THE PIONEERS OF NEW-YORK. BY C. F. HOFFMAN. NEW-YORK: STANFORD AND SWORDS, 139, BROADWAY. 1848 -O THE PIONEERS OF NEW-YORK. AN ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE DELIVERED BEFORE THE DECEMBER 6, 1847. [■'The first settlement of this State coincided with its natural advantages. Wliile Englishmen came to America, either flying from ecclesiastical intolerance or pursuing the treasure its savages were sunposed to possess. Dutchmen, insoired by the spirit of trade, instead of sitting down on the slvirts of the New World, boldly penetrated to the head navigation of the Hudson. They built there a fort in the year 1614, and gave it the name of that august family, whose talents and labors, alike in the cabinet and the field, secured the liberty of England as well as of Holland, and established the Independence of Europe. * * * Children of commerce, we were rocked in the cradle of war, and sucked the principles of liberty with our mother's milk."— Governeur Morris, Dec. 6, 1812.] BY cVf. 'HOFFMAN. STANFORD AND SWORDS, 139, BROADWAY. 1848. G rr r l^£ 3 Q^ PRINTED By JOHN R. M'GOWN 106 Fulton-Street. THE PIONEERS OF NEW-YORK. Mr. President and Brethren of the St. Nichohis Society, I greet you on the occasion of this anniversary of the revival of our ancient fraternity : a revival which first brought us together in genial fellowship, to honor the memory and keep alive the traditions of the early pioneers of New- York of every race. I will not emulate the learned Diedrich Knickerbocker, by commencing this discourse with a history of the rest of the world, as forming a proper prefatory chapter to the more important annals of Manhattan, but like him, I must resort to pages ancient as those of Sanchoniathan Manetho and Berosus, for the proper and duly ceremonious introduction of my theme. Among the countless legends of Arabian fiction, there is a story of a certain travelling angel — ^a sort of spirit tourist, who, wandering about from planet to planet, would always after an interval of a thousand years, look in upon our orb as it were, and rest his wings for awhile near a particular spot, upon which he invariably first alighted. That fair spot of earth, it would seem, when fiirst he visited it, was wildly overgrown with ancient trees, and one lonely half- naked savage stalked amid their glooms, the only human occupant. " Art thou the only dweller here? " asked the wayfaring angel. " I dwell not here." replied the savage, " I but wandered hither like thyself — -man dwells not here — man never hath dwelt herel" and the sullen hunter strode off to deeper coverts and a more lonely shade. A tlionsand years went by — a!:;iiin the angel stood upon the earth ! He !^aw the eternal hills "around, the same. But the leafy plain which they had enc-ireled, how looked it now? Mosques — domes — minarets, the sanctuaries of the faithful, the abodes of a million of worshippers, reflected the sunshine from their white parapets. The streets swarmed with life. The rich bazaars, the marble palaces and frequent fountains, proclaimed centuries of busy toil of successful industry, of present abounding luxury. " This noble and flourishing city ! How long hath it stood here? " asked the angel of one of its thronged multitude. " Knowest thou not the diadem city of the earth?" responded the inhabitant. "This city! It was always thus magnificent! Alia alone can tell when first its mosques were reared by the Faithful." Another thousand years have passed away — the angel is again there. He stands upon the shrubless and barren borders of a lake where fishermen are drawing their nets, and he calls to them from the shore — " Friends ! where is the ancient city which once reposed amid these hills?" The fishermen shake their heads : they have never heard of it. Their fathers have fished for many generations in that lake, which always washed the base of the surrounding hills as now ! The legend goes on to relate that the spirit ti-aveller returned twice or thrice yet again at the same intervals of time. Where he looked for the lake on his next visit, he found a meadowy pasture! The herdsmen tending the flocks that were scattered over it, laughed at his tradition of the sandy shored lake; and turning up the rich black soil with their staves, averred that those grassy fields had ever been the same as now. On his final visit the angel found a still more novel aspect on the scene. The very mountains which once girdled it had sunk into the earth, and yielded their jilace to tw^o broad arms of the sea, which now encircled that legendary spot in their embrace. The turfy savannah, for which he looked, was now broken up into hill and dale, laced by pebbled brooks or seamed here and there by deep artificial excavations. The once grassy and mountain- girt plain had become an isi-ano. He saw in one part strange shrubs, growing here there upon pinnacles of rock, whicli had either been thrown down from hills that had crumbled long ago, or lifted up by hidden energies of the earth beneath. But many roads crossed each other at intervals between them. In the most rugged situations the labor of man had so far subdued the ungenial soil, that many a garden and orchard relieved and diversified that island ; over which from the sea-ward extremity a vast city seemed to be growing even while the angel gazed : growing up from the very bosom of the bitter and brackish waters, as if the energies of old Ocean himself were lifting it from bis foam, and pushing it as it expanded, still farther and farther landward ! This, (quoth the angel.) nuist be an intelligent people, who make so thrifty a use of this forbidding soil — this must be a people most highly favored by a god-like Intelligence, whom the ix>wers of nature thus combine to favor in rearing their fast growing city. And he asked one of the dwellers, " Where are the ancient races that once flourished here? " " This is a neiv land," was the reply. " It has been a wilderness since time began — a desert untrod liy civilized man till tee came to settle and reclaim it." "Well, then (said the iiKpiisitive spirit,) this no])le city, who reared it from the waves?" " We did — we Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock," cried the same half a dozen voices in the highest Puritan key. "Why. my friends, (said the angel, speaking now with something of a Dutch accent.) even while I have gazed upon this moiling multitude, gazed through the two centuries, which are to me but as a moment of time. I have seen three races of men succeeding each other in power here, and all of them preceded you on the spot whose story of yesterday you profess to tell me." And such is history ! — Such, in the moral world developed around us, are the broad contrasts, the incessant changes in human thought and action, that although upon our continent, we find only in Uximil and Palenqiie, some approach to the physical realization of the Arabian fable, it shadows forth but too truly the mind of man. The alternate mental feebleness and proud intellectual achievement of our race, its darling love of existing idols, its arrogant reliance ujwn the Present, its childlike forgetfulness or stupid and dotard oblivion of the Past. Its again re-nascent energies and its insolent confidence that the youth thus once more j-e-invigorated, though rocked on the graves of coiottless civilizations, shall preserve its fresh enlightenment for ever. Such is histoi-y ! Alas ! too often such especially is American history. Such, above all, is the history of the State in which we live — a growing empire of more than two centuries, with a story only of yesterday. The predominance of the English race in the ultimate settlement of these United States, has made us but too ready to forget the claims of other nations (which are likewise represented in its present population) to the honor of exploring and planting it. Without diminishing the glory of Cabot in maritime exploration, to the navigators of Holland is due the credit of fir.st carefully surveying our whole Atlantic coast, and minutely mapping that part of it from Cape Cod to Henlopen. To the French, tbat of making known our vast inland waters, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the tideless wave of Lake Superior, the savage torrent of the Missouri, and the far winding current of the Mississippi. The nautical enterprize and the abundant maritime resources of the Dutch, whose navy (according to Sir Walter Raleigh) numbered ten ships to one for that of England,* gave them pre- eminent advantages over all other nations in examining the indented coast of the whole Atlantic sea-board of America, and selecting the most elegible points for such colonies as they chose to plant ; while the topographical science of the French, (whose skill in * At a later day one Dutch commercial establishment alone without the aid of the Provincial or Federal government of the United Provinces, "could equip a fleet of fifty sail of the line without building a single vessel." [Baanage in the Universal History.) Dutch words still supply half the technical terms used on shipboard. engineering was subsequently made famous over Europe by the pupils of Vauban.) fitted them for tbe reconnoisancc which they consummated with so much skill upon this Northern Continents The very points which the latter selected for military or trading posts two hundred years ago, have since become the most important towns west of the Alleglianies. Oswego, Niagara, Pittsburg, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and New Orleans, have all fulfilled the destiny that was predicted for them when designated by the sagacious Frenchmen as the keys of the respective regions in which they are situated. Nor have our pure Anglo-Saxon chroniclers contented 'them- selves with slurring over the all-important part which other Europeans had alike in planting this vast empire, and in developing its exhaustless resources. But with regard to this State particularly, in their works of solemn history, in their school books, in their public lectures, and in their anniversary addresses, they, in the blind pursuit of an unmeaning theory, seem to aim with singular industry and a most perverted ability, to obliterate the peculiar story of New-York, and point on to New England, her elder provincial sister here, as a modern colony of Massachusetts Bay! A most erroneous and offensive assumption, which is every day more and more passing into the minds of the multitude as estab- lished truth. And while tlie Massachusetts-man, the Virginian and South Carolinian, are still identified with their fathers, in both private and historical association ; New- York, alike in the partisan writings of the annalist and in the habitual mention of the daily press, is scarcely recognized as having more than a territorial existence previous to the revolution. The popular plirase of " OUB Pilgrim fathers," has become perfectly domesticated in the public lecture-rooms of this city ; and no one thinks of discussing a question of morals in the newspapers, without referring to "the customs of our Puritan ancestry." Both these phrases, indeed, have more than once, of late years, been used in our State Legislature, to add force to some doctrinal appeal. And if the inquiring spirit of the aiwlogue makes his " angel visits " as far between as formerly, lie will find not a recognition remaining of 8 the ten generations of pioneering energy of which this State was the scene before tlie Puritan interpreter of history was abroad. It should be renieiubered, that while modern New-York is so much indebted to the healthful current of New England immigration, which poured in innuediately after the revolution, her ancient story, which new associations are so fast obliterating, is characteristically her own. Her own at least from the landing of Hendrick Hudson In 1G09, to her first act of revolution in seizing the stamped paper of the British crown in 1766. And while it might be in very ques- tionable taste to carp at or arraign the natural associations of those who compose, if not the largest, yet perhaps the most intelligent, and possibly the most valuable portion of our fellow citizens through- out the State generally, yet this covering up and obliteration of her ancient story is not altogether well I New-York, though she had no Sjieedweil nor Mayflower freighted with precious hearts, daring the wilderness for conscience's sake — New York was still planted, and earlier planted, by men as bold to confront the perils of a new climate or the horrors of savage warfare, as those who landed at Plymouth — by men, too, who penetrated beyond the mountains, and established their little colonies a hundred and fifty miles from the sea-shore, without thinking that they did anything extraordinary enough to transmit their names to posterity.* AVhy is it that we "Schenectady was commenced shortly after Christiause planted a colony at Fort Orange, acting under the edict of 1614." (Dunlap.) Individual enterprize having thus started the colony on the Hudson, and those individuals having established four colonial stations, one at Manhattan, one at the head of ship navigation, one at the head of tide water, and one on the Mohawk, all prior to 1618 and each of which is at this moment a populous town; the date of the actual settlement of the Hudson cannot be arbitrarily postponed to the subsequent periods of their chartered settlements, under specific corporations. If the colonies planted under the edict of 1614, be set aside for the further acts of colonization which took place under the incorporations and charters of 1621, 1623, 1629, or 1645, in order to place us here after the Puritans, we ought by the same reasoning to assume a much later and still more striking era of the colonization of New- York, as the great landmark of our history. That landmark, which most definitely severs us from New-England as being no Puritan province of hers, is the English planting of this colony by the cavaliers of Charles II. time, when the Duke of York took 9 liear so imu-h ol' " tlie I'liritau Anglo-Saxon stock," who tirst settled on tlie outer-casing of tins continent? Why is it that we hear so little of those who struck inwardly to its heart, and grappled at once with its strong vital pulsations at the head of its tide-waters? Those hold Belgic navigatoirs, whose tiag led that of England on every sea — those devoted Huguenots, who recoiled with such energy from the grasp of despotism, that they made hut one stride from luxurious France to this then savage wilderness — tliose brave English cavaliers, wlio recoiling from Puritan intoler- ance, with the same determined spirit as did the Huguenots from Papal higotry, came hither with little but cloak and rapier, to carve out their fortunes amid the forests of New-York? Why is it that we hear so seldom of this trinity of good blood, which blending for two hundred j-ears on the soil of New York, now flows in the veins of her native-horn children, and bred a crop of men that will mate with the " Puritan Anglo Saxon " in any State of this Union? It is because yoii, brethren of St. Nicholas, have too long neglected the story of your fathers! Too coldly fostered, or too carelessly criticised the efforts of your own sons or of strangers, to illustrate it. It is because too many of the modern children of New- York, looking back for ever, like the patriarch's wife, to scenes they have left, offer but petrified affections to those local memories and that State pride to ichich yon yourselves are so faithless ! In those old colonial days, when the now popular dogmas about " the Puritan Anglo-Saxon race " had not been broached, either in the student's closet or the breeder's stable, the chance traveller who visited the banks of the Hudson and Mohawk, oliserved the happy fusion of national prejudices, and the general ease and uniformity of sentiment which prevailed among the descendants of the different Euro]iean stocks by which that noble valley was originall,\' jdanted: Imt. while recording that the general svstem of possession here, and filled the province with En-rlishmen as different in charaoter from the Puritans as were the Netherlanders themselves. 