The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 by Julian Hawthorne

J >> Julian Hawthorne >> The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1

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Peter Stuyvesant is a favorite character in our history because he was a
manly and straightforward man, faithful to his employers, fearless in
doing and saying what he thought was right, and endowed with a full share
of obstinate, homely, kindly human nature. He was not in advance of his
age, or superior to his training; he was the plain product of both, but
free from selfishness, malice, and unworthy ambitions. He was born in
1602, and came to America a warrior from honorable wars, seamed and
knotty, with a famous wooden leg which all New Yorkers, at any rate love
to hear stumping down the corridors of time. His administration, the last
of the Dutch regime, wiped out the stains inflicted by his predecessors,
and resisted with equal energy encroachments from abroad and innovations
at home. He was a true Dutchman, with most of the limitations and all the
virtues of his race; fond of peace and of dwelling in his own "Bowery,"
yet not afraid to fight when he deemed that his duty. His tenure of office
lasted from 1647 till 1664, a period of seventeen active years; after the
English took possession of the town and called it New York, Peter went
back to Holland, unwilling to live in the presence of new things; but he
found that, at the age of sixty-three, he could not be happy away from the
home that he had made for himself in the new world; so he returned to
Manhattan Island, and completed the tale of his eighty years on the farm
which is now the most populous and democratic of New York's thoroughfares.
There he smoked his long-stemmed pipe and drank his schnapps, and thought
over old times, and criticised the new. After two and a half centuries,
the memory of him is undimmed; and it is to be wished that some fitting
memorial of him may be erected in the city which his presence honored.

The very next year after his arrival, free trade was established in New
Amsterdam. There had been a strict monopoly till then; but in one way or
another it was continually evaded, and the New Amsterdam merchants found
themselves so much handicapped by the restrictions, that their inability
reacted upon the managers at home. There were not at that time any infant
industries in need of protection, and the colony was large and capacious
enough to take what the mother country sent it, and more also. But in
order to prevent loss, an export duty was enforced, which pressed lightly
on those who paid it, and comforted those to whom it was paid. Commerce
was greatly stimulated, and the merchants of old Amsterdam sent
compliments and prophesies of future greatness to their brethren across
the sea. Every new-hatched settlement that springs up on the borders of
the wilderness is liable to be "hailed" by its promoters as destined to
become the Queen City of its region; the wish fathers the word, and the
word is an advertisement. But the merchant princes of Amsterdam spoke by
the card; they perceived the almost unique advantages of geographical
position and local facilities of their American namesake; with such a bay
and water front, with such a river, with such a soil and such openings for
trade, what might it not become! Yes: but--"Sic vos noa vobis
aedificatis!" The English reaped what the Dutch had sown, and New York
inherits the glory and power predicted for New Amsterdam.

The soil of Manhattan Island being comparatively poor, the place was
destined to be used as a residence merely, and the houses of prosperous
traders and burghers began to assemble and bear likeness to a town. The
primeval forest still clothed the upper part of the island; but the
visible presence of a municipality in the southern extremity prompted the
inhabitants to suggest a remodeling of the government somewhat after the
New England pattern, where patroons were unknown and impossible. It is not
surprising that suggestions to this effect from the humbler members of the
community were not cordially embraced by either the patroons or their
creators at home; in fact, it was still-born. That the people should rule
themselves was as good as to say that the horse should loll in the
carriage while his master toiled between the shafts. The thing was
impossible, and should be unmentionable. The people, however, continued to
mention it, and even to neglect paying the taxes which had been imposed
with no regard to their reasonable welfare. A deputation went to Holland
to tell the directors that they could neither farm nor trade with profit
unless the burdens were lightened; the directors thought otherwise, and
the consequence was that devices were practiced to lighten them illicitly.
This added to the interest of life, but subverted the welfare of the
state. Where political rights are not secured to all men by constitutional
right, those who are unable to get them by privilege, intrigue to steal
what such rights would guarantee. At this rate, there would presently be a
Council of Ten and an Inquisition in New Amsterdam. In 1653, the Governor
was constrained to admit the deputies from the various settlements to an
interview, in which they said their say, and he his. "We have come here at
our own expense," they observed, "from various countries of Europe,
expecting to be given protection while earning our living; we have turned
your wilderness into a fruitful garden for you, and you, in return, impose
on us laws which disable us from profiting by our labor. We ask you to
repeal these laws, allow us to make laws to meet our needs, and appoint
none to office who has not our approbation." Thus, in substance, spoke the
people; and we, at the end of the Nineteenth Century, may think they were
uttering the veriest axioms of political common sense. What sturdy Peter
Stuyvesant thought is perfectly expressed in what he replied.

