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tii I r [0 \ I IRS 01 N i:\v-voRk. 
 
 AN 
 
 \.\M\i:i!SAi;V DISCOURSE 
 
 ill !■ DKI iiKK TIIK 
 
 St. Nicholas Sorictn of itlanhaitan, 
 
 DECEMBER 
 
 I Bret eettl nt of thie 8tate coincided with iti oataral advantajree. WblU Ef l iih— 
 
 BUM to America either fljrii or pu ratting thi 
 
 - Outcome lepired bj the »piril of trade, Ineli down on 
 
 \. i, boldl) penetrated to the be id Derivation of the II I 
 
 l ,i family, » - 
 ■ ibioel I thr I • 'I ili" hlicrtt nf \ II 
 
 J the Indepei nmerco, wo warn rocked in 
 
 principle! of liberty with our iuutlicr'« milk." — Gortrntur 
 
 - 
 
 BY C. F. UOPFJI IK 
 
 xcrtn QQftl . 
 
 \i ■< i|,'l> AND SW< EtDS, 1 I • BR( »AI>\\ 'AY 
 
 I I 
 
TRINTKD BY JOHN K. Jl'oOWK, 
 
 106 Fulton-sfreet. 
 
 
 
I'll E Mm\ eers of m:w-\ <»kk 
 
 Mi:. ! r runl Brethr* :: of the St. Nichol I 
 
 on of this anniversary of the revival of <>ur 
 vival which first brought 
 ! fellowship, to liuiic.r the memory and keep alive the 
 traditions of the early j >i> >t n • w-York <>l every r 
 
 I will not emulate the learned Diedrich Knicl . by 
 
 commencing this discourse with a history of th the world, 
 
 as forming a proper ; chapter to the nunc important 
 
 annals of Manhattan, 1> tl like him, I musl resort t.> 
 
 f Sanchoniatl tho and Berosus, for the pi 
 
 monious introduction of my theme. 
 Among the countl ibian fiction, tl 
 
 •I travellin spirit tourist, who, wandering 
 
 about from plain t to pi ild alwaj I of a 
 
 . lonk in iijion our <ub as it weir, and rest hia winga 
 alar spot, upon which be invariable 
 alighted. 
 
 :, it would seem, when • ■ 1 it. 
 
 \vn with r i r i > . and one lonely 
 
 e<] am ! th .pant. 
 
 " Art thou 1 1 
 
 replied the " I but wand 
 
 hither like thyself — man ,/»/•<"< not here — man never hath dwelt 
 
 and the sullen hunt 
 moro lonely ah 
 
A thousand years went by — again the angel stood upon the 
 earth ! 
 
 He saw the eternal hills around, the same. But the leafy 
 plain which they had encircled, 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 1 " asked the angel of one of its thronged multitude. 
 
 " Knowest thou not the diadem city of the earth 1 ?" 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 1" 
 
 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 traveller 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 place to two 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 l>y pebbled bi 
 
 1>Y deep artificial excavations. I ind mountain* 
 
 e,iit plain bad beoome w island. I 
 
 shrubs, growing here there upon pinnacles < tichhadi 
 
 thrown down from bills that bad crumbled loo • 
 up l>y bidden energies of the earth beneath. But m 
 therai intervals between thom. In the m 
 situations the labor <>f man bad so far subdued the ungeni > 
 that many a garden and orchard relieved and diversified that 
 island; over which from the sea-ward • ■ x t r • • 1 1 s 1 • 
 to 1m- growing even while the an ■. growing up from the 
 
 very bosom of the bitter and brackish - nergies of 
 
 old Ocean him i lifting it from his foam, and pushing it as 
 
 it expanded, still farther ami farther landward ! 
 
 This, (quoth the angel,) must be an intelligent who 
 
 make so thrifty a use of this forbidding soil — this must be a ]>•_?< »jiIo 
 
 bighly favored by a god-like intelligence, whom tin- powers 
 
 ture thus combine t<> favor in rearing their fast growing city. 
 
 And he asked one of the dwellers, "where are the ancient i 
 that once flourished hei i 
 
 '• This is anew land," was thr reply. " It has been a wilde: 
 
 in — i . K-L-n nntrod by civilized man till m came to 
 
 I reclaim it." 
 
