tolerate the dissent of others. To restrain and punish error seemed right and necessary. Williams and Hutchinson were banished; the Quakers were persecuted and the witches hanged. But Puritanism contained within itself the power to correct its own abuses. Within the austere and gloomy fabric dwelt the very soul and genius of FREE THOUGHT. Under the ice-bound rigors of the faith flowed a current which no fatalism could congeal, no superstition poison. The heart of a mighty, tumultuous, liberty-loving life throbbed within the cold, stiff body of formalism. A powerful vitality, which no disaster could subdue, no persecution quench, warmed and energized and quickened. The tyranny of Phipps, the malice of Parris, and the bigotry of Mather are far outweighed by the sacrifices of Winthrop, the beneficence of Harvard, and the virtues of Sir Henry Vane. The evils of the sys tem may well be forgotten in the glory of its achievements Without the Puritans, America would have been a delusion and liberty only a name. ILLU CHAPTER XVIII. NEW YORK.—SETTLEMENT. LUSTRIOUS Sir Henry Hudson! Indomitable explorer, dauntless cavalier of the ocean! Who so worthy to give a name to the great inland sea of the frozen North as he who gave his life in heroic combat with its terrors? Who so fit to become the father of a colony in the New World as he who braved its perils and revealed its mysteries? And where should the new State be planted unless by the broad haven-broadest and best on the American coast-and among the beautiful hills and landscapes Where The Hudson came rolling through valleys a-smoke It was the good fortune of the American colonies to be founded by men whose lives, like the setting suns of summer, cast behind them a long and glorious twilight. But for the name and genius of Hudson the province of New Netherland had never been. For ten years after the founding of New Amsterdam the colony was governed by directors. These officers were appointed and sent out by the Dutch East India Company, in accordance with the charter of that corporation. The settlement on Manhattan Island was as yet only a village of traders. Not until 1623 was an actual colony sent from Holland to New Netherland. Two years previously, the Dutch West India Company had been organized, with the exclusive privilege of planting settlements in America. The charter of this company was granted for a period of twenty-four years, with the privilege of renewal; and the territory to be colonized extended from the Strait of Magellan to Hudson's Bay. Manhattan Island, with its cluster of SIR HENRY HUDSON. huts, passed at once under the control of the new corporation. In April of 1623, the ship New Netherland, having on board a colony of thirty families, arrived at New Amsterdam. The colonists, called WALLOONS, were Dutch Protestant refugees from Flanders, in Belgium. They were of the same religious faith with the Huguenots of France, and came to America to find repose from the persecutions of their own country. Cornelius May was the leader of the company. The greater number of the new immigrants settled with their friends on Manhattan Island; but the captain, with a party of fifty, passing down the coast of New Jersey, entered and explored the Bay of Delaware. Sailing up the bay and river, the company landed on the eastern shore; here, at a point a few miles below Camden, where Timber Creek falls into the Delaware, a site was selected and a block-house built named Fort Nassau. The natives were won over by kindness; and when shortly after the fort was abandoned and the settlers returned to New Amsterdam, the Indians witnessed their departure with affectionate regret. In the same year Joris, another Dutch captain, ascended the Hudson to Castle Island, where, nine years previously, Christianson had built the older Fort Nassau. A flood in the river had swept the island bare. Not deeming it prudent to restore the works in a place likely to be deluged, Joris sailed up stream a short distance and rebuilt the fortress on the present site of Albany. The name of this northern outpost was changed to Fort Orange; and here the eighteen families of Joris's company were permanently settled. In 1624 civil government began in New Netherland. Cornelius May was first governor of the colony. His official duties, however, were only such as belonged to the superintendent of a trading-post. In the next year William Verhulst became director of the settlement. Herds of cattle, swine and sheep were brought over from Holland and distributed among the settlers. In January of 1626, Peter Minuit, of Wesel, was regularly appointed by the Dutch West India Company as governor of New Netherland. Until this time the natives had retained the ownership of Manhattan Island; but on Minuit's arrival, in May, an offer of purchase was made and accepted. The whole island, containing more than twenty thousand acres, was sold to the Dutch for twenty-four dollars. The southern point of land was selected as a site for fortifications; there a block-house was built and surrounded with a palisade. New Amsterdam was already a town of thirty houses. In the first year of Minuit's administration were begun the settlements of Wallabout and Brooklyn, on Long Island. The Dutch of New Amsterdam and the Pilgrims of New Plymouth were early and fast friends. The Puritans themselves had but recently arrived from Holland, and could not forget the kind treatment which they had had in that country. They and the Walloons were alike exiles fleeing from persecution and tyranny. On two occasions, in 1627, a Dutch embassy was sent to Plymouth with an expression of good will. The English were cordially invited to remove without molestation to the more fertile valley of the Connecticut. Governor Bradford replied with words of cheer and sympathy. The Dutch were honestly advised of the claims of England to the country of the Hudson; and the people of New Netherland were cautioned to make good their titles by accepting new deeds