"The old laws will stand. Directors and council only shall be law-makers:
never will they make themselves responsible to the people. As to officers
of government, were their election left to the rabble, we should have
thieves on horseback and honest men on foot." And with that, we may
imagine, the Governor stamped his wooden toe.

The people shrugged their shoulders. "We aim but at the general good,"
said they. "All men have a natural right to constitute society, and to
assemble to protect their liberties and property."

"I declare this assembly dissolved," Peter retorted. "Assemble again at
your peril! The authority which rules you is derived not from the whim of
a few ignorant malcontents." Alas! the seed of the American Idea had
never germinated in Peter's soldierly bosom; and when the West India
Company learned of the dialogue, they spluttered with indignation. "The
people be d----d." was the sense of their message. "Let them no longer
delude themselves with the fantasy that taxes require their assent." With
that, they dismissed the matter from their minds. Yet even then, the
Writing was on the wall. The flouted people were ripe to welcome England;
and England, in the shape of Charles II., who had come at last to his own,
meditated wiping the Dutch off the Atlantic seaboard. It availed not to
plead rights: Lord Baltimore snapped his fingers. Lieutenant-governor
Beekman, indeed, delayed the appropriation of Delaware; but Long Island
was being swallowed up, and nobody except the government cared. The people
may be incompetent to frame laws: but what if they decline to fight for
you when called upon? If they cannot make taxes to please themselves, at
all events they will not make war to please anybody else. If they are poor
and ignorant, that is not their fault. The English fleet was impending;
what was to be done? Could Stuyvesant but have multiplied himself into a
thousand Stuyvesants, he knew what he would do; but he was impotent. In
August, 1664, here was the fleet actually anchored in Gravesend Bay, with
Nicolls in command. "What did they want?" the Governor inquired.
"Immediate recognition of English sovereignty," replied Nicolls curtly;
and the gentler voice of Winthrop of Boston was heard, advising surrender.
"Surrender would be reproved at home," said poor Stuyvesant, refusing to
know when he was beaten. He was doing his best to defeat the army and navy
of England single-handed. But the burgomasters went behind him, and
capitulated, and--Peter to the contrary for four days more notwithstanding
--New Amsterdam became New York.

The English courted favor by liberal treatment of their new dependants on
the western shore of the Hudson; whatever the Dutch had refused to do,
they did. The Governor and Council were to be balanced by the people's
representatives; no more arbitrary taxation; citizens might think and pray
as best pleased them; land tenure was made easy, and seventy-five acres
was the bounty for each emigrant imported, negroes included. By such
inducements the wilderness of New Jersey, assigned to Berkeley and
Carteret, was peopled by Scots, New Englanders and Quakers. Settlement
proceeded rapidly, and in 1668 a colonial legislature met in the town
named after Elizabeth Carteret. There were so many Puritans in the
assembly, and their arguments were so convincing, that New Jersey law bore
a strong family resemblance to that of New England. This had its effect,
when, in 1670, the rent question came up for settlement. The Puritans
contended that the Indians held from Noah, and as they were lawful heirs
of the Indians, they declined to pay rents to the English proprietors.
There was no means of compelling them to do so, and they had their way.
The Yankees were already going ahead.

Manhattan did not get treated quite so well. The Governor had everything
his own way, the council being his creatures, and the justices his
appointees. The people were permitted no voice in affairs, and might as
well have had Stuyvesant back again. After Nicolls had strutted his term,
Lord Lovelace came, and outdid him. His idea of how to govern was
formulated in his instructions to an agent: "Lay such taxes," said he, "as
may give them liberty for no thought but how to discharge them." Lord
Lovelace was an epigrammatist; but in the end he had to pay for his wit.
He attempted to levy a tax for defense, and was met with refusal; the
towns of Long Island had not one cent either for tribute or defense; his
lordship swore at them heartily, but they heeded him not; and he found
himself in the shoes of the ousted Dutch Governor in an another sense than
he desired. And then was poetical justice made complete; for who should
appear before the helpless forts but Evertsen with a Dutch fleet! New
York, New Jersey and Delaware surrendered to him almost with enthusiasm,
and the work of England seemed to be all undone.

