Conceived in Liberty (57 page)

The persecution of the Quakers now worked, as in New England, to multiply greatly the number of Quaker converts. Lady Moody and many of her followers from Lynn became Quakers at this time.

To return to the Flushing protest, this was a remonstrance drawn up in a public meeting and signed by thirty-one men, headed by the town clerk, Edward Hart, and the sheriff, Tobias Feake. The remonstrance pointed not only to Christian conscience but also to the fact that their town charter “grants liberty of conscience without modification” and that they intended to stand by these rights. Many of the signers were originally from Lynn; others were English Pilgrims who had lived in Leyden, Holland.

For this heroic act of defiance, Stuyvesant dismissed Feake and Hart from their official positions, harshly imprisoned the latter and heavily fined the former, and deprived Flushing of the right to hold town meetings. But this tyranny was in vain, as the illegal sheltering of Quakers and the conversion to their creed continued and intensified. Also in vain were the jailings of Quakers, of whom there were at one time nine imprisoned in New Amsterdam. The Dutch Calvinist ministers Megapolensis and Drosius despairingly reported in 1658: “The raving Quakers... continued to disturb the people of this province. Although our government has issued orders against these fanatics, nevertheless they do not fail to pour forth their venom. There is but one place in New England where they are tolerated and that is Rhode Island, which is the sewer of New England.”

The persecution of the Quakers in New Netherland was finally ended by the case of John Bowne. Bowne, a Quaker convert in Flushing, had been fined twenty-five pounds for holding a meeting, and threatened with banishment for nonpayment. After three months in prison, Bowne was deported to Amsterdam, the council deciding on banishment “for the welfare of the community and to crush as far as it is possible that abominable sect who treat with contempt both the political magistrates and the ministers of God’s holy Word and endeavor to undermine the police and religion.” But Bowne put his case before the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam. Shocked at the excesses, the company directed Stuyvesant that “the consciences of men ought to remain free and unshackled.
Let everyone remain free
so long as he is modest, moderate, and his political conduct irreproachable.” Bowne returned to Flushing a free man in 1663, and the Quakers were not persecuted again. As in New England, the Quakers had by the early 1660s triumphed over persecution.

New Amsterdam functioned as the major center of an illegal but free trade for the English colonies in America, for the purchase of European manufactures and for the sale of enumerated commodities, especially tobacco. Following the Restoration of Charles II, and the elaboration of the Navigation Act structure, England began to find New Netherland to be a major irritant, a major loophole in its attempt to mold and restrict colonial trade.

The English Council of Trade, established in the autumn of 1660, complained regularly to the government that New Netherland was the center of free trade in America in violation of the acts of trade. Furthermore, English ire was drawn toward New Netherland because the latter vigorously competed with the English colonies for settlement by Englishmen. The colonial concern of the English government was reflected in its continuation of the Protectorate project for settlement and development of the island of Jamaica. The colonial government there would be completely dominated by the English government and was to be the standard form imposed on the colonies. Since an elected assembly such as Virginia’s would be attractive to settlers, this form of government was pressed on Jamaica. And the fear that Dutch toleration would attract English settlers to Long Island instead of to Jamaica caused the English government to exempt the English colonies from the principal religious act of the Restoration—the Act of Uniformity of May 1662. In February 1662 the Dutch West India Company had invited all those “of tender conscience in England or elsewhere oppressed” to settle on Long Island, where the major English settlements in New Netherland were located.
Since this threatened to attract Dissenters from England, where repression of the Puritans was increasing, and especially Dissenters from New England, the 1662 Act of Uniformity did not apply to the colonies, which had been included in the 1559 Act. Thus, Dutch colonial competition provided the New England colonies with religious benefits as well as economic and political ones.

The Dutch West India Company, furthermore, was a point of special animosity to the English imperialists, as it was a major competitor of the principal instrument of English speculation and expansion, the Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa, which had raided the Dutch slave ports in West Africa. When the Spanish government sold the slave-trade contract, or Asiento de negros, to a Genoese company, which subcontracted the Asiento to the Dutch West India Company and the Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa, the English company was granted a new charter (January 1663) and the monopoly of trade in slaves from West Africa to the English colonies, as well as the exclusive right to occupy ports in West Africa.

