Page:Augustine Herrman, beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade, merchant of New Amsterdam and first lord of Bohemia manor in Maryland (1941).djvu/13

 variably was chosen. Herrman was one of the few, if not the only man in New Amsterdam who was able to read the fate of the province by the signs of the times. He saw that Holland in America was doomed and that England sooner or later would gain control of the country of Henrik Hudson.

In preparing this record of Augustine Herrman’s life, we have endeavored to keep as closely as possible to the actual facts. The colonial documents of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Delaware and Rhode Island have been gone over carefully. In fact, there are few of the original colonial records that do not have something to say about Herrman’s extraordinary career. He appears to have traveled widely and was likely known all the way from Boston to Charleston, at least by name and reputation. It may not be an exaggeration to call Herrman “the first great American”. He was a fitting antagonist to Peter Stuyvesant, “Our great Moscovy duke (who) keeps on as of old-something like a wolf, the longer he lives, the worse he bites.” Herrman, on the other hand, was ever cool and collected, with a quiet sense of humor and a philosophic attitude toward life in general. Although deeply religious and highly intellectual, he was neither a bigot nor a pedant. No man of his day could undergo hardships more submissively; no one could dispense the hospitalities of a great house with greater ease and more charming grace.

Then, too, from being merely a biography of an important historical personage, this account may help to impress a little more on the public mind the importance of New Amsterdam in its relation to America and Europe. In 1650, with the possible exception of Plymouth and Salem, New Amsterdam was the largest village in what is now the United States; in point of commerce it had no equal; not even Jamestown. The story of the conquest of New Netherlands by the British is the story of