But larger events were to control the lesser. France and England combined
in an iniquitous conspiracy to destroy the Dutch Republic, and swooped
down upon the coast with two hundred thousand men. The story has often
been told how the Dutch, tenfold outnumbered, desperately and gloriously
defended themselves. They finally swept the English from the seas, and
patroled the Channel with a broom at the masthead. By the terms of the
treaty of peace which Charles was obliged by his own parliament to make,
all conquests were mutually restored, and New York consequently reverted
to England. West Jersey was bought by the Quakers; the eastern half of the
province was restored to the rule of Carteret. The Atlantic coast, from
Canada down to Florida, continuously, was English ground, and so remained
until, a century later, the transplanted spirit of liberty, born in
England, threw down the gauntlet to the spirit of English tyranny, and
won independence for the United States.

When we remember that the Dutch maintained their government in the new
world for little more than fifty years, it is surprising how deep a mark
they made there. It is partly because their story lends itself to
picturesque and graphic treatment; it is so rich in character and color,
and telling in incident. Then, too, it has a beginning, middle and end,
which is what historians as well as romancers love. But most of all,
perhaps, their brief chronicles as a distinct political phenomenon
illustrate the profound problem of self-government in mankind. The
Netherlander had proved, before any of them came hither, with what
inflexible courage they could resent foreign tyranny; and the
municipalities, as well as the nation, had grasped the principles of
independence. But it was not until they erected their little commonwealth
amid the forests of the Hudson that they awakened to the conception that
every man should bear his part in the government of all. To attain this,
it was necessary to break through a crust of conservatism almost as
stubborn as that of Spain. The authority of their upper classes had never
been questioned; the idea had never been entertained that a citizen in
humble life could claim any right to influence the conditions under which
his life should be carried on. That innate and inalienable right of the
individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which Jefferson
asserted, and which has become an axiom to every American school-boy, does
not appear, upon investigation, to be either inalienable or innate. The
history of mankind shows that it has been constantly alienated from them;
and if we pass in review the population of the world, from the oldest to
contemporary times, and from savages tribes to the most highly civilized
nations, we find the plebeian bowing before the patrician, the poor man
serving the wealthy. The conception of human equality before the law is
not a congenital endowment, but an accomplishment, arduously acquired and
easily forfeited. The first impulse of weakness in the presence of
strength is to bow down before it; it is the impulse of the animal, and of
the unspiritual, the unregenerate nature in man. The ability to recognize
the solidarity of man, and therefore the equality of spiritual manhood,
involves an uplifting of the mind, an illumination of the soul, which can
be regarded as the result of nothing less than a revelation. It is not
developed from below--it is received from above; it is a divine whisper in
the ear of fallen man, transfiguring him, and opening before him the way
of life. It postulates no loss of humility; it does not disturb the truth
that some must serve and some must direct; that some shall have charge
over many things, and some over but few. It does not supersede the outward
order of society. But it affirms that to no man or body of men, no matter
how highly endowed by nature or circumstance with intellect, position or
riches, shall be accorded the right to dispose arbitrarily of the lives
and welfare of the masses. Not elsewhere than in the hands of the entire
community shall be lodged the reins of government. The administration
shall be with the chosen ones whose training and qualifications fit them
for that function; but the principles on which their administration is
conducted shall be determined by the will and vote of all.

This is not lightly to be believed or understood; Peter Stuyvesant voiced
the unenlightened thought when he said that, should the rabble rule, order
and honesty must be overthrown. This is the inevitable conclusion of
materialistic logic. Like produces like; evil, evil; ignorance, ignorance.
Only by inspired faith will the experiment be tried of trusting the
Creator to manifest His purposes, not by the conscious wisdom of any man
or men, but through the unconscious, organic tendency, mental and moral,
of universal man. We may call it "the tendency, not ourselves, which makes
for righteousness"; or we may analyze it into the resultant of innumerable
forces, taking a direction independent of them all; or we may say simply
that it is the Divine method of leading us upward; it is all one.
Universal suffrage is an act of faith; and, faithfully carried out, it
brings political and religious emancipation to the people. How far it has
been carried out in this country is a question we shall have to answer
hereafter; we may say here that our forefathers realized its value, and
gave to us in our Constitution the mechanism whereby to practice it. To it
they added the memory of their courage and their sacrifices in its behalf;
and more than this was not theirs to give.