 •■ Well then (said the inquisitive spirit,) this noble city, who 
 
 I 1 it from the wav> 
 
 " We did — we Pilgrims <>f Plymouth Rock," cried 
 
 half a dozen voices in the highest Puritan key. 
 
 •• Why, my B iends, (said the angel, speaking now with som< tl 
 
 '. !i accent,) even while I lit | upon tliis moiling 
 
 multitude, gMed through the two centuries, wbicb are to me hut 
 
 is ;i 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 win I to tell me." 
 
 And luch is ' — Such, in the moral world d 
 
 arouv contrasts, the inc • in human 
 
 •lit and action, that although upon our continent, we hv. 
 
in Uxmal and Palenque, 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 upon 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 
 re-invigorated, though rocked on the graves of countless civilizations, 
 sli all preserve its fresh enlightenment for ever. 
 
 Such is history ! 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 first carefully 
 surveying our whole Atlantic coast, and minutely mapping that part 
 of it from Cape Cod to Henlopen. To the French, that of making 
 known our vast inland waters, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to 
 the lideless 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." [Basnage in the 
 Universal History.] Dutch words still supply half the technical terms used on 
 shipboard. 
 
engim 
 
 pupils of Vauban,] fitted them for th< 
 
 imroated with bo roach skill upon thi> Northen I 
 Tin' very points which the latt. i I formilil 
 
 • wo hundred yi 
 tnw ( of the AJIeghanies. 
 
 ■. Pittsbui . I :ili-l 
 
 us, have all fulfilled the destiny that 
 them when designated l>y t' ! 
 of the in which they are Bitu 
 
 Nor have our pu ion chroniclei 
 
 with Blurting over the all-important part which 
 Europeans bad alike in planting this vast empire, and in dev< 
 
 But with regard to thi rticularly, 
 
 in their w ilemn 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 sin 
 industry arid a most perverted ability, to obliterate the peculiai 
 New-York, and joint on to New-England, her eldei 
 provincial Bister here, as a modern colony of Massachusetts Bay! 
 A most eir.niei.iis and offeni imption, which is 
 
 into the minds of the multitude 
 I truth. And while the Massachusetts-man, the Virginian and 
 South Carolinian, are still identified with their fathers, in both 
 private and historic ■ itionj New-Yi rtizan 
 
 writings of the annalist an.l in the habitual mention of the 
 
 fnized as li i'. i a territorial 
 
 t.. the revolution. I .' it phrai 
 
 has become perfectly <1 »m< in the 
 
 public le< is of this city ; and no one thinks of 
 
 " the 
 i Both the 
 
 nioro than on. e, of i . been n-rd in our 
 
 I.. lalure, to add force to some doctrinal appeal. And if the 
 inquiring spirit of tin- apologue makes h 
 
 rmerly, he will tin. 1 not a recognition remainii 
 
8 
 
 the ten generations of pioneering energy of which this State was 
 the scene before the Puritan interpreter of history was abroad. 
 
 It should be remembered, that while modern New- York is so 
 much indebted to the healthful current of New England immigration, 
 which poured in immediately 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 1609, 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 ! New- York, though she had 
 no Speedwell 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 any thing extraordinary 
 enough to transmit their names to posterity.* Why 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 1691, 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 
 
10 much of •' the P I 
 
 i on the iog of tins continent ' Why is it 1 1 1 
 
 tick inwardly to 
 >ng vit il the head 
 
 tide-* 
 
 of England on • levoted H recoiled 
 
 ' 
 tride from luxurious France to this th< 
 
 toiling from Puritan i 
 with the same determined spirit as did tho II 
 Papal bigotry, came hither with little but cloak and rapier, to 
 
 oat their fortunes amid the I N forkl Whj 
 
 that we bear so seldom of tins t ri : : I bio id, which blei 
 
 for two hundred years on the soil of New- York, now fl 
 veins of her native-born children, and bred a crop ol 
 will mate with the " Puritan Anglo Saxon" ii 
 l"n ; .. 
 