10 opinions here was far more liberal and tolerant tban that prevailing in tbe neigliboring colonies, those who have stated the fact leave us to make up our own judgment as to the cause. We may ascribe the amiable trait to the social intercourse and frequent intermarriages of the different races already alluded to; we may attribute it to the homely fact, that most of the settlers of New- York came hither to enjoy life, not to establish creeds ; to secure a (lonu'stic fireside, not to make converts to new political truths ; or. lastly, we may look for the cause in the nature of their favorite pursuits, and the mollifying effect, upon manners, of many a simple old festal custom : for our graceless Knickerbockers danced round a Maypole in the Bowerie. while the Puritan Anglo-Saxons burned witches at Salem. But in which ever direction we look, we are compelled to admit, that the planters of this Hollander colony— the Norman refugees to this Huguenot asylum, the cavalier exiles to this P^nglish province, whose commingled blood flows in the veins of the children of St. Nicholas, have left the Creoles of the soil of New-York no claim to the glories which we cheerfully accord to other sections of the colonial stock of America, on the score of their genuine Anglo-Saxon Puritan descent. We claim no ])restige of European origin; no hereditary right of superior intelligence; no aristocracy of race which shall place us at the head of the colonial planters of these United States, as the leading type of them all. We have no rivalship with the English Churchman of ancient Virginia, or the English Puritan of old Massachusetts ; with the Roman Catholic who planted tolerant Maryland, or the Swedish laitheran of the gallant little State of Delaware. We claim only that the spirit which characterized the pioneers of New-York is her own, and that it was borrowed from no other American colony. That her ancient political history is her own, and not an excres<'ence upon those of any other province. That her hiws, usages, riglits. and liberties spring from her own people — were developed by their wisdom — matured by their experience, and defended by their valor. We claim that the glory of the land, which men love to call the " The Empire State," has its well 11 springs iu the hearts of these our progenitors. We regard their councils and their deeds as a sacred bequest to memory, with all who now enjoy the fruit of the tree which they planted. And we take pleasure in believing, that not only their immediate descendants, but everij true son of Neit-York, to ivhat ever part of Europe or America he xiay care to trace his extraction, is univilling that the fathers of this State should have their labors ohliteratcd in tradition — is unwilling that the peculiar story of this ancient colony should be merged in other associations, and superseded by the encroaching annals of any sister State ; superseded here at least, amid the very graves of the men who fashioned that home in the wilderness, which we live to enjoy a metropolis of luxury. Our object to-night then is not a scholastic examination of the early annals of New- York, but a discursive recurrence to a few characteristic passages for the sake of freshening old sympathies, and brightening the chain of memories which link us to the fathers of Manhattan. In the first place, however, I must attempt to meet a statement made by a learned gentleman, when last year addressing a large, enlightened, and influential association of descendants of the Puritans, from the spot where I now stand. This learned gentle- man, eminent in New-England letters, representing the Puritanic stock on that occasion, proclaimed to his brethren of the New- England Society here in New-York, and through them to the New-York public, that " although some few settlements and attempts at settlement might have been previously made in America yet on the 22nd of December, 1620. when the Pilgrims of the Mayflower landed at Plymouth, ought to be dated the actual OPENING of tills continent." He likewise was understood to ascribe the introduction of " freedom, religion, and civilization," exclusively to the same Puritanic origin. Similar views appear to me to characterize the whole spirit of Bancroft's brilliant History of the United States, a work whose glowing eloquence and varied abilitj' has secured a wide-spread popularity, wliich is fast making it the standard authority of the country. Should these views finally prevail in our higher literature, 12 as tbey already do in our school books, (written almost exclusively by New-England men) some of the most interesting and valuable lessons in the philosophy of society, will be lost to those who come after us. I allude to the peculiar and diverse experience of each individual State of the confederacy, in the development of its moral resources and its progress toward a higher civilization. I would have other States of the old thirteen speak for themselves in this matter. As foir my own State, unless I much misconceive the character of the people — The Knickerbocker State, notwithstanding the ceaseless iteration of Puritanic assumption in pulpits and lecture rooms throughout her borders, is not yet prepared to accept the neighborly interpretation of American history, which sinks her. next to Virginia, the proudest* of the original "old tbirteeners." into the condition of the province of a province ! Nor do I think that it will be difficult to show, that however early the Puritanic school-master may have been abroad here, and however New- York may always have welcomed the representatives of bis intelligent and energetic race, as, in her eclectic spirit, she has ever welcomed the enterprize of every land and every language, she Is still not Puritanic in her origin, her pi-ogi-ess, or her character ; in other words, that tested by Jicr theory, and her practice of " settle- ment," and " freedom," and " religion," and " civilization," her stoi-y is her own .just as much as is that of Virginia the peculiar property of " the old Dnminion." Before attempting to meet the question in both its physical and its moral aspect, as I shall attempt to do. I will, in order to acquit our neighbors of singular arrogance, so far as I can, attempt to point out the error upon which tlieir encroachment upon our State pride is founded. * The proudest at least at that time, when New Plymouth, the genuine Pilgrim colony, to which it is now proposed to annex us, through Massachusetts, seemed about to be annexed to New-York instead of to Massachusetts Bay. Hear old Hutchinson. "I dare say there is not a man in the colony of Plymouth at this day, who does not think it a most happy circumstance, that they were annexed to Massa- chusetts instead of to New-York." — Hutchinson's Appendix. 13 As regards priority of settlement then, it is well known that England, at an early day. (.laiiued this province as a part of Virginia, and claimed it also on the ground, that Hendrick Hudson, though sailing under the flag of Holland when he discovered the river which bears his name, was an Englishman. This claim of prioritj' of possession was the subject of bitter controversy between England and Holland long after the foundations of New-York were laid by the latter ; and the I'uritnns. in their desire " to enlarge his Majesty's dominions, and live under their natural Prince,"* took as active a part then, as some of them do now, to prove that New- York was old England's and therefore of right belonged to New- England. When the cavaliers came in here to rule the province in the name of the Duke of York, the English side of the question seemed to be settled, though most assuredly no one then dreamed that it was settled in favor of English Puritans ; in reference to wliom the whole claim is now made, giving us a second-hand origin. The opposing races of that day liave since blended here, and the question now is. not one of English or Dutch rivalship, but of the early settlement of an American State. That is the question in its physical aspect. As regards its moral aspect — that of the independent growth of New- York upon its oicn ideas of "freedom, I'eligion, and civiliza- tion." and not upon ideas borrowed at second-hand from the Puritans, 1 will attempt similarly to acquit our Eastern friends here of encroachment, by venturing to interpret what I conceive to be their views upon the subject. Founded by the earnest sect of the Brownists, as the asylum for their peculiar fajtb.f one of the earliest acts of the Puritans of New-England was to make the most sedulous provision for educa- tion, and the gradual training of a homogeneous caste of people to faith, doctrine, and opinion. The Church and the Lyceum, or * Morton's New-England Memorial. t "When they first went to Holland they were known by the name of Brownists * * *. The plan they set out upon was not to make a great colony in a little time, but to preserve a pure and distinct congregation." — Hutchinson. 14 rather, their Chiu-cb and their Lyceum, embodied the Puritans' first ideas of the settlement of a new country, and many of their descendants are unwilling to recognize any other evidence of " freedom, religion, and civilization." as as.sociated with the word " settlement." Now. as it happens, New-York, unfortunately for her claims by such a test, took exactly opiX)site ideas from the start, arid perversely maintains them to the present day. The asylum of every sect, and eschewing alike the conventicle and the lecture-room, as a basis of civilization, she made the hearth-stone of home the foundation of good citizenship ; and without any reference to identity of doctrine or homogeneous origin, demanding only residence and loyalty to the province from her cosmopolite colonists, she took COMMERCE as her great liberalizer: took it not accidentally, nor with an Indirect and incidental view, but clearly and definitely; she explored every river, inlet, and harbor, and made a reconnois- ance of the interior, and established upon her c-oasts and inland waters, not " a few trading posts," but a whole system of " castles." as the " stations " of the Western settler were then, and are still called in the language of this State. How far the policy of New-York and her theory and practice of " settlement " may have fostered " freedom, religion, and civiliza- tion " within her borders, I may perhaps attempt to show hereafter. Let us now revert to the historic records which Mr. Brodhead's researches in Europe have recently made the property of this State. On Saturday the 11th of October. 1614, five years after Hendrick Hudson, in a vessel of eightj- tons burthen, had sailed up to the head of tide-water on the river which bears his name, there appeared before a meeting of the States-General convened at the Hague, the deputies of the United Company of Merchants of The United Provinces. They stated, that at great expense and heavy damage to themselves, arising from the loss of vessels during the last year, they had with five ships, owned by them, discovered and explored certain new lands in America between New France and Virginia, which they called New Netherland. They at the same time presented a map of the newly discovered country. 15 This, (says Mr. Brodhead,) marks the first official recognition of the existence of Neio Netherlaiid ; its name occurs for the first time in the grant which was made to these merchants to plant here a colony. Of the ships engaged in the exploration, which first gave a map of our coast to the world, one was commanded by John De Witt, another by Adrian Block, a third by Cornelius May. An island in the Hudson river long bore the name of the first of these gallant sailors, and " Block Island " and " Cape May " to this day tell us who were the hardy mariners that first explored them. The two remaining vessels were severally commanded by Captains Volkertsen and Christiansen. The name of the former has not yet appeared in our annals, but Hendrick Christiansen, ( De Laet tells us, ) was the first commandant of the first fort erected on Manhattan Island in 1614, and in the same year two other forts were built on the Hudson ; one at Esopus and one at the head of navigation near Albany. Six years later, and in the same year that the Puritans touched the rim of the coast at Plymouth, the advanced station of the commercial settlement of this province was on the Mohawk at Schenectady.* Let me now quote a passage from our historical collections, which sets forth in a still more striking light, the union of com- mercial enterprise and maritime science in these worthy prede- cessors of our present gallant race of New- York ship-masters ; and let me invite your special attention to this fact, that within two "1616 vers cette annee les Hollandais etablirent le village d'Esopus, qui prit ensuit le nom de Kingston. 