from the council of Plymouth. A touch of jealousy was manifested when the Dutch were warned not to send their trading-boats into the Bay of Narragansett. In 1628 the population of Manhattan numbered two hundred and seventy. The settlers devoted their whole energies to the fur-trade. Every bay, inlet and river between Rhode Island and the Delaware was visited by their vessels. The colony gave promise of rapid development and of great profit to the proprietors. If the houses were rude and thatched with straw, there were energy and thrift within. If only wooden chimneys carried up the smoke, the fires of the hearthstones were kindled with laughter and song. If creaking windmills flung abroad their ungainly arms in the winds of Long Island Sound, it was proof that the people had families to feed and meant to feed them. The West India Company now came forward with a new and peculiar scheme of colonization. In 1629, the corporation created a CHARTER OF PRIVILEGES, under which a class of proprietors called patroons were authorized to possess and colonize the country. Each patroon might select anywhere in New Netherland a tract of land not more than sixteen miles in length, and of a breadth to be determined by the location. On the banks of a navigable river not more than eight miles might be appropriated by one proprietor. Each district was to be held in fee simple by the patroon, who was empowered to exercise over his estate and its inhabitants the same authority as did the hereditary lords of Europe. The conditions were that the estates should be held as dependencies of Holland; that each patroon should purchase his domain of the Indians; and that he should, within four years from the date of his title, establish on his manor a colony of not less than fifty persons. Education and religion were commended in the charter, but no provision was made for the support of either. ; Under the provisions of this instrument five estates were immediately established. Three of them, lying contiguous, embraced a district of twenty-four miles in the valley of the Hudson above and below Fort Orange. The fourth manor was laid out by Michael Pauw on Staten Island; and the fifth, and most important, included the southern half of the present State of Delaware. To this estate a colony was sent out from Holland in the spring of 1631. Samuel Godyn was patroon of the domain, but the immediate management was entrusted to David Peterson de Vries. With a company of thirty immigrants, he reached the entrance to Delaware Bay, and anchored within Cape Henlopen. Landing five miles up the bay, at the mouth of Lewis Creek, the colony selected a site and laid the foundations of Lewistown, the oldest settlement in Delaware. After a year of successful management, De Vries returned to Holland, leaving the settlement in charge of Gillis Hosset. The latter, a man of no sagacity, soon brought the colony to ruin. An Indian chief who offended him was seized and put to death. The natives, who thus far had treated the strangers with deference and good faith, were aroused to vengeance. Rising suddenly out of an ambuscade upon the terrified colonists, they left not a man alive. The houses and palisades were burned to the ground; nothing but bones and ashes remained to testify of savage passion. When De Vries returned, in December of 1632, he found only the blackened ruins of his flourishing hamlet. He sailed first to Virginia for a cargo of supplies, and thence to New Amsterdam; but before the colony could be re-established, Lord Baltimore had received from the English government a patent which embraced the whole of Delaware; the weaker, though older, claim of the Dutch patroon gave way before the charter of his more powerful rival. In April of 1633, Minuit was superseded in the government of New Netherland by Wouter van Twiller. Three months previously the Dutch had purchased of the natives the soil around Hartford, and had erected a block-house within the present limits of the city. This was the first fortress built on the Connecticut River; but the Puritans, though professing friendship, were not going to give up the valley without a struggle. In October of the same year an armed vessel, sent out from Plymouth, sailed up the river and openly defied the Dutch commander at Hartford. Passing the fortress, the English proceeded up stream to the mouth of the river Farmington, where they landed and built Fort Windsor. Two years later, by the building of Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut, the English obtained command of the river both above and below the Dutch fort. The block-house at Hartford, being thus cut off, was comparatively useless to the authorities of New Netherland; English towns multiplied in the neighborhood; and the Dutch finally surrendered their eastern outpost to their more powerful rivals. Four of the leading European nations had now established permanent colonies in America. The fifth to plant an American State was Sweden. As early as 1626, Gustavus Adolphus, the Protestant king of that country and the hero of his age, had formed the design of establishing settlements in the West. For this purpose a company of merchants had been organized, to whose capital the king himself contributed four hundred thousand dollars. The objects had in view were to form a refuge for persecuted Protestants and to extend Swedish commerce. But before his plans of colonization could be carried into effect, Gustavus became involved in the Thirty Years' War, then raging in Germany. The company was disorganized, and the capital wasted in the purchase of military stores. In November of 1632 the Swedish king was killed at the battle of Lützen. For a while it seemed that the plan of colonizing America had ended in failure, but Oxenstiern, the great Swedish minister, took up the work which his master had left unfinished. The charter of the company was renewed, and after four years of preparation the enterprise was brought to a successful issue. |