 It is becauf '■' St. Nicholas i long 
 
 of your fathers I Too coldly fostered, i 
 . the efforts of your own sons ot of strangers, 
 to illustrate it. It is because too many of the modern childn 
 New- York, looking back for ever, like the patri ife, to 
 
 i they have left, offer but petrified affections tot! 
 memories and that State pride \ you yoi trt n 
 
 ■ 
 In those old colonial days, when the now popular 
 
 . do! been brosched, aid 
 closet or the b eeder's stable, the chane 
 who visited the banks of the H I on and Mohawk, observed the 
 .• fusion of national prejudices, and the •• and 
 
 uniformity h prevails 
 
 the different European which thai noble valley was 
 
 ■ i 
 ■ 
 
• prevailing 
 . : . the feet leave 
 to the cause. We 
 
 .1 frequent 
 illuded to : we may 
 rs of New- 
 secure 
 Bits ical truths ; 
 
 nature of their favorite 
 ■ - manners, ol many a si 
 
 ckers danced round 
 
 e, while the Puritan Anglo-Saxons 
 
 in which ever direction we look. 
 
 . that the planters of this Hollander 
 
 — -: >this Huguenot asylum, the cavalier 
 
 5 to this I Wood flows in 
 
 . the ereoles of 
 - . we cheerfully 
 
 tal stock of America, on the 
 
 Aag 5 Puritan descent. 
 
 si § of European origin; no hereditary right 
 
 isl tcracy of race which shall place 
 
 .'. planters of these United 5 
 
 f them all. We have no rivalship with the 
 
 d of ancient Virginia, or the English Puritan 
 
 . the Roman Catholic who planted 
 
 the Swedish Lutheran of the gallant little 
 
 are. 
 
 We claim only that the spirit which characterized the pioneers 
 
 - her own, and that it was borrowed from no other 
 
 That her ancient political history is her own. 
 
 t an escresence upon those of any other province. That her 
 
 is, and liberties spring from her own people — 
 
 ; their wisdom — matured by their experience. 
 
 efended by their valor. We claim that the glory of the land. 
 
 .. men love to call the " The Empire State," has its well 
 
11 
 
 springs in 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 every true son of New-York, to what ever pari of Europe or 
 America he may care to trace his extraction, is unwilling that the 
 fathers of this State should ha , '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 lar^e, 
 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 h ave been previously made in America 
 yet on the 22nd of December, 1C20, when the Pilgrims of the 
 Mayflower landed at Plymouth, ought to be dated the actual 
 opbning of this continent." He likewise was understood to ascribe 
 the introduction of "freedom, religion, and civilization," exclu 
 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 ability his secured a wide-spread 
 popularity, which is fast making it the standard authority of the 
 country. Should these views finally prevail in our higher literature, 
 
12 
 
 as they 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 for 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 
 thirteeners," 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 alway have welcomed the representatives of his 
 intelligent and enei'getic 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 progress, or her character ; 
 in other words, that tested by her theory, and her practice of " settle- 
 ment," and "freedom," and "religion," and "civilization," her 
 story is her own just as much as is that of Virginia the peculiar 
 property of "the old Dominion." 
 
 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 their 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 thai 
 England, at an early day, claimed 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 
 priority 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 Puritans, 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 
 whom the whole claim is now made, giving us a second-hand 
 origin. 
 
 The opposing races of that day have 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 own ideas of "freedom, religion, and civiliza- 
 tion," and not upon ideas borrowed at second-hand from the 
 Puritans, I 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 theirjpeculiar faith ,t 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 Church 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 associated with the word 
 «' settlement." 
 
 Now, as it happens, New- York, unfortunately for her claims 
 by such a test, took exactly opposite ideas from the start, and 
 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 coasts 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 eighty 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 New Netherland; its name occurs fjr 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 annce les Hollandais etablirent le village d'Esopus, qui prit 
 ensuit le nom do Kingston. 1620 establissment, par les memes colonistes du village 
 de Schenectady sur la riviere de Mohawk a 15 milles et demi d' Albany." — L 'Art 
 de verifier les Dales. See Stuyvcsant's indignant protest (of August, 1664,) 
 against the base surprisal and seizure of New-York by 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 a 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 nostri ab anno 
 clcioc xiv. ad aliquot succe«dentes tcnuerimt. — Nov. 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 Netherland, and launched first upon 
 our waters. Here is the record. 
 
 On the 18th of August, 1616, 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 having discovered and explored certain lands, a bay, 
 and three rivers, situated between 38 and 40 degrees of latitude, 
 in a small yacht of 16 tons burthen, named the " Onrust," (Restless,) 
 which 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 neighborhood 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. — DUcoursc before the 
 New-York Historical Society. 
 