1620 eatablissment, par les memea colonistea du village de Schenectady sur la riviere de Mohawk a 15 milles et dem d' Albany." — L' Art de verifier les Dates. See Stuyvesant's indignant protest (of August, 1664,) against the base surprisal and seizure of New-York bj' the English in a time of profound peace, in which he thus marks the date of settlement. "The Dutch came not into these provinces by any violence, but by virtue of \ commission, by the States-General in 1614, when they settled the North River near Fort Orange! Dr. Laet, in mentioning the administration of Christeausen and Elkens prior to the existence of the West India Company and the chartered government, they established here, under a director general, at a later period says, Ita noatri ab anno cicicc xiv. ad aliquot succeedentea tenuerunt. — -Vor. Orb. 16 years from the establishment of those trading stations at the head of the Hudson navigation, a thorough coast survey was attempted in a vessel built here in New Netherlaud, and launched first upon our waters. Here is the record. On the iSth of August. IGIO, Captain Cornelius Hendrickson, of Monichenden, in Holland, appeared before a meeting of the States-General, in behalf of the directors of New Netherland, situated in America, "between New France and Virginia, and extending from 40 to 45 degrees of North latitude," and made a report of his liaving discovered and explored certain lands, a bay, and three rivers, situated between .18 and 40 degrees of latitude, in a sinuU yacht of 16 tons burthen, named the "Onnist," (Restless.) tchich had been built there. He also presented to the States- General a descriptive map of the countries he had discovered and explored. This map is drawn on parchment, about two feet long and eighteen inches wide, and is executed in the most elegant style of art. It shows, very accurately, (says Mr. Brod- head,) the situation of the coast from Nova Scotia to the Capes of Virginia, and the discoveries then made in Long Island Sound, and in the neigliborhood of Manhattan. A fac-simile of this map is now in the office of the Secretary of State at Albany. And the register of the first vessel of which we have any account, built and belonging to the port of New-York, should never be forgotten by any true tarpaulin that sails from our harbor. The Indian term Manhattanuk. meaning. " the people of the whirlpool,"* has been thought still whimsically significant of our present municipal char- acter, but still more prophetic is the name of the first vessel built by white men in this State, 230 years ago. Yes. " the Restless " was the pioneer craft of this fevered metropolis, whose eager commerce now " pushes its wharves into the sea, blocks up the wide rivers with its fleets, and, sending its ships, the pride of naval architecture, to every clime, defies every wind, outstrides every tempest, and invades every zone."f * Schoolcraft. t Bancroft, as quoted by Brodhead, in this connection. — Discourse be/ore the New-York Historical Society. 17 The fur trade, the early nursery of the hardihood of New Netherland. and her favorite si)here of adventure, long after she passed to the British rule, was now holdly entered upon and prosecuted for a while with singular success. In 1020, as we have already said, a trading station was erected at Schenectady, and two years after the landing of the Mayflower, when Morton arrived in New England in 1022, he tells us that the colonists of the Hudson had already exported the worth of twenty thousand pounds sterling from the forests of New- York. The advanced post on the Mohawk brought the colonists in contact with the nearest of the confederated cantons of the Iroquois ; and then began that league with this singular republic of the Red Man, which endured till the acts of England in the Revolution first arrayed the Iroquois against the patriot citizens of New-York, who took ui5 arms in the war of Independence. The whole iniiioi'ts from 1024 to 1(;27, were valued at forty- six thousand dollars, while the exports exceeded sixty-eight thou- sand dollars.* Three years afterwards. (KtoO. ) the condition of the settlements on the Hudson are described by a cotempoirary Elnglish writer as " knowne to subsist in a comfortable manner, and to promise fairlie both to the State and tl;e undertakers. The cause is evident : — the men whom they carrie, though they be not many, .-ire well chosen and known to be useful and serviceable ; and they second them with seasonable and fit supplies, cherishing them as carefully as their own families, and employing them in profitable laliors that are knowne to be of speclall use to their comfortable subsistence. "f And in 1082 Captain Mason of New Plymouth writes to the English Secretary of State, that "the Dutch on the river of Man- ahatta have built shippes there whereof one was sent into Holland of GOO tons or thereabouts ; and have made sundry good returns of commodities from theme into Holland. Especially this year have they returned fifteen thousand beaver skins, besides other articles.''^ ♦ Moulton'a "Novum Belgium." t See Planter's Plea, London, 1630. t Brodhead's London Doc. 2 18 lu 1638 the trade as well as the cultivation of the soil of New Xetherland was by the formal act of the States-General, thrown open to every person whether denizen or foreigner.* From this period, although still but a hamlet, dates that cosmo- politan character which soon marked the future metropolis of the Union, more decidedly even at that early date, that it did more populous neighborhoods. The colony often languished from the inefficiency of its rulers ; but that very imbecility of rule left the character of the people to develope through their own individual enterprise; ond while all strangers were welcome among them, the New-Yorkers of that day asked nothing from the new comer save that he should show he was identified with " this eountry," as they already began to term their province, by accepting a grant of land, and laying a hearth-stone with the rest. Their whole idea of homogenousness. of clanship, of conservatism, seemed based uix)n the notion of each denizen having a homestead of his own. Their ingenious modification of the feudatory spirit, transferred to the State the homage and loyalty which pure feudalism gave to the prince or the baron ; and this, as I shall show hereafter, was the intended correction of any abuse of the cosmopolitan spirit induced by their theory of citizenship — a theoi\v as different from that of the English as is the bond of marriage from the filial tie. Learning, meanwhile, which already began to flourish in New- England, was sadly neglected in New- York, as literature is now ; while commerce, as now. was the one idea of the Knickerbockers as much as a peculiar Church had been the one idea of the veritable Pilgrims. Now, which of these ideas was first established here? which of these ideas has been most steadily carried out up to the present moment? Why they whose literature now gives law to the mind of so many American communities, brought over with them the doctrines of the Dutch Arminius. stowed away in the hold of the Mayflower to puzzle their own minds ; the home inheritors of their peculiar Church and College privileges, are now the first to embrace the * O'Callaghan. 19 questionings of every new dogma, and impinge it witli Puritanic intolerance upon others ; wliile tlie two noblest edifices upon the continent, consecrated to the Faith of the original Pilgrims, are now reared beneath the wing of Coinnicrce in the " New Netherlaud " islands of Manhattan and Nassau.* The early civil privileges of New-York offer indeed a most interesting field of imiuiry. The political (luestion of " Nu- tivism,'" as it is called, (which was broad, generous, and republican, as compared with the question now pressing upon us ; that of the Puritan Anglo-Saxon, or any other foreign race claiming to be the chief representatives and only interpreters of the genius of our institutions, ) finds no support in the early doctrines of New-York ; though the spirit which influenced some of the upholders of nativism is deeply ingrained in her unwritten constitution. That spirit, while freely i-ecognizlng to the uttermost the cosmopolitan principle already indicated, sedulously guarded against its abuse by exacting from all new comers the most solemn and c-omprehen- sive oath of allegiance to the commonwealth here. Like the marriage rite in .some schools of faith, this allegiance carried with it the sanction of a sacrament, in the modified feudal views of that day. It was an allegiance, not to doctrine nor opinion, which seems to be the existing theory of citizenship among some of our wise politicians, but to the State itself ; who.se loyal liegeman each foreign candidate for citizenship became, as the first condition of that political marriage which was intended wholly to supersede the filial tie of "Father-land." Many were the New Englanders, as I shall hereafter show, who, seeking for " a fair field and no favor," availed themselves of this broad but clearly defined platform, to rise to consideration in New- York ; many who never dreamed that the condition of loyalty to the pride and dignity of the commonwealth under which they won preferment here, would be set aside by their modern country- men in order to prove that New-Y'ork was a province of New England. * The "Church of the Puritans" on Union Square, and the "Church of the Pilgrims" on Brooklyn Heights. 20 We must now— in order to see how far the rights of a freeman were guaranteetl to her citizens, at the very inception of the iwlitical history of the State — we must now briefly revert to the country wlience came her first pioneers of many races and every religious persuasion. " Xo part of Europe contains half the number of beautiful cities, towns, and villages, all distinguished by an air of neatness peculiar to Holland * * *. The civil wars in France, the troubles in Germany, and the religious jiersecutions every where, crowded the ]irovinces with ingenious mechanics and artists ; because here they might practise the dictates of conscience, and enjoy the fruits of industry in security and repose. New manufactories were every day erected, and trades too big for individuals, were conducted to advantage by joint-stocks. During a bloody contest that continued for forty years, the republic attained the highest pitch of grandeur — the freedom of tlie ]n-ess was thorough and universal — and not- withstanding the magistrates were themselves the subjects of the keenest pasquinades, they opposed every proposition to shackle it * * *. The colonists composed the body of the people, but Jews, Mahomedans, Arminians, and Brownists, were permitted the free exercise of their religion * * * a sedulous regard to freedom appears in every jiart of their constitution. This Republic of Holland, composed of seven provinces, each enjoying its own independent privileges, the State may be termed a confederacy, united by one common interest. The seven provinces are all separate republics, acknowledging no authority, subordinate to no other power save that vested in their particular States. Even the provinces them- selves are divided into smaller republics, [our present township and district system.] Every city possesses certain sovereign privi- leges. Her provincial States cannot seize an offender, pardon a crime, or frame laws within the jurisdiction of a city. Every thing relative to itself and unconnected with the rest of the province, is transacted by its own magistrates. * * * The union of the seven provinces may be compared to the iinion of several princes, formed for their mutual security, repose, and defence. Each preserves liis own sovereignty, while he enters upon certain engagements 21 peculiar to the confederacy. * * * The government favors no curioui^ inquiry into the faith of any man. * * At Amsterdam every sect known in Europe, almost in the world, hath its public meetings ; all are citizens associated by the bonds of society and government, under the important protection of indifferent laws, with equal encouragement of arts, industry, and genius, and equal freedom of sentiment, sjieciilation, and inquiry."* Such was the European Republic from which came the pioneers of New-York ; in the heart of which State already existed the only aboriginal Republic known among the Red Race of this continent. An aboriginal Republic, which, by Cadwallader Golden, writing one hundred years ago, is most curiously assimilated to the Re- _')nblic of Holland ; the accomplished tory writer never dreaming the while, he was proving that a pure Republican system, whether imiwrted in indigenous, seemed intended by Providence to stamp the genius of our institutions from the first.f * Sir W^illiam Temple, Basnage, and others, quoted in the "Universal Hi.=tory," vol. xi. fol. ed. London, 1762. This work, so favorably mentioned by Dr. Johnson is Clarke's favorite authority in his Commentaries on the Bible. t The parallel drawn by Colden is worth quoting in this connection: "This FIVE NATIONS, (the Iroquois of New- York,) consist of so many tribes or nations joined together by a league or confederacy, like The United Provinces (of Holland,) and without any superiority of one over the other. This union has continued so long, that the Christians know nothing of the original of it. The people of it are known by the English names of Mohawks, Oneydoes, Onandagoes, Cayugas, and Senekas. Each of these nations is again divided into three tribes or families, who distinguish themselves by three different arms or ensigns, and the sachems put this ensign or mark of their family to every public paper when they sign it. Each of these nations is an absolute republic by itself, and every castle in each nation makes an independent republic, and (as in our existing township and district system) is governed in all public affairs by its own sachems. The authority of these rulers is gained by and consists wholly in the opinion the rest of the nation have of their wisdom and integrity. They strictly follow, (like the Hollanders,) one maxim, formerly used by the Romans, to increase their strength, that is, they encourage the people of other nations to incorporate with them." A distinguished feature of their character, (says De Witt Clinton,) was an exalted spirit of liberty, 'which scouted with equal indignity at domestic or foreign control. "We .