In 1650 New Netherland and the New England Confederation had come to an agreement by which the English towns of eastern Long Island came under Connecticut or New Haven government, and the western quarter of the island remained Dutch. Connecticut, emboldened by its new royal charter, now also pressed its presumptuous claims to Dutch territory, specifically to Westchester County and to the towns of western Long Island, where Englishmen had continued to settle. Peter Stuyvesant realized that in any conflict, New Netherland would be hopelessly beaten by the English colonies alone. Its population of 5,000 contrasted with one of 8,000 in Connecticut, over 20,000 in Massachusetts, and 27,000 in Virginia. As early as 1655, Stuyvesant had displayed his caution in relations with the English when the New Englander, Thomas Pell, purchased and settled the Westchester land of Pelham Manor, formerly Anne’s Hoeck, where Anne Hutchinson had been murdered. Stuyvesant ordered Pell to leave, bag and baggage, but did nothing when Pell failed to comply. And now, in late 1663, the English towns of Long Island rebelled and proclaimed King Charles as their sovereign. They formed themselves into a league (consisting of Hempstead, Gravesend, Flushing, Oyster Bay, Middleburg, and Jamaica) and chose the veteran adventurer John Scott of Hempstead as their president. The rebels thereupon called upon England for action to crush the colony of New Netherland. Stuyvesant again pursued the course of prudence, and agreed to Connecticut demands to give up Westchester and the Long Island towns. When interethnic riots ensued on Long Island, however, Stuyvesant sent an armed force to protect the Dutch Long Island towns of Breukelen and Flatbush.

Amid this growing crisis, a landtag met in New Amsterdam in April 1664, but could only bow reluctantly to
force majeure
and agree to yield to Connecticut’s terms. But in the meanwhile, a special committee of the
Privy Council found a solution (in January 1664) to the problem of the English settlers in New Netherland and the threat of free trade to England that New Netherland’s existence posed: it would end New Netherland’s existence by conquest. Consequently, in February a grant and on March 12 a patent were issued to the Duke of York, giving him the territories along the Hudson and Delaware rivers where the Dutch had settled, plus a governmental appropriation of money to cover the expenses of seizing them as well as the Dutch ports of West Africa. The seizure was to be accomplished by the English navy, of which the Duke of York was commander. Of the three-man special committee that had submitted this recommendation to the Privy Council, it should be noted that all were officials of the Admiralty under the Duke of York, and two of them, Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, were promptly rewarded (June 1664) by the grateful Duke with a subgrant of the territory between the Hudson and the Delaware rivers.

In April 1664 the Duke of York appointed Colonel Richard Nicolls to head a commission of four to direct the conquest of New Netherland and to establish English government there. The commissioners, as we have seen, were instructed to arrange for the aid of New England in the conquest of New Netherland, to gain the enforcement of the Navigation Acts, and to settle the disputes in New England. Colonel Nicolls promptly launched an armed expedition to seize New Netherland.

To meet the English force of 1,000 men that arrived at the end of August, Stuyvesant had only 150 soldiers and 250 citizens capable of bearing arms. Not only were the Dutch outnumbered, but disaffection had been strong for years and the burgomasters were strongly inclined to submission. This inclination was greatly intensified by Nicolls’ generous terms to the Dutch, offering liberty of conscience, the retention of property rights, and freedom of trade and immigration. Furthermore, the Dutch citizens were promised freedom from conscription and guaranteed against any billeting of soldiers in their homes.

It was not lost on the realistic Dutch people that they would be enjoying far more liberty under English rule than they ever had under the despotic company government. The burgomasters and even the magistrates now clamored for submission. In a tantrum at surrendering his power, Stuyvesant tore the English message to bits, but the people demanded to hear it and Nicholas Bayard, one of the leaders of the Dutch community, pieced it together and read it to the crowd, which now called exuberantly for submission. The people were intelligent enough to regard their lives and liberties more highly than they did a remote and artificial patriotism. As the historian John Fiske pointed out: “There were many in the town who did not regard a surrender to England as the worst of misfortunes. They were weary of [Stuyvesant’s] arbitrary ways... and in this mood they lent a willing ear to the offer of English liberties. Was it not better to surrender on favorable terms than to lose their lives in behalf of—what? Their homes and families? No indeed, but in behalf of a remote government which had done little or
nothing for them! If they were lost to Holland, it was Holland’s loss, not theirs.”
*