The fur trade, the early nursery of tlie hardihood of New 
 Netherland, and her favorite sphere of adventure, long after she 
 passed to the British rule, was now boldly entered upon and 
 prosecuted for a while with singular success. In 1620, as we 
 have already said, a trading station was erected at Schenectady, 
 and two yeai's after the landing of the Mayflower, when Morton 
 arrived in New England in 1622, 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 
 up arms in the war of Independence. 
 
 The whole imports from 1621 to 1627, were valued at forty- 
 six thousand dollars, while the exports exceeded sixty-eight thou- 
 sand dollars.* 
 
 Three years afterwards, (1630,) the condition of the settlements 
 on the Hudson are described by a cotemporary English writer as 
 " knowne to subsist in a comfortable manner, and to promise fairlie 
 both to the State and the undertakers. Tlie cause is evident : — 
 the men whom they carrie, though they be not many, are 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 labors that 
 are knowne to be of speciall use to their comfortable subsistence."t 
 And in 1632 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 600 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's " Novum Belgium." t See Planter's Plea, London, 1630. 
 
 t Brodhead's London Doc. 
 2 
 
18 
 
 In 1638 the trade as well as the cultivation of the soil of New 
 Netherland 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 day, 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; and 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 country," 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 upon 
 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 theory 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 bee/i the one idea of the veritable 
 Pilgrims. Now, which of these ideas was first established here 1 
 which of these ideas has been most steadily carried out up to the 
 present moment 1 
 
 Why they whose literature now gives law to the mind of so 
 many American communities, brought over with them the doctrines 
 of the Dutch Armenius, 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 with Puritanic 
 intolerance upon others ; while the two noblest edifices upon the 
 continent, consecrated to the Faith of the original Pilgrims, are 
 now reared beneath the wing of Commerce&n the " New Netherland " 
 islands of Manhattan and Nassau.* 
 
 The early civil privileges of New- York offer indeed a 
 most interesting field of inquiry. The political question of " Na- 
 livism" 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 recognizing to the uttermost the cosmopolitan 
 principle already indicated, sedulously guarded against its abuse 
 by exacting from all new comers the most solemn and comprehen- 
 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; whose 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 favoi-," 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-York 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 guarantied to her citizens, at the very inception of the 
 political history of the State — we must now briefly revert to the 
 country whence came her*first pioneers of marry races and every 
 religious persuasion. 
 
 " No 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 persecutions every where, crowded 
 the pi'ovinces 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 the press 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 oaigpawle composed the body of the people, but Jews, 
 Mahomedans, Armenians, and Brownists, were permitted the free 
 exercise of their religion * * * a sedulous regard to freedom appears 
 in every part 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 maybe compared to the union of several princes, formed 
 for their mutual security, repose, and defence. Each preserves 
 his own sovereignty, while he enters upon certain engagements 
 
21 
 
 peculiar to the confederacy. * * * The government favors no curious 
 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, speculation, 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 Colden, writing 
 one hundred years ago, is most curiously assimilated to the Re- 
 public of Holland; the accomplished tory writer never dreaming 
 the while, he was proving that a pure Republican system, whether 
 imported or indigenous, seemed intended by Providence to stamp 
 the genius of our institutions from the first.! 
 
 * Sir William Temple, Basnage, and others, quoted in the " Universal History," 
 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 are born free ! " said Garangula, a century before the identical 
 
Let us now see how the first white Republicans of New-York 
 carried out the eclectic principle of citizenship, already indigenous 
 to the soil of this State, as shown by Colden ; how " they encour- 
 aged the people of other nations to incorporate with them," and 
 how the rights and privileges accorded to all men of all nations in 
 Holland, were guarantied to settlers of every country in this 
 State. 
 
 The first chartered city in the colony was our present metro- 
 polis, and the avowed object of her first charter is to establish a 
 government, wherein the citizens shall choose their magistrates 
 and a representative council annually. (Dunlap.) This charter 
 dates in the month of May, 1621. That is, within seven years of 
 the first active measures which had been taken and effectually 
 carried out for planting the colony of the Hudson. That wide- 
 spread colony, being already so advanced as to require a central 
 government, which should erect it into a province. 
 
