The Epic of New York City (12 page)

Then word arrived from the Dutch West India Company that the English ships were not headed for New Amsterdam. Instead, according to this rumor, they were en route to Boston, where the king's men were to insist that Church of England rites be observed.

Everyone relaxed. Stuyvesant let the Dutch vessels sail for the Caribbean, and he departed for upstate New York to pacify Indians. So for the second time the governor was absent from New Amsterdam during an emergency. Fortunately, a messenger caught up with him to report that the English squadron was indeed bearing down on the city. Stuyvesant got back to town just three days before enemy masts loomed against the horizon.

The English ships anchored off Coney Island below the Narrows. Two days later Colonel Nicolls demanded the surrender of New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant's courage cannot be questioned, although his judgment, as in the 1644 attack on St. Martin Island, is open to debate. He resolved to fight.

This was a foolhardy decision. Stuyvesant admitted as much indirectly, for shortly before the enemy arrived, he told the Dutch
West India Company that the English in America outnumbered the Dutch “and are able to deprive us of the country when they please.” In 1664 there were 50,000 English colonists in Maryland and Virginia, plus an equal number in New England. New Netherland's 3 cities and 30 villages had a total population of only about 10,000 persons. New Amsterdam itself boasted only 1,500 inhabitants, and Stuyvesant could muster no more than 200 militia and 160 regular soldiers.

Dutch colonists had been lax about throwing up their defenses, arguing that the company or the Dutch government should pay for all fortifications. Now, partly because of their own folly, they were helpless. The Wall Street palisade was falling apart. The city was open along the banks of both rivers. Food was scarce. Despite the gunpowder sent from Delaware, there still wasn't enough on hand. The fort, which didn't even contain a spring or well, couldn't withstand a siege. If an invader landed on either shore, he could stand on the hills of Broadway at pistol-shot range and look down into the fort's interior.

English negotiators rowed to a wharf under a white flag of truce. Stuyvesant received them with starchy courtesy, pointing out that England and Holland were not formally at war. The British then produced a letter from Nicolls stating his terms. These were liberal, considering that all the power was on his side. He promised to grant Dutch citizens freedom of conscience and religion. He declared that he would not interfere with their private property, inheritance rights, or customs. They would be permitted to trade directly with Holland. Public buildings and records would be respected. City officials could remain in office awhile; later, elections would be held. When the English diplomats had been rowed back to their men-of-war, the burgomasters urged Stuyvesant to accept these conditions “in the speediest, best and most reputable manner.” He refused. They argued. In a fit of temper he tore Nicolls' letter to shreds. A crowd gathered. Some people cursed stiff-necked Peter, while others cursed the company. By this time they knew about Nicolls' letter, although they were unaware of its contents. “The letter!” they cried. “The letter!”

After Stuyvesant stamped out to take up a position on the fort, his secretary gathered the scraps of paper, pasted them together, and handed the mended document to the burgomasters. They quickly announced the terms, and almost everyone wanted to give up.

As the enemy fleet sailed into the Upper Bay and closed in on the
Battery, the governor stood on a rampart near a gunner who was holding a burning match near a cannon. Stuyvesant growled, “I must act in obedience to orders!” Near him stood a minister, who cried, “It's madness!” Laying a hand on Stuyvesant's shoulder, the pastor pleaded, “Do you not see that there is no help for us either to the north or to the south, to the east or to the west? What will our twenty guns do in the face of the sixty-two which are pointed toward us on yonder frigates? Pray, do not be the first to shed blood!”

At that moment a messenger brought Stuyvesant a document signed by ninety-three of the principal citizens—including one of his own sons. They begged him not to do anything that would result in the slaughter of the innocent and reduce the city to ruins. The gunner still held the match at the ready as the governor read the paper. His eyes were sad; his lips, white. At last he signaled to the gunner to put out his flame. Then, more to himself than anyone else, Peter Stuyvesant muttered, “I had rather be carried to my grave.” Five minutes later a white flag waved above the fort.

Chapter 4

I
T HAD
been so easy. Without declaring war, without firing a shot, without spilling a drop of blood, the English took the forty-year-old Dutch city of New Amsterdam on August 29, 1664.

They renamed it New York in honor of the Duke of York, its new lord proprietor. York is a compound of two ancient words, which mean place at the water, a fit title for so great a seaport.

The day after the surrender the burgomasters and schepens transacted municipal business as though nothing had happened. The next Sunday the chaplain of the English troops conducted the first Church of England rites ever observed here. The transition from Dutch to British rule did not greatly disturb most citizens, for they felt nothing
could be so oppressive as a soulless corporation and a high-handed governor. But Peter Stuyvesant took it hard. To Holland he sent an explanation of his own conduct, describing how helpless he had been at the critical moment. Then he retired to the shaded quietude of his country estate.

The surrender of the city was an event of deep significance for all America. As historian John Fiske said, “Few political changes have been greater in their consequences. By transferring from Dutch into English hands the strategic center of antagonism to New France, it brought about an approach toward unity of political development in the English colonies and made it possible for them to come together in a great federal union.”

