The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; a Century Too Soon (A Story

Excerpt

CHAPTER IX.

THE MOVING WORLD.

     If we could look down the long vista of ages,
       And witness the changes of time,
     Or draw from Isaiah's mysterious pages
       A key to this vision sublime;
     We'd gaze on the picture with pride and delight,
       And all its magnificence trace,
     Give honor to man for his genius and might,
       And glory to God for his grace.
                                           --PAXTON.

After the surrender of New York to the English, in the year 1665 Peter Stuyvesant went to Holland to report to his superiors. In order to shift the responsibility from their own shoulders, they declared that the governor had not done his duty, and they asked the States-General to disapprove of the scandalous surrender of New Netherland. Stuyvesant made a similar counter-charge and begged the States-General to speedily decide his case, that he might return to America for his family. The authorities required him to answer the charges of the West India Company. He sent to New York for sworn testimony, and at the end of six months he made an able report, its allegations sustained by unimpeachable witnesses. The company made a petulant rejoinder, when circumstances put an end to the dispute. War between Holland and England then raging was ended by the peace concluded at Breda in 1667, when the former relinquished to the latter its claims to New Netherland. This brought to an end the controversy between Stuyvesant and the West India Company.

Stuyvesant went to England and obtained from King Charles permission for three Dutch vessels to have free commerce with New York for the space of seven years. Then he sailed for America, with the determination of spending the remainder of his life in New York. He was cordially welcomed by his old friends and kindly received by his political enemies, who had learned by experience that he was not a worse governor than the Duke had sent them. Stuyvesant retired to his bowerie or farm on East River, from which the famous Bowery of New York City derived its name, and in tranquillity passed the remainder of his life.

The people of New York soon discovered that a change of masters did not increase their prosperity or happiness. Brodhead says: "Fresh names and laws they found did not secure fresh liberties. Amsterdam was changed to New York and Orange to Albany; but these changes only commemorated the titles of a conqueror. It was nearly twenty years before the conqueror allowed for a brief period to the people of New York even that partial degree of representative government which they had enjoyed when the tri-colored ensign of Holland was hauled down from the flagstaff of Fort Amsterdam. New Netherland exchanged Stuyvesant and the West India Company and a republican sovereignty for Nicolls, a royal proprietor and a hereditary king. The province was not represented in Parliament, nor could the voice of its people reach the chapel of St. Stephen at Westminster as readily as it had reached the chambers of the Binnenhof at the Hague."

Nicolls was succeeded by Francis Lovelace in 1667. Lovelace was a quiet man, unfitted to encounter great storms, yet he showed considerable energy in dealing with hostile Indians and French on the northern frontier of New York. He held friendly intercourse with the people of New England, and in the summer of 1672, when a hostile squadron of Dutch vessels of war appeared before his capital, he was on a friendly visit to Governor Winthrop of Connecticut. War had again broken out between England and Holland, and the Dutch inhabitants of New York had shown signs of discontent at the abridgment of their political privileges and a heavy increase in their taxes without their consent. Personally, they liked Lovelace; but they were bound to consider him as the representative of a petty tyrant. When, in menacing attitude, they demanded more liberty and less taxation, the governor in a passion unwisely declared that they should "have liberty for no thought but how to pay their taxes." This was resented, and when the Dutch squadron came, nearly all the Hollanders regarded their countrymen in the ships as liberators. When Colonel Manning, who commanded the fort, called for volunteers, few came, and these not as friends but as enemies, for they spiked the cannon in front of the statehouse.

The fleet came up broadside to the fort, and Manning, sending a messenger for Lovelace, opened fire on the enemy. One cannon ball passed through the Dutch flagship from side to side; but the balls from the fleet began pounding against the walls of the fort. Six hundred Holland soldiers landed on the banks of the Hudson above the town and were quickly joined by four hundred Dutch citizens in arms urging them to storm the fort.