\re born free!" said Garangula, a century before the identical 22 Let us now see bo\v tlie first white Reimblicans of New- York carried out tlae eclectic principle of citizenship, already indigenous to the soil of this State, as shown by Colden : liow "they encour- aged the people of other nations to incorporate with them," and bow the rights and privileges accorded to all men of all nations in Holland, were guaranteed to settlers of every country in this State. The first chartered city in the colony was our present metro- polis, and the avowed oI).iect of her first charter is to establish a government, wherehi the citizens shall choose their magistrates and a representative council annually. (Dunlap.) This charter dates in the month of May. KGl. That is. within seven years of the first active measures which had been taken and effectually carried out for planting tlie colony of the Hudson. That wide- spread colony, being already so advanced as to require a central government, whicli should erect it into a province. The trading " stations " previously planned on the Hudson, which are at this day populous towns, bad each already become the nucleus of a " settlement." and in the municipal government, two systems, essentially different, obtained. In the colonics, as the settlements removed from Manhattan were called, the superintending power was in several instances lodged in one individual known as the patroon. This '* patroon." words were penned by the immortal Jefferson. With this republic of native freemen on our own soil, a formal league was contracted at Schenectady in the year 1620, by the first European republicans who ever trod this soil, and these last came from the United Provinces, which the acute-minded and sagacious Colden recognized as the nearest type of this theti only existing American Confederacy. That New- York league, tliough often tested by the dire invasions of the French, existed unbroken through one hundred and fifty years of the colonial history of this State. Let the speculative reader now revert to the spirit of the institutions of either section of that league as here traced by other pens than mine, and then turn to the Constitution of New- York for the year 1846, in which the best features common to both re-appear, and he must acknowledge that there is no necessity for New-Yorkers, whether of to-day or of two hundred years ago, looking either to Connecticut or to New Plymouth for the genius of New-York institutions. (See an interesting paper on this subject by the zealous antiquarian Giles F. Gates, Esq.) 23 who at bis own expense iniiiorted hither the settlers upon his manor-graut, was the ininieaiate vassal of the State, and was resixjnsible to that sovereign authority for the conduct of the tenants upon his manor. In return for their obedience to the act of his special courts, edicts, and ordinances, the patroon was bound to protect his colonists against the surrounding Indian tribes and all other aggressors, and the colonists had the right to address themselves bj' appeal to the supreme authority at Manhattan, in case they were either aggrii'ved or oppressed by said patroon. But this provision for drawing capital into the country by the erection of manors, constituted only a single feature in the general system of colonial govermnent. which was erected upon the follow- ing basis : — " Those colonists who shall form within their limits such a settlement of people as to c-onstitute hamlets, villages, or even cities, shall obtain in such case, middle and lower jurisdiction, and the same rights as manors in Holland, and shall in like manner be capacitated to bear and use the names and titles thereof ; und the qualified persons* of such cities, villages, and hamlets, shall in such case, be authorized to nominate for the office of magistrates, a double number of persons, wherefrom a selection shall be made by the director and council: and justice shall be administered in these hamlets, villages, and cities, according to the style and order of the Provinces of Holland, and the cities and manors thereof ; to which end the courts shall follow, as far as the same is possible, tlie ordinances received here in New Amsterdam." Now I would ask you. if our boa.sted " Anglo-Saxon " township system offers any thing freer than tliis? or if there he any charter found in the colonial history of America, establishing more clearly the privileges of a colonist, whether viewed in i-eference to the town in which he lived, or to the whole province, or to the mother country? Well then does the historian of New Netherlandf say, that * I can only gather from the spirit of the institutions of Holland, as pourtrayed upon a previous page, that each town settled the qualification of its own voters, t Dr. O'Callaghan. 24 " It is to the Reimblic of Holland, and the wise and beneficent modification of the feudal code, which obtained there, and not to the puritauic idea of popular freedom introduced from Connecticut, as some incovrcctJii claiiii.* that New Netherland and the several towns within its confines were indebted for whatever municipal privileges they enjoyed. The charters under which they Avere planted were essentially Dutch, and not of Connecticut origin; and those who look to New England as the source of popular privileges in New Netherland. fall therefore into a grievous error, sanctioned neither by law nor history." But the Englishmen of two hundred years ago themselves best recognized the freedom of New Netherland Ity crowding hither, as to an asylum of lilierty ; by aiding to i)lant an infant State under this very charter, and l>y taking the oath of allegiance, which identified tliem and their descendants with the existing franchises and future prosperity of the commonwealth of which they formed a part, and with nil the memories and pride of the sovereign State of New-York. Founded, as this Society is, upon those associations which mark our independent existence, whether as a colony, a province, or a state, without any reference to the extraction of its members.t whether Hollander. Huguenot. English, or Hindostanee. it may still he interesting to mention a few of the diverse peoples which, in the early days of New-York, were again and again grafted in among the three races which form the basis of the Knickerbocker stock. For the three great eras of New- York colonization are its first conunercial planting by the Hollanders ; its becoming the principal asylum of the Huguenots in America after the revocation of the edict of Nantes; :ind the influx of Cavalier and anti-Puritan English, after it became a province of the British Stuarts.j: * Bancroft. t The conditions of membership of the St. Nicholas Society of New-York, have no reference to a Dutch extraction, as is generally supposed. Chancellor .Tones, the venerable president, is a descendant of a Welsh officer, who, like the founders of several other distinguished New- York families of similar extraction, served in the armies of the Prince of Orange before coming to settle in this State. t These last ultimately stamped the language of New-York; whose very In 1G24, ten yeai-.s after tlie Ilollanclers established their three forts on the Hudson, and connnenced that line of posts whicli soon extended from the Connecticut to the Delaware, we have the first infusion here of the different races from which, one liundred years later, the genuine Knickerbocker was evolved. A large body of Walloons, inhabitants of the frontier between France and Flanders, who spoke the old Gallic language, and professed the reformed religion, apiilied in .1622 to Sir Dudley Carlton to settle in Virginia, with tlie privilege of erecting a town there. The Walloons, during "tlie tliirty years" war, distinguished tliemselves for their valor and savage spirit, and the governor of Virginia seems not to have given a satisfactory reply to what he probably considered an arrogant condition, which they proposed as the basis of any settlement in his colony, viz : — That tliey should be governed i)y magistrates elected by themselves.* Several families of these Walloons therefore, established themselves (in the year 1(524) in New Netherland, witliin the confines of the present town of Brooklyn, on Long Island, where the Wallabout (or " Bay of Foreigners," — Wale Bocht,) still identifies their memory with the locality ; and several other families of the same race, taking one of Christianse' " stations " as the nucleus of their colony, augmented the settlement at the base of the Katzbergs, near the head of ship navigation, on the Hudson. - In 1642 a band of representatives of the English race appear in New Netherland, and jilant tliemselves beside their Belgic and Gallic ])redecessors, with whom they soon become lilended by intermarriage. In this year .a band of religionists, led on by the Rev. Mr. Doughty. liichard Smith, and others, who had followed the Pilgrims from old England to New England, were compelled to withdraw from the latter country by the persecution they received there; and, after juaking formal ai)plication to the authorities of English provincialisms, in many respects so different from other English provincial- isms of New England, go far to disprove an identy of provincial origin in the English settlers of either colony; much less that the Puritans ever imprinted their peculiarities upon New-York as "New England's eldest daughter!" * O'Callaghan. 20 New Netherlaud, tbey liad a grant of land assigned to them. Endowed with the usual privileges of free manors, such as free exercise of their religion, powers to plant towns, build churches, nominate magistrates, and administer civil and criminal jurisdiction. Six mouths later, Throginorton, who had already been driven with Roger Williams from Massachusetts by the fiery Hugh Peters, procured permission to settle thirty-five families on the lauds in Westchester County, now known as Throg's Neck, which the New Netherlauders at that time named Vredeland, or " Laud of Peace." A meet application, as O'Callaghan remarks, " for the spot selected by those who were bruised and broken down by religious perse- cution." In the same year the Lady Moody, with her minor son. Sir Henry, and many followers, fied iu a similar manner from New England to the asylum at New Netherlaud, and founded the town of Gravezande, (now Graveseud,) on Long Islaud. To which island Thomas Ffarringtou. John Townsend, William Lawrence, John Ffirman, and otliers, were compelled, in the next twenty months, to remove with their families, from New England; and after accepting a grant of land from the authorities of New Nether- land, enroll themselves as liegemen of that province. The historian De Laet says, iu speaking of this period of the history of New Netherlaud. " niuubers, nay, whole towns, to escape from the insupiwrtable government of New England, removed to New Netherlaud to enjoy that liberty denied them by their own countrymen." So great was the influx of Englishmen who came now. not as the veritable I'ilgrinis li.-ul i)roposed in IIoIl;ind. " to reform any thing which was amiss " among their entertainers, but to enjoy true Knickerl>ocker freedom, that the director-general of tliis province, in order " to prevent the (listurl)anee of harmony and social intercourse, more or less, by the incoming of so many strangers to reside here." apiwinted George Baxter as " English secretary of the council at New Netherlaud." It is werth stating in this connection, however, that the Dutch language is at this very day still spoken in many of the localities of I^ong Island by some of the descendants of these, then " strangers." It is to this early Englisl) innnigrariou that certain ingenious theorists have attempted to trace tbe liberties of New-York, ami establish them as of Puritan origin. But these men most assuredly came not hither to bring " Puritan freedom," but to escape from " pure Anglo-Saxon " tyranny, and their descendants have ever been among the staunchest children of St. Nicholas. All of these immigrants, as well as some who came in from Virginia about this period, took the oath of fidelity to the director and c-ouncil of New Netherland, " to follow the director or any of his council wherever they shall lead ; faithfully to give instant warning of any treason or other detriment to .this country, that shall come to their knowledge; to as.sist to the utmost of their powers in defending with their treasure and their blood, the inhabitants thereof, against all enemies." In the cordial receptionof these immigrants we have the fullest recognition of the cosmopolitan spirit which has since then made New-York the metropolis of the Union. In the jealous exaction of this formidable oath of fealty, we have the most solemn safe- guard against the perversion of that cosmoix)litan spirit to any external use against the pride and honor of the land we call our own. In contirniation of the latter spirit, we have the words of that curious proclamation of the council of New Netherland, which, ten year later, marks the presence of the next element of the Knickerbocker lineage. This paper, which bears date 18th September. 1G48, sets forth, " Whereas it has been seen with great concern, that many Scotcli mercliants, who. from time to time, c^me from their own country over here, after having sold out their cargoes, go with their ships to some other place without doing any benefit to this countrj-, whicli is an injury to our people, who are obliged to bear all the burdens: Therefoi-e it is deemed adviseable for the inhabitants of New Netherland to take action, so that from this time forth, all Scotch merchants and small dealers who come over from their own country with the intention of trading here, shall not be per- mitted to carry on any trade in the land, until after they have had a residence here in New Netherland three years. Anre- sensations of all these races. It is often a jarring history when we look to public life, but in the private circle there seems to have been an early absorption of national ]iecullarities into one general colonial character, based in the main upon domestic habits.