Except for one brief interruption, New York was to be ruled for many years by the last of England's royal Stuarts, James Stuart—first as the Duke of York and then as King James II. His authority over the new English colony was as absolute as that formerly enjoyed by the Dutch West India Company. His henchmen wielded all legislative, executive, and judicial power, subject only to approval by the king and Privy Council of England. James, who never visited his American empire, chose well when he selected Colonel Richard Nicolls as his first governor.

Nicolls was about forty years old when he succeeded Peter Stuyvesant. Tall and erect, gray-eyed, genial and polite, and somewhat curly-haired, Nicolls was a bachelor. The son of a lawyer, university-trained Nicolls read Greek and Latin classics in the original and spoke Dutch and French as fluently as his native English. He utterly charmed the Dutch citizens, who signed a letter proclaiming Nicolls “a wise and intelligent governor, under whose wing we hope to bloom and grow like the cedar on Lebanon.” He repaired Fort Amsterdam and renamed it Fort James. He offered to let any Dutchman go back to Holland, hoping none would do so, and none did. Of course, he was careful to ship the Dutch soldiers back home.

This first English governor found himself at the head of a strange assortment of people. The Dutch made up three-quarters of the population, but the other quarter consisted of English, French, Swedes, Finns, Portuguese, and Negroes—most of the Negroes having been brought here from Brazil. From the time of the first English settlers there had been frequent marriages between the Dutch and the English. Educated citizens spoke both languages, but many businessmen were unable to translate from one language to the other.
Because of the growing influx of Huguenots, some records were kept in French. All in all, the city was a veritable Babel.

Society was rigidly stratified. The immigrants brought along their Old World prejudices, which they handed down to their children. A line was clearly drawn between master and slave, master and indentured servant, aristocrat and tradesman, rich and poor. The common people felt they had small chance of rising in the social scale. Because of patroonships, the first wealthy class consisted of landowners. Only later did trade and shipping elevate to prominence men of humble origin.

The colonists owned several kinds of livestock—goats, hogs, oxen, sheep, cattle, and horses. Goats cost little, bred prolifically, and yielded milk and meat. Hogs overran the streets. Some farmers preferred English swine because they were hardy and could endure cold weather without shelter, but Holland hogs grew heavier and yielded more pork than the English kind. Oxen hauled wagons and pulled plows.

Dutchmen had brought their own stolid cattle to the New World. With the inauguration of livestock fairs in the city they gazed for the first time on the red English cattle shipped here by New Englanders. Local farmers soon learned that superior cattle could be bred by mating Holland bulls and English heifers. Milk was sold from house to house by countrymen bearing wooden yokes on their shoulders. From each end of the yokes dangled chains, attached to huge tin milk cans. Thus laden, the dairymen trudged about the city, crying, “Milk come!”

Because fences were scarce, most livestock grazed at large. This resulted in confusion and in conflicts about ownership until Nicolls ordered the branding of all cattle and horses. Roundups were held in Manhattan. To corner, halter, and lead wild bulls to market was a dangerous sport. The English imported bulldogs, which soon became popular among butchers. The bowlegged broad-jawed animals were trained to seize a bull by the nose and hold down its head until a rope could be slung about its neck.

When the English arrived, most of the horses in the colony were of Dutch strain. Heavy and awkward, they were good for farmwork but for little else. After the first English horses had been imported from New England and the mother country, Governor Nicolls introduced horse racing into America. Out on Long Island, near the town of Hempstead, he found a long narrow plain covered with fine grass and
unmarred by sticks or stones. There Nicolls built a racetrack, called the Newmarket Course for the famous racetrack outside London. Then the governor scheduled a series of horse races, “not so much for the divertisement of youth as for encouraging the bettering of the breed of horses which, through neglect, have been impaired.”

Apparently the first race was run in 1665, and others were run in the two following years. We know for certain that a contest was held in 1668 because Yale University owns a silver dish with this inscription: “1668: runn att Hampsted Plains, March 25.”

Two months after the city had been captured, Nicolls called a meeting of leading citizens, including former Governor Stuyvesant. Nicolls said that he hoped they would take the customary oath of allegiance to British authority. This did not mean, he explained, that they would be renouncing allegiance to the Dutch government. Presumably, the oath would result in dual citizenship. Some Dutchmen protested. Then the English governor pointed out gently but firmly that all Dutch inhabitants must renew the titles to their lands in the name of the Duke of York. After more discussions and explanations, 250 residents of the city and the adjoining countryside swore fidelity to British overlordship. Even Stuyvesant took the oath.

The Dutch West India Company now ordered Peg Leg Peter back to Holland to explain his surrender to the English. Before sailing, he obtained from the burgomasters and schepens a certificate testifying to his good character. Upon his arrival in Holland he blamed the loss of the colony on company officials, who had left him without adequate means of defense, without a single warship, and with only a few barrels of gunpowder. Angrily, they countercharged that Stuyvesant was guilty of cowardice and treason.