Yet, Stuyvesant, a hard-liner to the last, desperately tried to rouse the rapidly defecting Dutch to resistance to the death. Even his closest supporters turned against him. His councillor, Micasius de Sille, warned that “resistance is not soldiership, it is sheer madness.” The rigorous Calvinist minister Reverend Mr. Megapolensis urged that “it is wrong to shed blood to no purpose.” Even Stuyvesant’s own son, Balthazar, affixed his name to a remonstrance, signed by nearly a hundred leading citizens, that pled for surrender. Finally, left alone in his colony, Peter Stuyvesant gave in, and on September 7 surrendered to the English. Colonel George Cartwright, a fellow royal commissioner of Nicolls’, obtained the peaceful surrender of Fort Orange on September 20. The English promptly assumed and continued the understanding the Dutch had with the Iroquois. New Netherland had disappeared.

The English had one last military task: the conquest of the separate colony of New Amstel. Nicolls sent another royal commissioner, Sir Robert Carr, to the Delaware. Once again the sensible Dutch burghers of New Amstel were eager to surrender. But the autocratic governor d’Hinoyossa insisted on hopeless resistance. The English finally stormed and captured Fort Casimir on October 10, and English troops took revenge by plundering and killing some of the citizenry. The Atlantic coast from Maine to South Carolina was now in the hands of the English.

It is an ironic footnote on Peter Stuyvesant’s frenzy at the idea of surrender that he passed his last days, in the late 1660s and early 1670s, in peaceful contentment on his farm in Manhattan, not only unmolested but in friendship with Governor Nicolls. Shorn of power, Peter Stuyvesant was a happier and perhaps a wiser man.

The first step of the new governor, Colonel Nicolls, was to change important names from Dutch to English: and so New Amsterdam became the city of New York, New Netherland became New York Province, and Fort Orange was renamed Albany, after one of the Duke of York’s titles. West of the Delaware, New Amstel was changed to New Castle, and Altena to Wilmington.

Trouble in Delaware began immediately, as Sir Robert Carr plundered the Dutch settlements unmercifully, confiscating property for the use of his family and friends, plundering houses, and selling Dutch soldiers into servitude in Virginia. Nicolls rushed down to Delaware, removed Carr, and placed his son, Capt. John Carr, in command of the district and at the head of a council of seven.

Boundary and jurisdiction offered a longer-range problem in the Delaware district. For Lord Baltimore claimed all of the west bank of the Delaware on behalf of Maryland, under Maryland’s charter from Charles I. But the Duke
of York refused to remove his troops, and the Delaware region remained as part of New York Province. Another boundary dispute requiring settlement was the conflict with Connecticut. According to the Duke of York’s charter, New York could have claimed all of Connecticut up to the Connecticut River, thus almost obliterating the colony, but Nicolls amicably settled for Westchester County, and Connecticut obtained the land to the east. This territory included the town of Stamford, which had tried to proclaim itself an independent republic. On the other hand, New York, according to the clear-cut terms of the charter, obtained jurisdiction over all of Long Island. In imitation of Yorkshire in England, Nicolls promptly organized Long Island, Staten Island, and Westchester, with their preponderant English population, into one district called Yorkshire. The new district contained three subdistricts or “ridings”: the East (now Suffolk County and most of Nassau County); the West, including what is now Kings County and Staten Island; and the North, including what is now Westchester, Bronx, and Queens counties.

As a result of the king’s grant to the Duke of York, New York now included Delaware, the County of Cornwall (all of Maine east of the Kennebec), and such islands off Massachusetts as Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. But one breakup of the old New Netherland territory was a bitter blow to Nicolls’ hopes of power. In June 1664, before New Netherland had even been won, the Duke of York had granted the territory between the Hudson and Delaware rivers, bounded at 41° on the north, to the proprietorship of two of his court favorites, John Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. This new province of New Jersey now lay outside New York jurisdiction.