* the Revolution; although, (as in the case of the Irish Clintons intermarrying with the Dutch De Witts, originating the former distinguished New-York family,) a genealogist would discover that Irish blood contributed at an early day to form the characteristic stock of New- York. * That is according to the competent testimony of an enlightened European observer, who resided here for many years in the middle of the last century, when New- York was at her full social maturity, and when the witness to the condition of things here was th? acute and discerning friend and correspondent of the critical Dugald Stewart, the great metaphysician. According to the intelligent Mrs. Grant of Laghan, whose delightful reminis- cences of early New- York, have of late years found a singular counterpart in the pictures of Swedish society given by Fredrika Bremer, there were in her day but few youth of character or respectability, who had not made one or more expeditions to the frontiers, serving at least one campaign in the interminable wars on the Canadian frontier. Yet, the great simplicity of manners, the peace, security, and abundance which prevailed in the Valley of the Hudson, gave to that favored region a character of almost pastoral tranquillity. "This singular community," says the observing Scotch woman, "seemed to have a common stock, not only of sufferings and enjoyments, but of information and ideas." Some pre-eminence in point of knowledge, there certainly was, yet those who possessed it seemed scarcely conscious of their superiority. The daily occasions which called forth the exertions of mind, sharpened sagacity, and strengthened character; avarice and vanity were there confined to very narrow limits; of money there was very little, (wampum beads being actually for a whole generation the principal medium of exchange,) and dress was, though in some instances valuable, not subject to the caprice of fashion; the beasts of prey that haunted their enclosures, (for wolves and bears especially abound in this colony,) and the enraged savages that always hung threatening on their boundaries, made them more and more endeared to each other. 31 The Pioneers of New-Yoi'k then were, as we have seen, of any other than '• Puritan Anglo-Saxon " origin. From the brown In this calm infancy of society the rigors of law slept, because the fury of turbulent passions had not yet awakened it. Fashion, that whimsical tyrant of adult com- munities, had not yet erected her standard; "yet no person," says Mrs. Grant, "appeared uncouth or ill-bred, because there was no accomplished standard of comparison; their manners, if not elegant and polished, were at least easy and independent, while servility and insolence were equally unknown." Belted in, as it were, by the formidable Iroquois on their northern and western border, and acknowledging those martial tribes as their chief bulwark against the allied Hurons and French of Canada, they were thus brought in immediate contact with those whom the least instance of fraud, insolence, or grasping meanness, might have converted from even valuable friends into resistless enemies. They were thus, we are told, compelled at first to "assume a virtue if they had it not," while the daily pressure of circumstance, at last rendered that virtue habitual. With regard to the New- York women of that day, the same writer bears par- ticular testimony that while their confined education precluded elegance of mind, the simplicity of their manners was as far removed as possible from vulgarity. "At the same time," she observes, "these unembellished females had more com- prehension of mind, more variety of ideas, more, in short, of what may be called original thinking, than could be easily imagined." Indeed it was on the women that the task of religious instruction chiefly devolved; and the essentials rather than the ceremonials of piety, being instilled by them, the mothers of the colony were thus regarded with a reverence which gave a simple earnestness to the character when mixing in secular concerns. Of the domestic, or rather the out-of-door pursuits of these simple housewives, there is one charming picture which has come down to us. While the custom of the male head of the household cherishing some ancient tree planted immediately in front of the door-way, was almost universal in both town and country, alike in Albany and New-York, as well as in every rural settlement, each dwelling was adorned with its little garden, which was under the special care of the mistress of the famih-. The garden spot, devoted equally to flowers and esculent vegetables, was thought to evidence equally the advance of her taste and the condition of her house-keeping. After describing these gardens as "extremely neat, but small, and not by any means calculated for walking in," the European resident exclaims, "I think I yet see what I have so often beheld in both town and country, a respectable mistress of a family going out to her garden in an April morning, with her great calash, her little painted basket of seeds, and her robe over her shoulders to her garden labors. These were by no means figurative; From morn till noou. from noou till dewy eve. 32 plains of Noniiaiidy and the green vales of England; from the sunny hills of Savoy and the bleak wastes of Finland, came they a woman in very easy circumstances and abundantly gentle in form and manners, would sow and plant, and rake, incessantly." These fair gardeners (we are also told) were likewise good florists, and displayed much emulation and solicitude in their pleasing employment. In connection with this glimpse of not uninteresting homely habits it may be worth while to recur to the condition of slavery in early New- York. So utterly is this institution now effaced from among us, that it has become difficult to realize how much is due to the far-seeing statesman and pure patriot, through whose instrumentality, chiefly, abolition was effected within our borders. Yet in no colony of our present Union did slavery more generally prevail than in that of New-York; for while the social distinctions, depending upon taste and education, were quietly respected, there was here no division of society into two great classes, as at the south; where one great landed proprietor could count hundreds of human beings as his serfs, while another of the same blood, was sunk almost below the servile tiller of the soil, by the very fact of his owning no property in any man but himself. For, while the number of slaves in any New-York family rarely exceeded a dozen, there was hardly a dwelling in the colony that did not shelter some of these family appendages. Slavery was indeed here literally "a domestic institu- tion." "There were no field negroes," no collection of cabins remote from the house, known as "the negro quarters." The slaves lived under the same roof, and partook of the same fare as the rest of the family, to which they belonged. They were scrupulously baptised too, and shared the same religious instruction with the children of the family. There was no especial law, we are told, preventing the barter of slaves; but a natural sentiment, which had grown into a custom, as compulsory as any law, prevented the separation of families; and, above all, the sale of any child without the permission of the mother, who would often exercise her own caprice in designating its future master. The exchange of slaves was also almost invariably limited to family relatives. When a negro woman's child attained the age of three years, it was solemnly presented, the first new j-ear's day following, to the son, or daughter, or other young relation of the family, who waa of the same sex with the child so presented; and when in after years, the youthful master went out to seek his fortunes upon the frontiers, a thousand instances are related of the fidelity and devotion of these sable squires, amid the perils of the wilderness. There is one remark which 1 will venture to make, in connection with this branch of our subject, because its truth may be, even at this late day, verified in Rockland, Orange, Kings, Queens, and other counties of this State, where the full- blooded descendants of these negro slaves are still found with their African features and complexions, wholly unchanged. In this colony alone was it customary. 33 bitlier to this " land of a thonsaml lakes : " where hhthely gathered the Sahiion higher of Erin's rivers, and the hunter of the Stag tlirough Scottish heatlier, to ply their sport amid the forest fast- among the rural population, (after the fashion of dealing with the household serfs of northern Europe, in the olden time,) to seat the menials at the lower end of the family board, but notwithstanding this familiar contact with the race, amalgamation as I have already hinted, was utterly unknown to our forefathers. The mulatto mixture was introduced here from other States. As a happy confirmation of the truth of this observation, derived from other sources, I may mention, that after writing thus far, I found, upon referring to the work from which I have already so freely quoted, the valuable testimony of its writer, given in the following words: — "It is but justice to record a singular instance of moral delicac\% distinguishing this settlement (the Colony of New-York,) from every other in the like circum- stances. Though from their simple and friendly modes of life, they were from infancy in habits of familiarity with their negroes, yet being early taught that nature had placed between them a barrier, which it was in a high degree criminal and disgraceful to pass, they considered a mixture of such distinct races with abhor- rence, as a violation of her laws. This greatly conduced to the preservation of family happiness and concord. It may be thought remarkable, that our forefathers, while deducing not only their general code of morality, but this special creed as to the preservation of castes from the Bible, likewise pretended to find in the same good book the most unquestionable authority for holding the black race in bondage. They imagined that they had found the negro condemned to perpetual slavery, and thought nothing remained for them but to lighten the chains of their fellow Christians after having made them such." We have now to confess, that though the schoolmaster was abroad among these primitive people, there were few of them, who, in the expressive language of our day, could be called "pure intelligences." Of law, we are drily told by a contemporary, the generality of those people knew very little; of philosophy, nothing at all, save as they found them both in the Bible; the time-cherished possession of every family; and often their only literary treasure. We have now the laws, the poetry, and philosophy, of which they were so deplorably ignorant; yet the law-giver, the poet, and the philosopher, might perhaps perversely decide that the spirit which gives vitality to these elements of social elevation, was hardly more diffused than formerly. They either and all of them might declare that Order, the first and highest law of Heaven itself — that Truth and Xaturalness, the basis of all poeil of New-Y'^ork ; and it took not only the " Anglo-Saxon " but, all the tribes of Europe to produce that social and political atmosphere in which the native genius of all countries has ever been cordially welcomed ; and where that of New England, especially, has matured some of its noblest fruits. And those fruits — if I have fairly traced the meaning of New-Y'ork history, and justly interpreted the spirit of New-Y'ork institutions, can never rightennsly be plucked from the generous soil which nurtured tliem, to minister either to foreign national vanity, or to elevate any scholastic home theory of caste, origin, or religion ! all of which the men of New-Y'ork, at the very inception of her coloni- zation ; all of which they set aside for a different basis of citizenship. That basis, being simply (Jomiciliation, and loyalty to the pride, honor, and dignity of the commonwealth. The law of social and political progress in New England, as ♦ "Our ancestry may be traced to four nations, the Dutch, the British, the French, and the Germans. It would have been strange had a people so formed, been tainted with national prejudices. Far from it. We are, if I may be allowed to say so, born cosmopolite." — Governeur Morris. 35 we gather it from her many able and patriotic writers, lias been the gradual liberalizing of a strict demi-ecclesiastic caste of men of a homogeneous origin. The law of progressive civilization in colonial New-York, was shniily that of mind acting upon mind, without appeal to any admitted standard doctrine — the attrition of man acting uix)n man, without reference to either indentity of race or superiority of origin. When therefore the colonists of New-Yorlc, who had here practised their opposing creeds, while blending their different races, for many generations preceding the era of the Declaration of Independence — when the people of New- York, I say, took their place in the American confederacy as an independent people, the type of character developed by their peculiar condition, was already marked — marked strongly and emphatically — but marked by anything else than the characteristics of Puritanism ; which are now so often erroneously held up as representing the .seminal principles of freedom both in this State and others. I say " erroneously." for in this colony, even in the early days of the Dutch rule, the full privileges of citizenship were here accorded to all who had a direct interest in the soil ; while in Massachusetts Bay colony, where the ministers of religion were not restricted to jtowers i)urely spiritual, similiar privileges were denied to all who were not received into the Church of which Plymouth Rock was the corner-stone. The amiable Robinson had admonished his peoi)le that "more light would come." Y'et. while our neighbors disdained to borrow the light of toleration from New Netlierland. those of their own blood, who brouglit more light to the Puritans, were compelled to fly to the Dutch here for an asylum, even as their rigorous brethren had in former years fled to the Dutch of Holland; until Roger Williams, the good, the liberal, the charitable, driven out with the rest, planted the tree of toleration in Rhode Island iu 1636. But let us look more closely into these modern claims of political Puritanism, of which we now hear so much, as originating the theorj' and setting in motion the practice of North American liberty. Is the germ of all American freedom traceable to Plymouth 3G Kock? Is the genius oi American institutions referable solely to tbe PHrltan origin of New England? Guizot calls the reformation begun by Luther " an insurrection of the hmnan mind against the absolute power of spiritual order! " Now ruritanism, instead of being at the head of that insurrection, came in after the battle was half fought ; came in as the claimant, the claimant by Divine right, of a new form of spiritual control, not less absolute than that which it opposed! It was a brave spirit, that of old Puritanism ; and I yield to none in honoi-ing its undaunted antagonism to older forms of des- potism over the rights of conscience — but it was not less a des- potisn) ! It was an adventurous sjiirit. that of old Puritanism, and I honor it not less tor its self-martyrdom of exile, than for its unflinching grapple with the dogmas of its enemies. But I will not recognize its ferocious