 The trading "stations" previously planted on the Hudson, 
 which are at this day populous towns, had each already become 
 the nucleus of a " settlement," and in the municipal government, 
 two systems, essentially different, obtained. 
 
 In the colonies, as the settlements removed from Manhattan 
 were called, the superintending power was in several instances 
 lodged in one individual known as the pair von. 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 then only existing American Confederacy. 
 That New-York league, though 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, lookino- 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 his own expense imported hither the settlers upon his 
 manor-grant, was the immediate vassal of the State, and was 
 responsible 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 by appeal to the supreme authority at Manhattan, in 
 case they were either aggrieved 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 government, which was erected upon the follow- 
 ing basis : — 
 
 " Those colonists who shall form within their limits such a 
 settlement of people as to constitute 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; and 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, 
 the ordinances received here in New Amsterdam." 
 
 Now I would ask you, if our boasted " Anglo-Saxon " township 
 system offers any thing freer than this ] or if there be any charter 
 found in the colonial history of America, establishing more clearly 
 the privileges of a colonist, whether viewed in reference to the 
 town in which he lived, or to the whole province, or to the mother 
 country 1 
 
 Well then does the historian of New Netherlandt 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 Republic of Holland, and the wise and beneficent 
 modification of the feudal code, which obtained these, and not to 
 the puritanic idea of popular freedom introduced from Connecticut, 
 as some incorrectly claim* that New Netherland and the several 
 towns within its confines were indebted for whatever municipal 
 privileges they enjoyed. The charters under which they were 
 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 by crowding hither, 
 as to an asylum of liberty; by aiding to plant an infant State under 
 this very charter, and by taking the oath of allegiance, which 
 identified them and their descendants with the existing franchises 
 and future prosperity of the commonwealth of which they formed 
 a part, and with all 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 be 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 commercial planting by the Hollanders; its becoming the 
 principal asylum of the Huguenots in America after the revocation 
 of the edict of Nantes ; and the influx of Cavalier and anti-Puritan 
 English, after it became a province of the British Stuarts.^ 
 
 * Bancroft. 
 
 + The conditions of membership of the St. Nicholas Society of New-York, have 
 no reference to a Dutch extraction, as is generally supposed. Chancellor Jones, 
 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. 
 
 X These last ultimately stamped the language of New-York ; whose very 
 
25 
 
 In 1624, ten years after the Hollanders established their three 
 torts on the Hudson, and commenced that line of posts which soon 
 extended from the Connecticut to the Delaware, we have the first 
 infusion here of the different races from which, one hundred 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, applied in 1622 to Sir Dudley 
 Carlton to settle in Virginia, with the privilege of erecting a town 
 there. The Walloons, during " the thirty years" war, distinguished 
 themselves 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 they should 
 be governed by magistrates elected by themselves* Several 
 families of these Walloons therefore, established themselves (in the 
 year 1624,) in New Netherland, within 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 plant themselves beside their Belgic and 
 Gallic predecessors, with whom they soon become blended by 
 intermarriage. In this year a band of religionists, led on by the 
 Rev. Mr. Doughty, Richard 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 making formal application 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. 
 
2G 
 
 New Netherland, they had 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 months later, Throgmorton, who had already been driven with 
 Roger Williams from Massachusetts by the fiery Hugh Peters, 
 procured permission to settle thirty-five families on the lands in 
 Westchester county, now known as Throg's Neck, which the New 
 Netherlanders at that time named Vredeland, or •' Land 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, fled in a similar manner from New 
 England to the asylum of New Netherland, and founded the town 
 of Gravezande, (now Gravesend,) on Long Island. To which 
 island Thomas Ffarrington, John Townsend, William Lawrence, 
 John Ffirman, and others, 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, in speaking of this period of the 
 history of New Netherland, " numbers, nay, whole towns, to escape 
 from the insupportable government of New England, removed to 
 New Netherland to enjoy that liberty denied them by their own 
 countrymen." So great was the influx of Englishmen who came 
 now, not as the veritable Pilgrims had proposed in Holland, " to 
 reform any thing which was amiss" among their entertainers, 
 but to enjoy true Knickerbocker freedom, that the director-general 
 of this province, in order " to prevent the disturbance of harmony 
 and social intercourse, more or less, by the incoming of so many 
 strangers to reside here," appointed George Baxter as " English 
 secretary of the council of New Netherland." It is worth stating 
 in this connection, however, that the Dutch language is at this very 
 day still spoken in many of the localities of Long Island by some 
 of the descendants of these, then " strangers." It is to this early 
 English immigration that certain ingenious theorists have attempted 
 
27 
 
 to trace the liberties of New- York, and establish them as of 
 Puritan origin. But these men most assuredly came not hither to 
 bring "Puritan freedom," but to escape "pure Anglo-Saxon" 
 tyranny, and their descendants have ever been among the staunchest 
 children of St. Nicholas. 
 
