The Story of New Netherland/Chapter 12

M ILITARY men are usually failures as civil rulers, and Peter Stuyvesant, the next Director-General of New Netherland, was no exception to the common experience. Nevertheless, his familiar figure and personality have thrown all predecessors into the shadowy background. Being, as the people saw him, a creature of flesh, blood, clothes, wood, and silver, he was a most picturesque personage, on which fiction and caricature have delighted to dwell. His long career, of seventeen years in the public activities of the Dutch Manhattan village and eighteen years as a private gentleman in the social life of the English city, has left an enduring impression on the metropolis. Minuit, van Twiller, and Kieft are to-day but as profiles in silhouette, while Stuyvesant’s features are clear and his portrait is familiar. Indeed, he seems to be a living person among us.

One of the brave man’s legs bad been lost in West Indian warfare, and had been replaced, through the combined services of the carpenter and silversmith, by a triumph of art and skill. Tradition, with varied tongue, tells of silver nails, studs, bands, or, and most probably, bullion lace as ornamenting his timber supplement. From nursery legend alone, we can almost see “Old Silvernails” stomping down Broadway and giving his orders like a general in battle. Among the scores of American place-names containing “silver,” at least one, in Connecticut, Silvernails, famous for its eggs and poultry, recalls the popular nickname of the warrior-governor.

It was a bright, warm day on May 24, 1647, when the Director and his retinue stepped ashore near the fort. In this tall and dignified man, then forty-five years old, the people saw the son of a Domine, the scion of a noble family, a brave Soldier, and an officer experienced in colonial administration.

Whatever his personal limitations, however colossal his egotism, or whatever his lack of sympathy with popular rights, Stuyvesant was in private character above reproach. With a high sense of honor he had purity of purpose. His honesty was above question, as his integrity was unspotted. In short, he had all the merits of a soldier and all the faults of a military man unsuited to civil government, and he met with the usual failure. With the conscience of a Roman functionary, he incarnated the corporation. He disliked personal opposition of any sort whatever, and he took it as a direct insult when the orders he gave were not instantly obeyed.

So far from being a typical Dutchman, Peter Stuyvesant was more like a Muscovite or Spaniard. In most of his public actions, he flew in the face of Dutch precedents, flouted the spirit of the Republic, and trampled on the first instincts of free men. In this he was as narrowly conscientious as the Duke of Alva. Among the exceptionally unwise things done by Stuyvesant was his prohibition of popular amusements at Easter and Christmas time.

Of much more importance for the social welfare of the colony than Stuyvesant’s rigid military conscience, was the fact that he brought with him a wife, and thus made a home. Van Twiller and Kieft were probably lone men, without the restraints of a household. With the new Governor, however, came ladies of character and refinement, and of Huguenot origin. Mrs. Samuel Bayard, whose husband had been a brother of Mrs. Stuyvesant, accompanied the Governor’s wife. With her three children, Peter, Balthasar, and Nicholas, Mrs. Bayard assisted her brother and sister-in-law, and was helped by them to make a home for her sons in the New World. With two such women of culture, Manhattan society was sure to be elevated. Happily also van Dincklagen, the officer who assisted in bringing about the removal of van Twiller and Kieft, remained in office, to be, as before, a champion of the people.

It was probably the disputes with England, then looming up towards war, that prompted the appointment of a purely military character like Stuyvesant. However, the new Governor found that one of his first tasks was with impudent cattle rather than with trespassing Yankees. The cows, mounting the grassy slopes of the fort to graze, not only threatened to trample down the defenses of New Amsterdam, but actually looked down unenviously upon the garrison. The hogs, rooting up the earthen walls, leered at the soldiers and sniffed at the heroes within. The Governor at once called for reform and repair, but in the wrong way. He did not live up to the Dutch doctrine of “no taxation without consent,” for which his countrymen were even then fighting at home. He ordered the impounding of cattle and the levying of a tax to rebuild and enlarge the fort.