intolerance in forcing its own dogmas upon Quakers and Anabaptists in this land, as proving that it offered a true priesthood for the altars of freedom! I will not recognize that its blind uses of power have proved aught to the world in the sciexce of liherty — aught save the mental vigor and conscientious hardiliood of its stern asserters of narrow doctrine. And, speaking still of Pui-itanism in its political aspect — I will recognize its hard earned triumplis as marking more than one glorious tide in the moving waters of human freedom — but I will not recognize it as the spirit which first released the waves — I will not recognize it as the compelling power which still teaches deep to call unto deep until the true knowledge of human rights is wide spread as the ocean, and the voices of true liberty are echoed from every shore. Hear the language which these Pilgrim fathers used in reference to their free-hearted hosts of Holland, when assigning their reasons for leaving that hospitable laud of subborn tolerance. " Inasmuch as in ten years time, whilst we sojourned among them, ive could not hring them to reform any thing amiss among them.'' 37 Now tlie prerogative to lueddle with the concerus of your neighbor, here asserted with such unconscious simplicity ; to meddle according to i/our conscience, and your opinion of what is good for your neiglibor, is directly opposed to the notions of liberty, in which the forefathers of New-York were tutored, and is still most repugnant to some of their descendants as the great political ijnpertinence of the present day. And here a few words as to the mode of meddling. The Puritans brought from England this grand axiom of resistance to monarchy and aristocracy. Associated opinion — organized sentiment is the great engine of a people's power against hereditaiy oppression. Here was a great political truth. Here was the introduction of a moral Church into politics to countervail the ancient influence of unmeaning party cries, or unthinking fealty to a leader. But uix»n this truth the veritable Pilgrims stopped short! Now what learned the recusants of their order in Holland? what did they come to practise along with their Dutch friends here ill New Nether land? They learned the true principal of individual KLPRFSENTATioN ; aud that an oligarchij of associated doctrine is in a free counti'y the most subtle instrument wherewith to strangle individual liberty. And they came to New Amsterdam to practise resistance against such an oligarchy which they left behind them in Massachusetts Bay. The first great principle of the Plymouth Rock men, in after years, contributed largely, in these northern States, to make us a nation: the last inbred spirit of the men of New-York can alone keep us free among ourselves. In the war of the Revolution these two great forces of national and of home freedom acted in accord. But they have often, both before and since then, been arrayed against each other; and they will still be continually in conflict until their relative bearing and respective value are clearly understood by our countrymen. I need not remind you how their action has been illustrated in New- York of late years, in the campaigns of anti-masonry and the disputed claims of political teetotalism ! 38 It matters not what part our people took upon either of these questions, or whether it was worth while for men of sense to take any part. But the excitement among the people of New- York proved how keenly their sensibilities are alive to the political action of any such organized influence, any associated moral church with a self-constituted priesthood, undertaking to regulate the State, or intei'pret the lives of its citizens. This keen jealousy of the assumption by any society whatever, (whether secret or open) of power which has never been delegated by the individual, is the antagonist spirit to Political Puritanism, and God grant that it may ever be strong in the soul of every true son of New- York. I wisli clearly to be understood in the use I here make of the word " Puritanism " as reflecting in no way upon the religious sentiments of any class of men, either here or elsewhere. The leading Church doctrines of New England, based upon the prin- ciples of Geneva, are common alike to Scotland and to Holland. I take the term in its original purport, when " Puritanism " referred not to religous conviction, but simply to that arrogant assumption over our neighbor, which prompts us to conspire with others to trample upon A/.y individual rights, feelings, habits, and prejudices, in the blind assertion of our infallible church of Opinion — a church wliose first altar is always reared in the soul by the anti-christian spirit of " I-am-hoIier-t1iaii-fJinii !" When it first lifted itself on Plymouth Rock, there, and at that time, the spirit of Puritanism was made respectable by the pioneering hardihood of those self-banished men; made worthy our reverence by their conscientious earnestness in founding a church for their own peculiar faith ; made touching by their long years of travail and suffering in bearing the ark of their faith about with them from shore to shore! But since then that spirit, divorced from these conditions, and held up in its nakedness as the true spirit of liberty — held up, too, most often, by those who have departed from the very church whose suffering fervor could alone sanctify its temporary rule and ministry — has stalked abroad tlirough every State in this Union, claiming to be the only true representative of the American sentiment of freedom, and wither- 39 ing in its grasp all manly independence of action and feeling. It siezes upon the press, and under the joint cry of " moral progress " and " freedom of discussion," it claims the right to meddle with the domestic hearth and private affairs of every citizen : borrowing a different form of cant, it juggles Itself into the heart of politics ; where, armed with tlie patronage of office, it smirkingly avows and arrogantly proclaims to its opponents the old dogma of " spoil- ing the Egyptians" as a fresh political precept in a Republican country. Nor content with its dirty triumphs here, it smoothes its grimacing wrinkles at political success, into new blandness of complacent hypocrisy, and invades the fields of Literature and Art, to cramp their development, and dwindle their growth. The poet must no longer write an Anacreontic, because " Teetotalism " is the order of the day. The painter must no longer depict the gallant deeds of his country's soldier, because " Public Opinion " leans to the theory of " Universal Peace." And the same spirit of Puritanism, that " Public Opinion " of Plymouth Rock, which ejected Roger Williams from Massachusetts, would still make feeling, intelligence, thought and talent, the mere handmaids of present accepted theory— eojupel Fancy to dance her hornpipe in the splints and bandages of doctrine, and turn the dream of Genius into a nightmare on the bed of Procrustes.* Beware, then, brethren of St. Nicholas, of the form which inge- nious scholars are now teaching the spirit of Puritanism to assume * The New England reader at home who is not aware that "the principles of the Puritans," and "the principles of '98," are alike appealed to in this State by crude Reformer or slang-whanging Politician to promote some partisan movement, will smile at the above as unmeaning tirade. The ingenious labors of more thought- ful theorists, tracing pretty much all American free speculation to Plymouth Rock, threatens to throw a fearful weight upon that sacred platform. And that which we once reverenced as the purely historical crag of New England, lifting itself above the ocean in all the majesty of simple granite, certainly does not gain much in our eyes, as now daily more and more converted into a mass of political and philoso- phical conglomerate, to which each speculative writer pretends that a pebble was contributed in his peculiar favor; and whose friable components they insist upon reclaiming in their original state, whether blended with the soil of the Battery, or underlying the pavement of Chestnut-street. 40 ill tliis State — that of a purer caste of men, originating beyond your own border, who bold up the doings of tbeir forefathers as prece- dents for your Government ; teach you their story In the lecture- room as what ought to be your story ; write your legalized books of education as if your State were a provincial offsprout of theirs ; and hold up their local references of habit and authority in your very halls of legislation, as law, to order your society. I quarrel not with any New Englander for making Plymouth Rock his Mecca ; yet I will not accept it as the Delphic oracle of New-York. I honor the lionie spirit of those who advance themselves as its faithful priests everywhere; but I deny their in.spiration, when, by a New England ordination, they claim to be our interpreters. " The Landing of our Pilgrim Fathers " is the lauding of Hendrick Hudson;* and his first crew of brave adventurers from the two great maratime nations of Christendom is our nearest type of a European origin. If it be not, we want none other at second hand, but look for our father-land here upon our own sovereign soil. " We grew out of this sacred ground icith our pioneer predeces- sors,"-f said that accomplished statesman and gallant gentleman, in whose veins commingled the blood of the Huguenot martyr with that of " the Belgic and British Patriot," which forms the old stock of New-York, and whose comi)rehensive genius in tracing the story of this State, broke forth into prophecy as he dwelt upon our fusion of races uiwn a soil which had already nurtured the noblest and most powerful race of aborigines on this continent — the * The anniversary of the 4th September, 1609, was thus celebrated in tliis State by the generation which has just passed away. See Miller's Discourse before the N. York Hist. Soc. Why should not the sons of "the Empire State" now recog- nize it everywhere? t Governeur Morris, who goes on to ask, "Have we not some traits to mark our common origin (with) a people free as the air they breathe; acute, dexterous, elo- quent, subtle, brave? Is it not likely this may be the character of our children's children? Never will those who tread the soil in which the Mohawks lie entomb- ed, submit to be slaves." Col. N. Y. Hist. Soc. 1814. 41 Romau-like ami far coiiqueriiig Iroquois. The sliallow sophis- tries of Puritan Aiiglo-Saxonism had not yet been heard within our borders when that philosophic mind of New-York ventured upon its far-sighted predictions of what tliose blended forces of best manhood must accomplish, in a region whose natural resour- ces afford a field for all the most powerful energies of civilization ! He looked upon the Susquehanna connecting us with the Chesa- peake ; upon tiie (leuesee connecting us with the Gulf of St. Lawrence ; upon the Alleghany linking* us with the sea of Mexico ; upon the great Lakes binding us to the boundless West ; upon the Hudson uniting us with the civilized world. He turned from the bloody school of our energies, in a hundred and fifty years of bor- der wars, and imagined those same indomitable powers applied to the arts of peace!* The curious si)eculative theory of that philosophic statesman is now History. Yes, it has heen History for more than twenty years. For the men of New-York wei'e acting History, while those in other States were writing it for us and our children : and the successful mingling of those wondrous waters through the agency of Clinton's more practical mind, has by introducing a new current of population into our State raised such a wave as almost to wash from the memory of the present generation the deeds of c-olonial enterprise upon which Mr. Morris predicated his generous prophecy. We hear much of the " Empire State." we forget the " Em])ire Colony" — the province where the two most powerful nations of Enrojie so long contended for empire. We forget that with a population less than that of either Massachusetts or Vir- ginia, here was the great seat of English executive and colonial jiower. in time of peace: and here, as Chancellor Kent has em- phatically termed it, was " the Flanders of North America." in time of war. The bold deeds of Miles Standish and the celebrated names of * See Discourse before the N. Y. Hist. Soc. in connection with the testimony which Mr. Sparks adduces as to Governeur Morris's agency in our system of inter- nal improvements. 42 Miantonimo and Philip of Polvaiiolvet, have made the Indian wars of New England familiar to every school-hoy, familiar as are the savage forays into Kentucky of a much later day ; yet — while the border contiicts with naked .savages of all the other States together, would not fill one chapter of the early military history of New- York — what do the rising generation know of our own wild-wood annals? what of "those arduous circumstances which marked our origin and impeded our growth — those ravages to which we were exposed — those jiersevering efforts to defend our country in the long i)eriod of nearly one hundred and seventy years; from the first settlement by the Dutch in ICU to the time when this city was evacuated by the British in the close of 1783." It is fortunate for the existing inhabitants perhai)s, that the old military glory of New-York should be merged and forgotten in her present successful cultivation of the arts of peace. But while we can trace much of the modern spirit of enterprize and improvement in her old colonial energies, as exhibited in another sphere of action, that martial sjiirit which first gave them vitality, is not unworthy of commemo- ration. That martial spirit which, leaving so few non-combatants, made the revolution in New-York truly a civil war ; that spirit of action which compelled every New-Yorker to take up arms for " King " or " Colony ; " which furnished regiment after regiment to the crown, and treble the nunil>er to the confederacy; which blazed forth with all its desperate energies in the death-grapple of brothers at Oriskany, and which is traceable in the gallantry of New-York's exiled sons, even down to the field of Waterloo!