people of New York, like those of her sister colonies, perceived their true strength, and learned a lesson of vast importance to them in the crisis which was now approaching. We have too often, in these volumes, considered the events which led to this crisis--the open resistance of the people to the supreme government--to require a repetition here, except those circumstances of local interest which marked the reception of the Stamp Act in New York.
When intelligence of the passage of the Stamp Act came over the sea, the people of New York boldly avowed their opposition. Cadwallader Colden, (v) a venerable Scotchman of
* The Democratic paper was published by John Peter Zenger, and was called The New York Weekly Journal; the aristocratic paper was published by William Bradford, formerly of Philadelphia (see page 258), and was called The New York Gazette. The latter was established in 1725, and the former in 1726. Bradford had been in the printing business in New York since 1693. His was the first newspaper printed in the colony.
** This was the first attempt in New York to muzzle the press. Andrew Hamilton, of Philadelphia, was Zenger's counsel; and the people, to express their approbation of the verdict, entertained Hamilton at a public dinner, and the corporation presented him with the freedom of the city in a gold box. On his departure, he was honored with salutes of cannon.
*** The loss of his wife had preyed upon the cheerfulness of Osborn, and he had become almost a misanthrope. Dismayed by the cares and perplexities of office which he saw awaited him, he hung himself with a handkerchief upon the garden fence of his residence.
**** We have already considered, in the first volume, the convention of colonial delegates at Albany in 1754, and the part which New York took in the war which ensued, and continued until 1763.
* (v) Colden was one of the most active and useful of the public men of New York before the Revolution. From a well-written memoir of him, by the pen of John W. Francis, M.D., of the city of New York, and published in The American Medical and Philosophical Register (January, 1811,