The Story of New Netherland/Chapter 23

“T HE Leisler episode” has been treated as a family quarrel, as a social cataclysm, as a disturbance between parsons and their flocks, and as a struggle of “Protestants” against “Papists.” The best view to take is that of the cool historian, who looks at the background and scans the latest evidence.

After the English conquest of 1664, with the increase of wealth, and the importation of English court notions, fashions, and social gradations, unknown in a republic, there grew up an “aristocratic party.” Scores of Dutchmen fawned on the English governors, securing fat offices and arrogating to themselves luxury and privileges unknown in simpler days. These were the men who had secured for New York City the flour monopoly, which took away from other places the right to bolt meal, that is, to sift out the bran and make flour. The monopolists were hated by the farmers, who looked on the Manhattan “court” as a centre of oppression.

In Europe, France under Louis XIV had become the paramount power. Its State Church was a persecutor. Tens of thousands of Huguenots, in fear of their lives, fled to Germany and Holland, but Louis sent his armies to ravage the Palatinate, or Rhine region, and in person invaded the Netherlands. The Dutch put their country under water and forced the French to retreat. William III of Holland gave his life to checkmate the Plans of Louis, who in 1685 revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had given freedom of conscience to the Huguenots. Thousands of these French Bible-readers came to America. Among them was Jacob Leisler, the son of a French exiled minister and born at Frankfort. He had enlisted as a soldier in the Dutch West India Company. After this military service, he rose, by his diligence and character, to be a church officer, one of the richest merchants in New Netherland, and a judge. Naturally he was an intense Protestant, for he knew what persecution meant. As a deacon in the Dutch Reformed Church and a man of wide experience, he loved the people, and generously helped the French immigrants. He was just the man to voice the feeling and act the will of the “Commonality,” or, in American English, the people.

Unfortunately, the Domines then in the province did what the clergy so often do to-day, — they allowed their sympathies to go with their tastes. At the crisis, they turned their backs on the “Commonality,” and sided with the men of wealth and office, many of whom were Anglo-maniacs of an acute type.

King William III landed at Torbay with an army, half Dutch and half Huguenot, and was proclaimed in Great Britain and America as sovereign. The people of New York were wild with joy. The French immigrants, who had never slept a night without fear lest King James II might make alliance with the French, and send an army from Canada to invade New York and ship them all back to France, were now sure of safety and freedom. The Dutch rejoiced because England had a king of their own blood and liberal ideas.

On Manhattan the situation was critical, for the office-holders, being all the creatures of James, had power to work mischief. The people waited anxiously for King William’s agents, but when neither these nor the dispatches came, they showed their power. In Boston the citizens arrested and imprisoned Governor Andros, and appointed a Committee of Safety.

The fort on Manhattan must be held by King William’s friends. Of the trained band of volunteers, Leisler was made first captain and then colonel. When the royal governor, Nicholson, overstepped his authority and arbitrarily dismissed a sentinel, who was a gentleman, he found the people rising in wrath, and he fled. Then the counties selected a Committee of Safety, and appointed Jacob Leisler captain of the fort. Later, they made him commander or governor of the whole province. There was no “usurpation” about it. Leisler chose counselors from each of the different nationalities.

Unfortunately, the Domines then in the province did what the clergy so often do to-day, — they allowed their sympathies to go with their tastes. At the crisis, they turned their backs on the “Commonality,” and sided with the men of wealth and office, many of whom were Anglo-maniacs of an acute type.

King William III landed at Torbay with an army, half Dutch and half Huguenot, and was proclaimed in Great Britain and America as sovereign. The people of New York were wild with joy. The French immigrants, who had never slept a night without fear lest King James II might make alliance with the French, and send an army from Canada to invade New York and ship them all back to France, were now sure of safety and freedom. The Dutch rejoiced because England had a king of their own blood and liberal ideas.

On Manhattan the situation was critical, for the office-holders, being all the creatures of James, had power to work mischief. The people waited anxiously for King William’s agents, but when neither these nor the dispatches came, they showed their power. In Boston the citizens arrested and imprisoned Governor Andros, and appointed a Committee of Safety.

The fort on Manhattan must be held by King William’s friends. Of the trained band of volunteers, Leisler was made first captain and then colonel. When the royal governor, Nicholson, overstepped his authority and arbitrarily dismissed a sentinel, who was a gentleman, he found the people rising in wrath, and he fled. Then the counties selected a Committee of Safety, and appointed Jacob Leisler captain of the fort. Later, they made him commander or governor of the whole province. There was no “usurpation” about it. Leisler chose counselors from each of the different nationalities.

Unfortunately, the aristocratic element for the most part stood aloof. The Domines, socially well disposed toward the former civil officials, who were members of their churches, held to the old order of things. In this, as so often with clerical conservatives, they proved themselves unable to read the signs of the times, or to understand that in the people is a truer instinct of order and righteousness than in the circles of privilege and fashion. At any rate, there seemed to be in the informed clergy very little of the spirit of Abraham Lincoln. The Reverend Messrs. Selyns, Dellius, and Varick thundered from their pulpits against Leisler’s authority, so that he and his party were more bitterly excited. The Leislerians thought a divine opportunity had been given to establish better government and to separate Church and State. Their feelings, as members of the Dutch Church, which in Patria had always stood for the freedom of the people, were outraged. They were bitterly disappointed in their ministers. Almost to a man, the free farmers sided with Leisler. In the towns, while the people were divided, the majority favored the ruler whom the people had chosen.