* Surely that military spirit of the storied past should not be forgotten while we enjoy its best fruits in the i)rosi>erous present. We hear much of what our Eastern neighbors endured for the protection of doctrine — it may he healthful to hear what our fathers did for the protection of home. I might now go l»ack to the Indian wars of Governor Kieft, when he made a re(iuisitiou upon the authorities at Albany for "tiro hundred i^uits of nmil." to repel a threatened * Sir William De Lancey, who gallantly fell in the charge at the battle of Waterloo, was of the New-York family of that name. 43 attack upon Maiihattiiu ; an attack which his folly liad provoked, and which resulted in that Indian onslaught which cut off the families of so many settlers, and shut up the survivors for a season within the defences of New Amsterdam. But I prefer to turn to the general affairs of the whole province, as showing its military position for a full century of New-York history. The French penetrated to Lake George, nearly simultaneously with the Dutch reaching Alhany, in 1609. And the wars with " New France." which commenced with the earliest period of New Netherland history, though ostensibly suspended when the parent countries were at peace with each other, were never fully concluded till after the conquest of Canada by the British arms ; and the incessant conflicts between the Iroquois of New-Yorlv and the Hurons, Otawas, and Adirondacks of the St. Lawrence, were in fact a struggle between the French, and English, to secure possession of Northern and Western New-York. A grasping desire for territory on the part of the French, and a bitter jealousy of their rivalry in the fur trade, on tlie part of the New-Yorkers, impelled the colonists on either side to share personally in these Indian quarrels, without troubling themselves much about the danger of compromising politically the mother countries which pretended to sway them. AVhether the French, after drawing their wonderful line of forts, which extended through the western wilderness from Quebec to New Orleans — whether they really ever hoped to cut a path to the Atlantic by the way of the Ilud.son, it is now difficult to say. But long previous to Leisjcr's ill-starred attempt to expel them from Cana^played upon this continent, an army led on by an array of Counts, Barons, and Chevaliers, with full battering train, complete camp equipage, and comissariat amply provided, penetrated as far as Onondaga Lake. The peace of Ryswick brought a breathing spell to the province. But in 1710 the old border struggles was renewed, and the province remained an armed camp till the peace of Utrecht in 1713. Again the province is in arms and marcliing upon the French at Niagara in 1727. And the enemy penetrated to Saratoga and cut off thirty families in a night -in 1747. The battle of Lake George, where Sir William .Johnson won his spurs, and where eight hundred of the invaders, under Dieskau, were left dead upon the field, brings us to ]7ri."i. The assault of the Marquis of Montcalm on Fort Ontario, with four thousand troops, follows; and the massacre of Fort William and Henry, with the devastation of German Flats on the Mohawk, by the invaders, brings us to (17.jS) the duplicate battle of Lake George, when seventeen thousand men, under Abercrombie, were defeated by the French ; the reduction of Fort Frontinac, on Lake On- tario, by three thousand provincials, the fight with the galleys on Lake Chamjilain. and the different affairs of Crown Point and Ticonderoga. Within the seven years of the War for Independence, the battle of Long Island, the battle of White Plains, the storming of Stoney Point, the affair of Fort Montgomery, the burning of Kingston, the sanguinary struggles of Cherry Valley and the Mohawk, with Oriskaney, the bloodiest field of all our Revolutionary conflicts, and Saratoga, the most glorious, crowd in with Niagara, Ticonde- 45 roga, and Crown Point, to mark their names yet again upon the blazing tablet of our military annals. And still once more, in 1814, the events at Fort Erie and Sackett's Harbor, at Champlain. and Niagara, swell the records of fierce conflicts upon her soil, and approve New- York the battle-field of the Union, the Flanders of American History.* We all know the part which New England played in the most brilliant of those battles; we all know that where duty calls or danger threatens, the sons of the Puritans are there with unblench- ing front and arm the readiest to strike. But her surviving soldiery from many a desperate field, who afterward returned to incoriwx'ate themselves with u.^, and till the soil they had first bathed with their blood, came not to preach and write us into the provincial condition from which they had aided in rescuing us ! And if they brought back " the schoolmaster " wth them, it was but just that the forum and Iijccuin of other States should minister to the distracted land which kept war from their homes by concentrating its devastations in this the great Military Arena of the North. But if that ministry of "candle, book and bell "' is to be tlie I)urial of our identity; the annihilation of our peculiar andoriginal place in the constellation of the Old Thirteen, and the ascription of all the glories of the Empire State to a modern and peculiar caste, we had rather that the schoolmaster had never been abroad witliin our Iwrders. Reading and writing, although the readiest aid to education, are not education itself ; intellect is not character ; nor can intelligence ever stand as a substitute for those sterling qualities of the patriot, which at best it but embellishes and makes available. I am not one of those who desire to see my country converted into a race of intellectual sharpers, nor have I any faith in the deification of Cyclopoedias ; and liowever much I may delight in the ingenious speculations of " New England Philosophy," I never would dream of exchanging for it the New-York touchstone of connnon sense bv which its crudities are safely tested. It was in the school of * Yet our gallant New-Yorkers in Mexico did not need these memories to inspirit them? 46 home, not in the public lecture- room — it was amid the Lares and Penates, not in the public temples of Pallas and Apollo, that our Scliuylers, Jays, Morrises. Livingstons and Clintons, learned best to serve their country. " If I do not greatly deceive myself, there is no portion of the histoi*j' of this country which is more instructive or calculated to embellish our national character, than the domestic of this State," says the illustrious Chancellor Kent. " Our history," adds that thoughtful and earnest inquirer after the Right and the True — " Our history will be found upon examination as fruitful as the records of any other people, in recitals of heroic actions, and in images of resplendent virtue. It is equally well fitted to elevate the pride of ancestry, to awaken deep feeling, and kindle generous emulation." That "'generous emulation," who shall presume to strike down its spirit among us, by parcelling out the glories of New-York among the different races that erewhile con- tributed to swell her population, and then passing them to the account of some other state or country, whether American or European? I may seem to carry my views of State pride and State feeling to extremes. But I do so advisedly; for these constitute the vital principle and informing spirit of State Rights ; and I hold it moreover to be but a narrow view of the benefits of the Federal System of our Great Union which would limit its influence merely to iwlitical action. A true nationality is only formed upon the realities among the people corresponding with the genius of the government ; and in these United States a great )iationality is not to be built up by ob- literating our local esprit de corps, and merging our sense of local rights, our keen perception of local privileges, and our local story, and our local pride, in one great clumsy structure of theoretical homogeneousness. Learned gentlemen may preach till the end of time that this country is " Pmitania," but they cannot make it so while every election for a town constable reminds us that our fed- erati^e system (\^■hether of town, county, state, or general govern- ment) offers all the mechanism for developing each lineament in detail so as to give completeness to the whole fabric^ of national 47 greatness. The aggregate of the traits and proportions thus pro- duced will stamp our national character; nay, has already stamped it, and he who would truly study the imprint must look to each separate die. Let him look to tluit which New- York has wrought for herself — look to each graven line, traced by whatever hands, be- tween the dates of 1G14 and 1847, and he will find her character as distinctly marked as that of any State in the confederacy. And yet no State in the Union has absorbed more foreign matter, nor moulded it more intimately to the genius of her own institutions. Her original founders, in tlieir own country, '* acquired power in the struggle for existence and wealth under the weight of taxation ; " surely the determined race which tlius built up the Northern Venice in defiance of every principle of political econony, must have planted in this State some vigorous element of nationality which equally bids defiance to the strongest conditions for subverting any local character, and permeates as now its still incoming population ! The philosophic .statesman who, nearly forty years ago, drew the parallel which I have been more than once tempted to carry out in this discourse, observes, that " He who visits the nations which Tacitus and Ctesar have described will be struck with a resemblance between those who inhabit particular districts, and those who dwelt there so many centuries ago. Notwithstanding the wars and conquests which have laid waste, deiwpulated, and repeopled Europe; notwithstanding the changes of government, and those \A'hich have been wrought by the decline and by the ad- vance of society and the arts ; notwithstanding the differences of religion, and tlie difference of manners, resulting from all these circumstances ; still the same distinctive traits of character reappear. Similar souls are animated by similar bodies." And if the spirit of New-York's early founders still lives in their descendants, it is because those European planters found the liomcstead principle already rooted here in the hearts of the only aboriginal tribes of America, who acknowledged the influence of woman, even as the German tribes, described by Tacitus, made that influence the cor- ner-stone of their nationality. 48 " Our aiioestoi-s," said the Iroquois Chiefs to the Governors of New-York, "loved their land. And why? Because they loved their women and children! Our ancestors? considered it a great offence to reject the counsels of their women. They were esteemed the mistresses of the soil."* These are the same people who told the European diplomat that came among them, " We are born free — we depend neither npon France or England." And told hhn this is a speech whose Ititing irony, splendid imagery, and solid reasoning, marks it as one of the most consummate pieces of ancient or modern oratory. A speech as sublime for its invective, as that of another Iroquoisf is touching for its pathos ; and that eloquence, indigenous to the soil of New-York, will hereafter, as formerly, plead trumpet- tongued from the lips of her children against our faithlessness, if we permit her peculiar story to be overlaid by that of any other State. When next therefore you here " the principles of our Puritan ancestry " appealed to in a New-York legislature, as authority here, repel with indignation the arrogant assimiption over your own original sovereignty. And when again you are told from a New- York rostrum, that " the Pilgrim fathers of Plymouth Rock " first opened this continent and introduced freedom, religion, and civili- * Clinton's tH.-scourse before the New York Historio.^il .Society, 1811. The names' of "the principal women" of the IroQuois or Five Nation?, are always appended to their land treaties. See Golden, and the Archives of this State. The fact of the admitted influential condition of the women among the aborigines of New-York, is worth noting at this time, when certain European philosophers are busy in tracing modern civilization not to Christianity, but, the position of women among the ancient Germans. t "Logan, the Mingo chief." The English called the Iroquois Mingoea, and Mr. Jefferson's famous Indian orator was a countryman of Garangula, upon whose eloquence De Witt Clinton has commented as above. "Red Jacket," at once so persuasively eloquent and so epigrammatically sarcastic, was of the same stock: and Clinton insists that "you may search in vain for a single model of eloquence among any other nation of Indians except the Iroquois; the faint glimmerings of genius, which are sometimes to be found in their speeches, are evidently derivative and borrowed from the Iroquois." — Clinton's Discourxe. 49 zatjon lure, o!i the soil which you tread — plant yourselves upon your own peculiar story, and let the barriers of history Vepel the offensive eneroachuient. If the question be that of priority of physical enterprize. point to Fort Orange at the head of the navigation of the Hudson in 1614, and tell them that the naval flag of New-York was first hoisted in a barque built here in 1014, by the peoide who ihen owned the mastery of the seas.* If the question be of political freedom, appeal to the ancient charter of the Hudson river colonists, and the movement in this city iu relation to " the stamp act," ten years before the famous " Boston tea party."t If of religious freedom, point to the article in our New Neth- erland land jiatents, securing perfect liberty of conscience. If the question l)e of religion itself, as the sanction of our fran- chises, recall the sixth of Sejiteniber 1G45, proclaimed by the governor-general of New Netherland as "a day of general thanks- giving to God Ahniglity, tobcohscrvcd iiiclmichesof crrnj persuasion throughout the province, in pious acknowledgment of the blessings which he has been pleased to bestow upon this covutrii."X * 1773, March Sth, The assembly entered at large on their journals a state- ment of the right of the colony of New-York with respect to its eastern boundary on Connecticut river: asserting priority of possession by the Dutch. "They (the Dutch) had in 1612 a town and fort (near New- York,) and in 1614 a town and fort (near Albany.)" — Dunlap's Appendix. While this discourse is passing through the press, a newspaper, published in New-York, observes, (amid some grossly disparaging remarks, launched in the most virulent spirit of exclusive Anglo-Saxonism, against the founders of this city,) that the Hollanders, even in the meridian of their maritime power, were subdued here by the English. This impression of New- York having finally become by conquest an appendage to the British crown, is one of the questionable assumptions in our popular history — as it is generally written. The province of New- York treacherously seized upon in time of peace by tlie English in 1664, was recovered by the Hollanders in 1673, and remained under a Dutch governor (Anthony Colve) until finally passed over to the sovereignty of England, in exchange for Surinam b.v the treaty of Breda. t See note at the end. i O'Callaghan's History of New Netherland. 