The English Puritans received their revelation in one way; the Dutch
traders and farmers in another; but it was the same revelation. To neither
could it be imparted in Europe, but only in the virgin solitudes of an
untrodden continent. There man, already civilized, was enabled to perceive
the inefficiency and distortion of his civilization, and to grasp the
cure. Hudson, an Englishman, but at the moment in Dutch service, opened
the gates to the Netherlanders, and thus enabled their emigrants to
perfect the work of emancipation which had been brought to the highest
stage it could reach at home. They were opposed by the directors in
Amsterdam, by their own governors and patroons, and by the errors which
immemorial usage had ingrained in them as individuals. They overcame these
forces, not by their own strength, nor by any violent act of revolution,
but by the slow, irresistible energy of natural law, with which, as with a
gravitative force, they had placed themselves in harmony. Thus they
exemplified one of the several ways in which freedom comes to man, and
took their place as a component element in the limitless cosmopolitanism
of our population.

Their subsequent history shows that nothing truly valuable is lost in
democracy. The high behavior and dignified manners which belonged to their
patroons may be observed among their descendants in contemporary New York;
the men whose ancestors controlled a thousand tenants have not lost the
powers of handling large matters in a large spirit; but they exercise it
now for worthier ends than of old. Similarly, the Dutch stolidity which
amuses us in the chronicles, reappears to-day in the form of steadiness
and judgment; the obstinacy of headstrong Peter, as self-confidence and
perseverance; the physical grossness of the old burghers, as
constitutional vigor. Many of their customs too have come down to us;
their heavy afternoon teas are recalled in our informal receptions; their
New Year's Day sociability in our calls, their Christmas celebrations in
our festival of Santa Claus. Much of our domestic architecture reflects
their influence: the gabled fronts, the tiled fireplaces, the high
"stoops," and the custom of sitting on them in summer evenings. In general
it is seen that the effect of democratic institutions is to save the grain
and reject the chaff, because criticism becomes more close and punctual,
abuses and license are not chartered, and the individual is bereft of
artificial supports and disguises, and must appear more nearly as God made
him.

[Illustration: Trepanning Men to be Sent to the Colonies]

CHAPTER FIFTH

LIBERTY, SLAVERY, AND TYRANNY

We left the colony at Jamestown emerging from thick darkness and much
tribulation toward the light. Some distance was still to be traversed
before full light and easement were attained; but fortune, upon the whole,
was kinder to Virginia than to most of the other settlements; and though
clouds gathered darkly now and then, and storms threatened, and here and
there a bolt fell, yet deliverance came beyond expectation. Something
Virginia suffered from Royal governors, something from the Indians,
something too from the imprudence and wrong-headedness of her own people.
But her story is full of stirring and instructive passages. It tells how a
community chiefly of aristocratic constitution and sympathies, whose
loyalty to the English throne was deep and ardent, and whose type of life
was patrician, nevertheless were won insensibly and inevitably to espouse
the principles of democracy. It shows how, with honest men, a king may be
loved, and the system which he stands for reverenced and defended, while
yet the lovers and apologists choose and maintain a wholly different
system for themselves. The House of Stuart had none but friends in
Virginia; when the son of Charles the First was a fugitive, Virginia
offered him a home; and the follies and frailties of his father, and the
grotesque chicaneries of his grandfather, could not alienate the
colonists' affection. Yet, from the moment their Great Charter was given
them, they never ceased to defend the liberties which it bestowed against
every kingly effort to curtail or destroy them; and on at least one
occasion they fairly usurped the royal prerogative. They presented, in
short, the striking anomaly of a people acknowledging a monarch and at the
same time claiming the fullest measure of political liberty till then
enjoyed by any community in modern history. They themselves perceived no
inconsistency in their attitude; but to us it is patent, and its meaning
is that the sentiment of a tradition may be cherished and survive long
after intelligence and experience have caused the thing itself to be
consigned to the rubbish-heap of the past.