With shouts and yells of triumph the body of one thousand men were marching down Broadway for that purpose. They were met by a messenger from Manning proposing to surrender the fort, if the troops might be allowed to march out with the honors of war. The proposition was accepted. Manning's troops marched out with colors flying and drums beating and laid down their arms. The Dutch soldiers marched in followed by the English troops, who were made prisoners of war and confined in the church. It was the 9th of August, 1672, and the air was quivering with heat, when the flag of the Dutch Republic once more waved over Fort Amsterdam, and the name of the city of New York was changed to New Orange, in compliment to William Prince of Orange.

The Dutch had taken New York.

The New Netherland and all the settlements on the Delaware speedily followed the capture of New York. The other English colonies near the province were amazed and prepared to defend their own domains against the encroachments of the Dutch, and Connecticut foolishly talked of an offensive war. Anthony Clove, the governor of reconquered New Amsterdam, was wide-awake. He kept his eye on the movements of the savages and Frenchmen on the north, watched every hostile indication in the east, and sent proclamations and commissions to towns on Long Island and in Westchester to compel hesitating boroughs to take the oath of allegiance to Prince William of Orange. His forts about New Orange were strengthened and mounted with one hundred and ninety cannon. A treaty of peace between the Dutch and English, however, made at London in 1674, restored New Netherland to the British crown. Some doubts arising as to the title of the Duke of York after the change, the king gave him a new grant of territory in June, 1674, within the boundary of which was included all the domain west of the Connecticut River, to the eastern shores of the Delaware, also Long Island and a territory in Maine. King Charles had commissioned Major Edmond Andros to receive the surrender of this province of New Netherland (New York) to which he was appointed governor. The final surrender was made in October, 1674, by the Dutch governor, who delivered up the keys of the fort to Major Andros, and the English never lost possession of the colony and city, until the united colonies gained their independence.

The political changes in New York had its effect on the settlements to the west and south. Eastward of the Delaware Bay and River (so called in honor of Lord De la Warr) lies New Jersey. Its domain was included in the New Netherland charter. So early as 1622, transient trading settlements were made on its soil, at Bergen and on the banks of the Delaware. The following year, Director May, moved by the attempt of a French sea-captain to set up the arms of France in Delaware, built the fort called Fort Nassau at the mouth of Timmer Kill or Timber Creek, a few miles below Camden, and settled some young Walloons near it. The Walloons (young couples), who had been married on shipboard, settled on the site of Gloucester. This was the first settlement of white people in New Jersey that lived long; but it, too, withered away in time. It was seven years later when Michael Pauw made his purchase from the Indians of the territory extending from Hoboken to the Raritan River and, latinizing his name, called it Pavonia.

In this purchase was included the settlement of some Dutch at Bergen. Though other settlements were attempted, it was forty years before any of them became permanent. Cape May, a territory sixteen miles square, which Captain Heyes bought of the Indians, all the time remained an uncultivated wilderness, yielding the products of its salt meadows to the browsing deer.

After the trouble with Dutch and Swedes the English came under the agent of the Duke of York and captured the New Netherland. While Nicolls was on his way to capture the Dutch possessions in America, the Duke of York conveyed to two favorites all the territory between the Hudson and Delaware rivers from Cape May north to the latitude of forty degrees and forty minutes. Those favorites were Lord Berkeley, brother of the governor of Virginia and the duke's own governor in his youth, and Sir George Carteret, then the treasurer of the admiralty, who had been governor of the island of Jersey, which he had gallantly defended against the forces of Cromwell. In the charter this province was named "Nova Caesarea or New Jersey," in commemoration of Carteret's loyalty and gallant deeds while governor of the island of Jersey. Colonel Richard Nicolls, the conqueror of New Netherland, in changing the name of the province to New York, ignorant of the charter given to Berkeley and Carteret, called the territory west of the Hudson Albania, in honor of his employer, who had the title of Duke of York and Albany.

