Page:Augustine Herrman, beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade, merchant of New Amsterdam and first lord of Bohemia manor in Maryland (1941).djvu/52

 their affairs in America. The Dutch colonists, realizing that a good many things needed adjusting, were justly fearful as to how the new governor was going to begin and how far he was likely to go.

His entry into New Amsterdam has been described as being “like a peacock with great state and pomp”. One of the principal inhabitants of the village later spoke of him as the “czar of Muscovy, who kept some of the principal men waiting for hours bare headed while he himself remained covered”. This appellation seemed curiously appropriate to Stuyvesant and one that has ever since clung to his memory.

Regardless of his shortcomings, which seem to have been many and sometimes grossly apparent, Stuyvesant was very much a man of the world, and he had the good sense to realize that he was to rule over a group of men as self-willed and obstinate as himself. He proceeded with a due amount of caution, considering his natural hasty temper and his precipitate ways of doing things. It can be said of him that he did make an honest effort to please the people and found that what they really wanted was a representative form of government. Upon this discovery the new Director General decided to govern his subjects with a really high hand and to allow no compromises.

The twelve men under Van Twiller who had been called together in face of the Indian menace and to discuss matters