So long as Sir Thomas Smythe occupied the president's chair of the London
Company, there could be no hope of substantial prosperity for the
Jamestown emigrants. He was a selfish and conceited satrap, incapable of
enlightened thought or beneficent action, who knew no other way to magnify
his own importance than by suffocating the rights and insulting the
self-respect of others. He had a protege in Argall, a disorderly ruffian
who was made deputy-governor of the colony in 1617. His administration
was that of a freebooter; but the feeble and dwindling colony had neither
power nor spirit to do more than send a complaint to London. Lord Delaware
had in the meantime sailed for Virginia, but died on the trip; Argall was,
however, dismissed, and Sir George Yeardley substituted for him--a man of
gracious manners and generous nature, but somewhat lacking in the force
and firmness that should build up a state. He had behind him the best men
in the company if not in all England: Sir Edward Sandys, the Earl of
Southampton, and Nicolas Ferrar. Smythe had had resignation forced upon
him, and with him the evil influences in the management retired to the
background. Sandys was triumphantly elected governor and treasurer, with
Ferrar as corporation counsel; Southampton was a powerful supporter. They
were all young men, all royalists, and all unselfishly devoted to the
cause of human liberty and welfare. Virginia never had better or more
urgent friends.

Yeardley, on his arrival, found distress and discouragement, and hardly
one man remaining in the place of twenty. The colonists had been robbed
both by process of law and without; they had been killed and had died of
disease; they had deserted and been deported; they had been denied lands
of their own, or the benefit of their own labor; and they had been
permitted no part in the management of their own affairs. The rumor of
these injuries and disabilities had got abroad, and no recruits for the
colony had been obtainable; the Indians were ill-disposed, and the houses
poor and few. Women too were lamentably scanty, and the people had no root
in the country, and no thought but to leave it. Like the emigrants to the
Klondike gold-fields in our own day, they had designed only to better
their fortunes and then depart. The former hope was gone; the latter was
all that was left.

Yeardley's business, in the premises, was agreeable and congenial; he had
a letter from the company providing for the abatement of past evils and
abuses, and the establishment of justice, security and happiness. He sent
messengers far and wide, summoning a general meeting to hear his news and
confer together for the common weal.

Hardly venturing to believe that any good thing could be in store for
them, the burgesses and others assembled, and crowded into the place of
meeting. Twenty-two delegates from the eleven plantations were there, clad
in their dingy and dilapidated raiment, and wide-brimmed hats; most of
them with swords at their sides, and some with rusty muskets in their
hands. Their cheeks were lank and their faces sunburned; their bearing was
listless, yet marked with some touch of curiosity and expectation. There
were among them some well-filled brows and strong features, announcing men
of ability and thoughtfulness, though they had lacked the opportunity and
the cue for action. Their long days on the plantations, and their uneasy
nights in the summer heats, had given them abundant leisure to think over
their grievances and misfortunes, and to dream of possible reforms and
innovations. But of what profit was it? Their governors had no thought but
to fill their own pockets, the council was powerless or treacherous, and
everything was slipping away.

It was in the depths of summer--the 30th of July, 1619. More than a year
was yet to pass before the "Mayflower" would enter the wintry shelter of
Plymouth harbor. In the latitude of Jamestown the temperature was almost
tropical at this season, and exhausting to body and spirit. The room in
which they met, in the governor's house in Jamestown, was hardly spacious
enough for their accommodation: four unadorned walls, with a ceiling that
could be touched by an upraised hand. It had none of the aspect of a hall
of legislature, much less of one in which was to take place an event so
large and memorable as the birth of liberty in a new world. But the
delegates thronged in, and were greeted at their entrance by Yeardley, who
stood at a table near the upper end of the room, with a secretary beside
him and a clergyman of the Church of England on his other hand. The
colonists looked at his urbane and conciliating countenance, and glanced
at the document he held in his hand, and wondered what would be the issue.
Nothing of moment, doubtless; still, they could scarcely be much worse off
than they were; and the new governor certainly had the air of having
something important to communicate. They took their places, leaning
against the walls, or standing with their hands clasped over the muzzles
of their muskets, or supporting one foot upon a bench; and the gaze of all
was concentrated on the governor. As he opened the paper, a silence fell
upon the assembly.

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