 All these immigrants, as well as some who came in from 
 Virginia about this period, took the oath of fidelity to the director 
 and council 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 assist to the utmost of their 
 powers in defending with their treasure and their blood, the 
 inhabitants thereof, against all enemies." 
 
 In the cordial reception of 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 cosmopolitan spirit to any 
 external use against the pride and honor of the land we call out- 
 own. In confirmation of the latter spirit, we have the words of 
 that curious proclamation of the council of New Netherland, which, 
 ten years later, marks the presence of the next element of the 
 Knickerbocker lineage. 
 
 This paper, which bears date 18th September, 1648, sets forth, 
 " Whereas it has been seen with great concern, that many Scotch 
 merchants, who, from time to time, come 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 country, 
 which is an injury to our people, who are obliged to bear all the 
 burdens : Therefore 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. And further- 
 
28 
 
 more, they shall be compelled, within one year after their arrival, 
 to erect a decent habitable tenement in New Netherland."* 
 
 The next element of Knickerbockerhood dates from the year 
 1665, when the colony of " New Swedeland " surrendered to Peter 
 Stuyvesant, who, upon the refusal of the Swedes to swear allegi- 
 ance to the conquerors, "picked out the flower of the Swedish 
 troops, and sent them, with some of the principal inhabitants, to 
 Manhattan. "t A portion of these established themselves in this 
 city, while others soon removed to the Walloon colony of Esopus, 
 in what is now Ulster county.| 
 
 * Paulding's New Amsterdam. 
 
 t See Coll. New- York Historical Society, 1814 and 1841. 
 
 t Coll. New-York Historical Society. Many of these Swedish colonists were 
 Finns. Dunlap, vol. i. p. 127, shows how intimate was the relation kept up five years 
 after this period, between the Swedes of New-York and those on the Delaware ; 
 the latter of whom, being the most numerous, were confidently appealed to by the 
 former in 1670, to assist them in building a place of worship, and the governor gave 
 permission to a Swedish gentleman, upon petition of the ministers and elders of the 
 Lutheran Church of New -York, to go to Delaware to solicit benefactions for that 
 purpose. The names of the Swedes, alike both of those who were transplanted to 
 Manhattan, and those who remained upon the Delaware, soon changed and 
 assimilated in sound to the names of the Dutch, German, or English neighborhoods 
 that surrounded them. To a list of Swedish colonists given by Andrew Rudman, 
 there is the following note in the Rev. Mr. Clay's Annals of the Swedes on. the 
 Delaware. " The reader will perceive how much the orthography of many of the 
 above names has changed in progress of time : Bengsten is now Bankson ; Bonde 
 has become Boon ; Svcnsen, Swanson ; Gostasson, Justis ; Jonasson, Jones ; Jocum, 
 Yocum ; Kyn, Keen; Hoppman, Hoffman; Von Culen, Culen; Hailing, Hew- 
 lings ; Wihler, Wheeler, etc." The American Scandinavian Society ought to look 
 after the traditions of this colony, in reference to which the Rev. Mr. Clay, in the 
 work above quoted, justly complains that " the geographers and historians of 
 America, while they have been very particular in detailing the circumstances 
 connected with the arrival and settlement of the English on James river, and of 
 the Pilgrims in New England, scarcely mention that there was ever such a colony 
 as the Swedes on the Delaware." But, alack for the poor Swedes, the merciless 
 eatire of Irving has given their last battle at Fort Christina such unhappy immor- 
 tality, that neither poetry, preaching, nor Frederika Bremer could now ever effect 
 for the Bird-grip what the two former have done for the Mayflower ; whose 
 