At once this military commander met with the sturdy resistance of patriotic freemen. He found that his countrymen had changed their skies, but not their steadfast minds. Refusing to be slaves of a corporation, they demanded the same rights as in the Fatherland. They declined to pay the taxes which they did not themselves vote. This right of representation in government and the voting of taxes had been the Netherlanders’ cherished possession since the Crusades, when they had won it from their feudal lords. It was questioned only by the Spanish King, whom they had abjured for treachery. Now, in a new world, the people did not propose to revert to mediaeval ways at the bock and nod of a man with a feudal baron’s mind.

Among those of the Nine Men who steadfastly resisted Stuyvesant was Adrian van der Donck, who might almost be called the father of the real city, as compared with the earlier hamlet, of New Amsterdam. A graduate of the University of Leyden, he hated to see law trampled under foot either by a corporation or by its creature. Being, like several other choice men in New Netherland, a yonkheer, or young lord, he bought a manor of the Indians north of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, which was called “the Yonkheer’s Land,” and thus his title remains in the name of the town which grew upon it. When the Nine Men proposed to call a town meeting, after the ancient style known in Patria for ages, Stuyvesant took van der Donck’s act as a personal insult, and threw the lawyer into prison. Later, he treated van Schlechtenhorst, the Patroon’s agent, in the same way.

Just at this juncture there arrived from Holland Mynheers Melyn and Knyter. They were armed with an order from the States-General condemning the Director, and ordering him to defend himself by attorney from the charges against him. This quieted the lion, and he behaved himself by freeing van der Donck. But when “John Company” sent Stuyvesant a letter, he became obstinate and vindictive again. Then the Nine Men, in the name of the people, prepared their famous Vertoogh, or Remonstrance. Van der Donkc was their penman. They asked that the Dutch National Congress should assume the direct rule over New Netherland, that they at New Amsterdam should have a burghers’ or municipal government, and that the boundaries of New Netherland should be rectified by treaty and clearly defined.

Van der Donck, with facile pen and pleasing voice, succeeded with the States-General so far as to get municipal government for New Amsterdam, and an order to the Director to inaugurate it. Nevertheless, corporationism was then as strong in the Dutch as it is now in the American Republic. Men high in the Government at the Hague used vested rights in defiance of popular wishes and welfare. The great argument against justice and righteousness was the West India Company itself. These monopolists scouted the idea of popular government, and could see no need of change in either conditions or the Directorship. This stiffened Stuyvesant’s back, and his behavior more closely than ever resembled that of a Japanese daimio or a spoiled child. Besides browbeating and insulting the Nine Men, he attempted to smother representative government by leaving unfilled the vacancies in the Board of Nine Men as they occurred, but once again these appealed to the States-General with effect, and in 1653 municipal government was proclaimed.

The burgomaster, schout, and schepens met once a week in the City Hall or Stadt-Hays (whence our word “State House”), and after due form of prayer proceeded to business. With a craft quite equaling what we have so often seen in our free’ land, the “machine,” consisting of “John Company” and Peter, had so “fixed” it that the Director not only appointed the city officers, but even made ordinances on his own account. Stuyvesant never lacked vigor and conscientious industry, and from 1653 dates an era of progress and prosperity on Manhattan and in New Netherland at large.

Yet the credit of good results in no sense belongs to Stuyvesant, but rather to van der Donck. In Holland, this legal gentleman, true father of municipal New York, himself became literally a stuyvesant, or stirrer up of the sand. He labored incessantly both by voice and pen. Besides discussions at the Hague and a fierce war with printer’s ink against “John Company,” he wrote in 1655 a book entitled “A Description of New Netherland,” which was widely read by all classes. It awakened more general interest and curiosity in the new land beyond sea than anything yet attempted. In some of its pictures the artist told fairy tales and got his imaginary animals, from the menageries of heraldry and mythology, mixed with those of reality in one happy family. It is amusing to see unicorns on Manhattan, elks that seem to be fighting horses, beavers snarling at hyenas, and eagles making prey of the unicorn, to say nothing of palm trees and other tropical features. Van der Donck was not the first author whose text was contradicted by the illustrations put in by his publishers. The first and best description of the American beaver is found, in this book, in which, also, with a warning against the awful waste of timber, we find a noble plea for forest preservation. Accurate in telling what he saw, van der Donck was at times misled by what he heard. Nevertheless, through van der Donck’s leaven, the colony became a real New Netherland, worthy of its name.