With the whole populace — the Domines and the wealthier classes on one side, and the plain people and anti-monopolists on the other — ranged in two opposite camps, there was something like civil war. The people stayed away from worship, refused to pay clerical salaries, and began to persecute and punish their pastors. Dellius fled to Boston, and Domine Varick of Long Island to Delaware. Varick was afterwards kept prisoner in the fort six months, dying ultimately from the effects of his ill treatment. It was a new thing in Dutch history when the ministers sided with the aristocrats against the people; for, throughout the grand story of freedom-loving Holland, people and pastors were one as against the privilege and prerogative. In the Netherlands the Dutch Republic was the child of the Church.

The “upper classes” made a sad mistake in not accepting the action of the people, as expressed in their Committee of Safety. The over-prudent clergy were probably influenced by social reasons, as pastors are so apt to be. Leisler was not “an illiterate German.” He was a prominent merchant and church officer, and had been duly chosen by the Committee of Safety because of his high character and ability. He had American and Continental ideas, and foresaw the future. He felt the necessity of a union of the colonies, and saw the danger from Canada that was imminent over Albany and Schenectady. He was the first man to call a Congress of the colonies to propose unity of action and secure mutual strength against France in Canada. The Congress met on Manhattan in the spring of 1690. Little was accomplished in the military campaign which followed, and by the fleet sent to Canada, but the Congress sent colonial men thinking of future union.

Leisler could not write English perfectly or express himself easily in this language, but he spoke and wrote German, Dutch, and French fluently, and had the mind of a statesman. At every stop of his difficult task Leisler strove to respect the forms of law, but, provoked at every turn with the violent opposition of the office-holding and money-making party, he was forced into doing arbitrary acts; yet, on the whole, considering his complicated tasks, and despite his mistakes, his career was noble and unselfish.

Dilatoriness in the slow-working British Government in this instance, even as in the time of our Revolution and Civil War, was the chief cause of the troubles which followed. King William appointed Sloughter governor. He, getting wrecked on the Bermudas, sent Captain Ingoldsby three months ahead of him. When the latter arrived at Manhattan, though without credentials, the old councilors of King James quickly gained his ear and advised him to demand at once the surrender of the fort. For this Ingoldsby had no commission, right in law, or authority. His business was to wait. Leisler, like a true soldier and a loyal subject, refused his demand.

This decision gave Leisler’s enemies their murderous chance. On the arrival of Sloughter, they had Leisler arrested. In spite of the efforts of the citizens, headed by Rev. Mr. Daillé, Leisler and his son-in-law, Milborne, were tried on the charge of treason and hanged, and their property was confiscated. As bravely as John Brown on the Charlestown scaffold, as nobly sweet in forgiving spirit and as became a true follower of the Victim on Calvary, Leisler died, finishing his career as a Christian gentleman and far-seeing statesman consistently and logically. The execution took place beyond the city walls, on the site of the New York Tribune building.

This brutal and lawless act of the British governor was an insult to the people who put Leisler into power, and on whose support he had based his right to power. Forced into many seemingly arbitrary acts by the exigencies of his difficult task, Leisler had done the right as God gave him to see the right.

The Leisler affair began a long dispute between “the short hairs” and “the swallow tails,” the minority of privilege and the multitude of plain people, to the great injury of religion and order. Incidentally it precipitated the massacre at Schenectady and its destruction in fire and blood. The Leislerians and anti-Leislerians were opposed in politics, church affairs, and daily life during many years.

Until our own time Leisler was looked upon as an “usurper,” and the wrong and injustice done his name are almost as great as those so long inflicted on Cromwell, the Anabaptists, and other forerunners of American safeguarded freedom. Heated prejudice has beclouded both fact and truth. Some respectable American historians, and the Tory writers to a man, and even Englishmen professing to be scholars, took this view, which my honored predecessor, Dr. A. G. Vermilyc, after minute research, has completely overthrown. Leisler is unanswerably vindicated by the facts, and our encyclopædias need revision.

Yet England loves fair play. It is now clear that the long delay of King William in answering Leisler’s repeated explanations of his act and appeals for orders, arose from Dr. Cotton Mather’s desire to have royal communications made slow, in order that New England and its popular rights might profit thereby, — though probably without intentional purpose of injury to Leisler or the people of New York. Soon the whole affair was reviewed and the iniquity of the hasty verdict demonstrated.

In England, Parliament legalized Leisler’s action and removed the attainder of treason, and Queen Anne restored Leisler’s estates to his family. Nevertheless, Governor Fletcher (1692-98) obeyed neither King nor Parliament, and set himself against their authority. In 1698 Leisler’s relatives asked Lord Bellomont, then governor, for permission to take up the bodies, which were buried near the gallows, and give them Christian burial in the Dutch Church edifice on Garden Street. Bellomont, “the hurricane reform governor,” probably out of sincere compassion, went to the other extreme in rebuking ostentatiously his predecessor and in vindicating the power of the law. He had the corpses exhumed, and although all the ministers and the Consistory of the Church were loud in their protests, — shall it be said to their shame? — the bodies of Leisler and Milborne were buried under the church floor. At midnight twelve hundred people exultantly furnished the funeral escort. The attitude of the church authorities long alienated the plain people from worshiping in the sacred edifices, and it was felt that the Domines had no sympathy with the feeling of the populace. By her historical origin and her long record as champion of the people’s rights, the Dutch Church has no business ever to side with partisans, who represent either wealth and power on the one side, or coarseness and turbulence on the other. Her place is ever as mediator and reconciler, and such in later days, true to her old traditions, she became, as we shall see.