50 And lastly, if the question be of civilization, and the onward si)irit of the -Age. point to the genial and gentle habits of that l)eoi)le. who. stern in their patriotism as they were free-hearted iu their sports.* furnislied three martyrs to political liberty (in 1G91,) neither of whom were I'urltaus ; each of whom represented a prominent type of our population. " I stand here in the name of tlie freeholders of New- York," said Mii.BouRNE, one hundred and fifty years ago, in the convention at Albany. "I iironounce the charter of the English King null. The jieople of New- York have the power to choose their own ofticers. and every incumbent should be subjected to a free election." Milbourne died for that sentiment, then so new. so startling, and so boldly uttered. I rule here, said Leisler. in the name of the people of New- York, and by the same riglit which has called William of Orange to the throne of England — the voice of my countrynjcn. The only council which I acknowledge is the conunittee chosen by the free and open election of the freemen of this i)rovlnce in their respective counties. Leisler perished on the scaffold for that rule, and CJoverneur, the third of these patriots, barely escaped with his llfe.f These three gallant men. the Netherlander, the Englishman, and tile TTnguenot. offer conjointly a glorious type of the Repub- * "Whereas," says the record of the burgomasters and schepens of Manhattan, "the winter festivals are at hand, it is found good that between this date and three weeks after Christmas, the ordinary meetings of the court shall be dispensed with." The spring festival was similarly honored by grave and aged citizens, setting aside the solemn concerns of public and private business, to take a share in the sports, as the following official May-day announcement will show: — "With the customary bell-ringing at the City Hall was published the renewed order concerning the planting of the Maj-pole, and the damage which may be done in consequence of the general sports. By these words it is made known that any damage which may ensue from the general rejoicings, shall be made known to the burgomasters at the City Hall immediately thereafter, when measures shall be taken to furnish reparation." — Paulding's Affairs and Men of New Amsterdam. t See "The administration of Jacob Leisler," in Sparks' American Biography, vol. iii., new series. 51 lican ancestry of New- York. But how have Xew-Yorkers pre- served their memory'.' Why that first triumph of au iudepeudent political spirit, that first well ordered success of The People, which gave a two years democratic rule to this State one hundred and fifty years ago, is it not still fondly cherished in Tammany Hall, which was built over the grave of one of tlie martyrs? Ask the sachems of that patriotic institution ! It is treasured at least among your citj' archives upon the same roll which gives the name of Peter de la Noye, the fii'st man that was ever elected by the freeholders and freemen of Manhattan to the mayorality of New- York? Ask our living civic fathers I* It lives then, if no where else, where the statue of the first and last Merchant Governor of New-York, the man whom the people elevated to power because he resisted the payment of illegal duties at the Custom House, it lives where the efiigy of that public spirited merchant dignifies the otherwise traditionless halls of your modern Exchange? Ask your Chamber of Conmierce ! For many years the Leisleriau party of New-York contended for principles, which every one now acknowledges to be the prin- ciples of the State. But so thoroughly did Toryism succeed in stamping them with obliquy at the time, that the voice of truth has been ever since unheard ; and with our archives full of irrefragable testimony to the nol)le spirit of Leisler's movement, and its entire sympathy with our present views of political right, the tale told by his foes has become part and parcel of our history, because LeisJcr'.s party was refjordcd as the New-Yorl; and not the English parti/.f And now let me pay a full-hearted tribute to that land where intelligence so faithfully ministers to patriotism, by collecting each shred of her peculiar story in town or liamlet. and hoarding up the * In the Corporation Manual, published \early, the names of the ofiBcials under the first popular government of New-York, are to this day omitted. The words ["usurpation of Leisler,"] in brackets, marking the only note of record of the most interesting political period in our provincial history. t See Chandler's Criminal Trials. 52 memories of each name and service of her sons who, even iu the humblest sphere, have contributed aught to the glory of the com- monwealth. Had the progress truths for which Milbourne perished — had the eternal principles of right and wrong, whose distinctions Leisler died in upholding^— had these been promulgated iu New England, and sealed with the blood of a New England man. does any one doubt that the names of the brave martyrs would have stood at this moment foremost in American history as the joint embodiment, the first breathing tyjies of principles taught eighty- six years afterwards in the Declaration of Independence? Strange, most strange is it, that the story of these memorable worthies of New-Yoi"k, so wholly, so peculiarly her own, should come up on the page of two leading New England historians, to prove that they are not worth remembering, or if worth remem- bering, that they acted under a Puritanic influence.* I respect, I reverence the zeal with which our intelligent neighbors preserve their own annals ; but it is full time that they should so write them, as not to overlay and obliterate ours. And the descendants of the Pilgrims here domesticated, are iilentified with ourselves in maintaining the local associations and distinctive history of this State, unless they mean their children of * Hutchinson, and Bancroft. The German mode of writing history to illustrate a theory, a mode which Mr. Bancroft has followed with such signal ability, can do no harm in Europe, where they only re-write an old story from printed works which are in every public library. But in this country, where history as yet, and for some time to come, is to be prepared from original documents, a system of the kind can hardly be beneficial to the cause of truth! In adorning the new walls of the new British Parliament House, their historic characters of the civil wars on either side, and the portraits of living men as directly opposed in political principle as Wentworth and Hampden, are alike preserved, as all forming a part of England's story. Should similar liberality of feeling ever grow up in this country, the faithful loyalty of Bayard, of Livingston, and other opponents of the democratic party of Leisler's time, will be honored even by those who disapprove their political prin- ciples; and the military valor of New-York, as illustrated by the brave De Lanceys of a subsequent generation, receive its just meed, without any reference to the failing cause which they espoused, not in treason, as Arnold did, but in the blind and mistaken belief that it was the cause of "The Right." 53 a generation hence, shall yield to the New Englander of that day, the provincial obeisance which American colonies before the Revolution are said to have conceded to the Englishman as the highest type for social imitation. The future history of New-York, in which men of other lineage than theirs are taking their full share, will be no history of " the Puritan Anglo-Saxon." And her present and her past stoiy, to the whole tissue and spirit of which their children's children will be heritors, is no more to be merged in that of New England, than it is in that of Virginia. The same spirit which now teaches the father to exalt the land of his birth over all other regions of America, will prompt the child to drag down that exaltation, if based upon the depreciation of his native soil. For no New-Yorker, whatever may be his extraction, will consent that his willing tribute to Pilgrim worth shall bo construed as a concession to Puritan superiority, or permit that his sympathetic reverence for the founders of a sister State, shall be perverted into an acknow- ledgment that any associations are paramount here which are borrowed at second-hand from another Commonwealth. There spreads the banner of New-York, and mark you well her ensignia ! The rising sun, the lifting eagle, the watch-word " Excelsior! " That sun shot his earliest beams from the bosom of our own waters ; and wherever the eagles of the great Republic liave flown, ours lias swept upon no feeble wing. Brothers of St. Nicholas, you at least will remember, that that bird of New- York which still bears ''Excelsior" in his beak, was fledged on his own soil — he never began his soarings from Plymouth Rock. He dressed his plumage in our own lakes, and his ])inions were nerved in the air of our own mountains. 54 NOTE. In the autumn of 1765, while several English men-of-war were lying in the harbor, and after the fort had been put in a complete state of defence by the Royal governor, "the stamps," conveyed in a merchant ship, arrived in the harbor of New- York. The king's stamp officer fearing the temper of the people, notwith- standing the means which had been adopted to overawe them, refused to receive the papers, much less to enter upon their distribution. Upon his refusal, they were transferred, first to a ship of war, and subsequently to the governor's quarters in Fort George. But the people discovered the secret of their landing, and on the instant, hand-bills appeared on every corner, threatening all persons who received or delivered a stamp. On the 31st of October the merchants held a meeting, and resolved not to import goods from England. The next day the people hung the governor in effigy, in what is now the Park. On the same evening thev repaired to the fort, and found the soldiers on the rampart ready to receive them. Nothing daunted, they marched to the gate, knocked and demanded admittance. This was of course refused. They then collected in the Bowling Green, and there, within pistol shot of the fort, built a bonfire, upon which they immolated the effigies of the governor along with his chariot, in which they fixed the effigy. In the next newspaper appeared an emphatic semi-official announcement, that the governor "had not issued, and would not suffer to be issued, any of the stamps now in Fort George." The people were not satisfied; they declared that the stamps should be delivered out of the fort or the.v would take them away by force. Finally, "after much negotiation," they were delivered to the mayor and common council, and deposited in the City Hall. We know that even at this early day, (says the Historian, speaking of this political movement of our citizens,) New- York was of considerable importance in the eyes of the British ministry, and was looked up to in a commercial point of view by the neighboring colonies. There was a military force kept up there. It was the head quarters of His Majesty's American Army. Yet in 1766, it was boldly proclaimed under the very guns of the fort, that the British Parliament possessed not the shadow of a jurisdiction over America. Nor did an apprehension of the men-of-war in the harbor, prevent the New-Yorkers from dragging one distributor of stamps from his hiding-place on the opposite side of the East-River. They even compelled him to sign a resignation of his office before a public magis- trate. In the same record are accounts of the dashing movements of "the Liberty Boys," which Marinus Willett, Alexander McDougall, and other patriots .subsequently less distinguished than these men of mark, carried through with so 55 much spirit. While to show the temper of our people in all circles of society, we find a committee of one hundred leading citizens address the Lord Mayor and Common Council of London, declaring that "Americans will not be deceived by conciliatory measures" — "The minions of power in New-York may inform the administration that New- York is as one man in the cause of liberty." This address was signed by Isaac Low, chairman, John Jay, Francis Lewis, John Alsop, Philip Livingston, James Duane, E. Duyckman, William Seton, William W. Ludlow Cornelius Clopper, Abraham Brinckerhoff, Henry Remsen, Robert Ray, Evert Bancker, Joseph Totten, Abraham P. Lott, David Beeckman, Isaac Roosevelt Gabriel H. Ludlow, William Walton, Daniel PhcEnix. Frederick Jay, Samuel Broome, John De Lancey, Augustus Van Home, Abraham Duryee, Samuel Ver- planck, Rudolphus Ritzeman, John Morton, Joseph Hallet, Robert Benson, Abra- ham Brasher, Leonard Lispenard, Nicholas Hoffman, P. V. B. Livingston, Thomas Marston, Lewis Pintard, John Imlay, Eleazer Miller, jr., John Broome, John B. Moore, Nicholas Bogert, John Anthony, Victor Bicker, William Goforth, Hercules Mulligan, Alexander McDougall, John Reade, Joseph Ball, George Janeway, John White, Gabriel W. Ludlow, John Lasher, Theophilus Anthony, Thomas Smith, Richard Yates, Oliver Templeton, Jacobus Van Landby, Jeremiah Piatt, Peter S. Curtenius, Thomas Randall, Lancaster Burling, Benjamin Kissam, Jacob Lefferts, Anthony Van Dam, Abraham Walton, Hamilton Young, Nicholas Rosevelt, Cor- nelius P. Low, Francis Basset, James Beeckman, Thomas Ivers, William Denning, John Berrien, Benjamin Helme, William W. Gilbert, Daniel Dunscomb, John Lamb, Richard Sharp, John Morin Scott, Jacob Van Voorhis, Comfort Sands, Edward Fleming, Peter Goelet, Gerret Kettletas, Thomas Buchanan, James Des- brosses, Petrus Byvanck, Lott Embren. Though all of these names are not found upon the Whig side after the Declaration of Independence, yet it must be remem- bered, that it was the community which the.v now represented, it was the merchants OF New York who were the first to enter into the famous non-importation agreement, which, being followed by the other colonies, did more than any other movement to produce the repeal of the stamp act. And that success gave heart to the country for bolder movements. — See Dunlnp, vol. i., and Appendix, vol. ii. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS \ 014 114 084 fi €>