When men of all the various creeds and nationalities who breathed the air of freedom in the Dutch Republic were assured of similar privilege in New Netherland, many crossed the Atlantic. Between 1653 and 1664, the population increased to about twelve thousand, of whom three thousand were on Manhattan. If any one should be honored with a statue by the citizens of New York, it is van der Donck. To him belongs largely the credit of changing the trading-post into a cosmopolitan city, in which twenty languages were spoken, and one to which came children of the same Heavenly Father who sought Him in many ways, and who under a governor like Minuit might have dwelt as brothers in one family.

It was a wolf’s welcome that Stuyvesant gave the Lutheran, the Jew, the Quaker, the Anabaptist, the Independent, and all who attended “conventicles,” that is, little meetings, apart from the Dutch Church.

The Lutherans in Holland had perfect freedom of worship, but when those on Manhattan asked for permission to worship publicly in their own way, they were denied. Bigotry, in the person of the Director, fell back on its “oath” and on Domine and Classis, and “one of the crowning glories of the Fatherland, freedom of conscience and worship, was for a season denied to New Netherland.” In time, after petty annoyances, and when the Director had been rebuked even by the Company, the Lutherans found peace, freedom, and prosperity, being now the fourth largest religious body in the United States.

When the Portuguese recaptured Brazil, the Jews had to fly for life. In. September, 1654, in the little Dutch ship St. Catrina — the American Hebrews’ Mayflower - twenty - three fugitives arrived at Manhattan. Their goods were promptly sold at auction for the passage money. Harshly treated by Stuyvesant, they waited patiently until deliverance came from “the land where conscience was free.” The Company rebuked their Director for his utterly un-Dutch behavior, and the States-General in 1655 gave special permission to the Jews to live and trade in New Netherland. In time New York became the largest Jewish city, and the College of the City of New York — the man child of Townsend Harris’s brain and heart, — “the greatest ,Jewish University,” in the world.

In their illiberal policy, the local authorities in Church and State acted contrary to the procedure in the Fatherland. The best apology we can make for either the clerical or the military persecutors on Manhattan is that they were men of their age. It seems, also, to be a law of nature that provincial people usually exceed those in the Fatherland in the intensity of their convictions. The prevailing sentiment in the Netherlands was that of toleration, and the temper that of Erasmus and William the Silent, rather than that of men who mistook their own will and ism, when linked with power, for God’s will and truth.

Stuyvesant’s genius as a soldier shone in war, and in military operations his record is admirable. He understood the character of the Indians, realized the intense pride of the Iroquois, and negotiated successfully with the Mohawks, but he frowned upon all suggestions, at home or from Holland, that savages should be employed as allies in war. Stuyvesant laid out the village of Esopus, in what is now the oldest part of Kingston, garrisoned it, and inflicted condign punishment upon the savages who massacred the whites at Wiltwijk. He resisted successfully the attempts of Englishmen to make a lodgment for trade upon the Delaware. He visited Hartford, and by his negotiations, as well as by his firmness with the English settlers on Long Island, staved off the inevitable inrush of the multiplying New Englanders, and nullified the secret plots of England’s unscrupulous rulers.

Faithful to the corporation which he represented, he tried to destroy the Patroon’s jurisdiction, repeatedly visiting Fort Orange and Rensselaerwijk, or sending soldiers to enforce the Company’s authority there. With a true dog-in-the-manger spirit, “John” and Peter refused to have Arendt van Curler’s settlement at Schenectady surveyed, lest these free farmers on the Mohawk might trade with the Indians. At these freemen we will now glance.