Berkeley and Carteret hastened to make use of their patent. The title of their constitution was: "The concessions and agreement of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of Nova Caesarea or New Jersey, to and with all and every new adventurers and all such as shall settle and plant there." It was a fair and liberal constitution, providing for governor and council appointed by the proprietors, and deputies or representatives chosen by the people, who should meet annually and, with the governor and his council, form a general assembly for the government of the colony. It provided for a choice of a president by the representatives when in session, in case of the absence of the governor and deputy governor. All legislative power was vested in the assembly of deputies, who were to make all laws for the province. These were to be consistent with the laws and customs of Great Britain and not repugnant to the interests of the proprietors. Emigration to New Jersey was encouraged. To every free man who would go to the province with the first governor, furnished with a good musket and plenty of ammunition and with provisions for six months, was offered a free gift of one hundred and fifty acres of land, and for every able man-servant that such emigrant should take with him so armed and provisioned, a like quantity of land. Even the sending of such servants provided with arms, ammunitions and food was likewise rewarded. And for every weaker servant or female servant over fourteen years, seventy-five acres of land was given. "Christian servants" were entitled, at the expiration of the term of service, to the land so granted for their own use and benefit. To all who should settle in the province before the beginning of 1665, other than those who should go with the governor, was offered one hundred and twenty acres of land on like conditions.

It was expected that these tempting offers would rapidly people the country with industrious settlers. Philip Carteret, a cousin of Sir George, was appointed governor, and with about thirty emigrants, several of whom were Frenchmen skilled in the art of salt-making, he sailed for New York, where he arrived about the middle of July, 1665. The vessel having been driven into the Chesapeake Bay the month before, anchored at the mouth of the James River, from whence the governor sent dispatches to New York. Among them was a copy of the duke's grant of New Jersey. Governor Nicolls was astounded at the folly of the duke's grant, and mortified by this dismemberment of a state over which he had been ruling for many months with pride and satisfaction. But he bottled his wrath until the arrival of Carteret, whom he received at Fort James with all the honors due to his rank and station. That meeting in the governor's apartments was a notable one. Mr. Lossing graphically described it as follows:

"Nicolls was tall, athletic and about forty-five years of age, a soldier, haughty and sometimes very irritable and brusque in speech when excited. Carteret was shorter and fat, good-natured and affable, with polished manners which he had learned by being much at court. He entered the governor's room with Bollen, the commissary of the fort, when the former arose, beckoned his secretary to withdraw, and received his distinguished visitor cordially. But when Carteret presented the outspread parchment, bearing the original of the duke's grant with his grace's seal and signature, Nicolls could not restrain his feelings. His temper flamed out in words of fierce anger. He stormed, and uttered denunciations in language as respectful as possible. He paced the floor backward and forward rapidly, his hands clasped behind his back, and finally calmed down and begged his visitor's pardon for his uncontrollable outburst of passion.

"Nicolls yielded gracefully yet sorrowfully to circumstances, and contented himself with addressing a manly remonstrance to the duke, in which he urged an arrangement for the grantees to give up their domain in exchange for 'a few hundred thousand acres all along the seacoast.'"

The remonstrance came too late. New Jersey was already down on the maps as a separate province. Governor Carteret at the head of a few followers crossed over to his domain with a hoe on his shoulder in significance of his desire to become a planter. For his seat of government he chose a beautifully shaded spot, not far from the strait between Staten Island and the main, called the Kills, where he found four English families living in as many neatly built log cabins with gardens around them. The heads of these four families were John Bailey, Daniel Denton, and Luke Watson and one other not known, from Jamaica, Long Island, who had bought the land of some Indians on Long Island.

In compliment to the wife of Sir George Carteret, the governor named the place Elizabethtown, which name it yet retains. There he built a house for himself near the bank of the little creek, and there he organized a civil government. So was laid the foundation of the colony and commonwealth of New Jersey.

The restoration did not so materially change the New England colonies as might have been supposed, considering that they were hotbeds of Puritanism. In the younger Winthrop the qualities of human excellence were mingled in such happy proportions that, while he always wore an air of contentment, no enterprise in which he engaged seemed too lofty for his powers. He was a man whose power was felt alike in the commonwealth and the restoration. The new king had not been two years on the throne when, through his influence, an ample patent was obtained for Connecticut, by which the colony was independent except in name.

After his successful negotiations and efficient concert in founding the Royal Society, Winthrop returned to America. The amalgamation of New Haven and Connecticut could not be effected without collision....