29 
 
 In 166 i crowded in the cavalier followers of the now restored 
 Stuarts, some of whom, (like the Pilgrim fathers,) had been 
 sojourners, with their prince, in Holland, and spoke her language; 
 as did the brave Calvinist " Captain John Underhill with his wife," 
 Lyon Gardiner, who also " had served in the low countries," and 
 other English exiles and soldiers of fortune who preceded the cava- 
 liers, and played an active part in the Indian wars of Long Island; 
 where some of Charles II's Tangier officers took up their manor 
 grants beside them, and in the mention of their neighborhood, 
 bring up, to this day, their military service in Africa as immortalized 
 in the quaint periods of old Pepys. Many were the manor grants 
 made to these last comers amid the fair lands of New-York, when 
 the bigotted English Duke, from which the Niagara State takes 
 its unmeaning provincial name, established a British government 
 over the province. 
 
 Twenty years later, following the detached families of Norman 
 Protestants, who had previously come hither through the ports of 
 Holland, began thegreat Huguenot immigration into New-York, 
 when so many families of persecuted Frenchmen migrated hither, 
 and established themselves, some in the city of New-York, some 
 on Staten Island, some at New Rochelle, in Westchester county, 
 some near De Vrie's ancient station, in what is now Rockland 
 county, and some, it is believed, in New Paltz, Ulster county. 
 
 In 1710 New-York, " originally only a field of wild-wood 
 enterprize for the Dutch and Scotch fur trader, but at an early day 
 the chosen asylum of the French anti-Romanist and English anti- 
 Puritan," became the asylum of three thousand German exiles, 
 who, flying from the devastation of " the blazing Palatinate," 
 migrated in one body to the valley of the Hudsou; while the wars 
 of Europe, and especially the discomfiture of the pretender to the 
 British crown in 1715, sent hither many an English, Irish,* and 
 
 very name alone can sink the whole Swedish navy of American emigration — the 
 Bird-grip, and Key of Calmer, the Swan, Eagle, and Golden Shark, the Fama, 
 Charitas, Black-cat, and Mercurius. 
 
 * The Irish immigration into New-York, which for several generations has 
 perhaps exceeded that of any other race, seems not to have been very large before 
 
30 
 
 Scottish soldier, who fought under opposite banners abroad; — sent 
 the banished captive, and his land-bountied conqueror to sit down 
 side by side and cultivate the arts of peace together upon the 
 genial soil of New-York. 
 
 The political history of our State in the intervening and sub- 
 sequent years, incessantly brings up the names of different repre- 
 sentations of all these races. 
 
 It is often ajar-ring history when we look to public life, but in 
 the private circle there seems to have been an early absorption of 
 national peculiarities 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 
 o-enealogist would discover that Irish blood contributed at an early day to form the 
 characteristic stock of New- York. 
 
 * That is according to tho 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 the 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 certaiidy 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 nan ow 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. 
 
The Pioneers of New- York 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 wore, 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 eame 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 tov/n 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 family. 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 tov/n 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 uoon, from noon till dewy eye,' 
 
32 
 
 plains of Normandy 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 year's day 
 following, to the son, or daughter, or other young relation of the family, who was 
 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 6quires, amid the perils of the 
 wilderness. 
 
 There is one remark which I 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 enstomary. 
 

 hither to this " land of a thousand lakes ; " where blithely gathered 
 the Salmon fisher of Erin's rivers, and the hunter of the Stag 
 through Scottish heather, 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, hut 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 delicacy, 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 Naturalness, the basis of all poetry — that Happiness, the ultimate aim 
 of all philosophy — though by no means so well understood as now, were practised 
 nearly as well ; were enjoyed almost as generally as in our enlightened day. — Coll. 
 New-York Historical Society. 
 3 
 
34 
 
 nesses of New- York, with men who had slaked the fever-thirst of 
 battle in the Rhine and the Scheldt : whither too, to stamp our share 
 in the heritage of England's wit and gaiety, and jocund spirit of 
 prime fellowship, drifted the roystering companions of that " merry 
 monarch," whose inborn selfishness has put many a genial heart 
 for ever out of humor with kingly courtesy and cavalier mirth. 
 
 Now when we remember that stringent circumstance handles 
 the plastic power in America which the mumbling fingers of time 
 manages in older countries ; and revert to the character of Ken- 
 tucky, as marked as that of any State in the Union, although it has 
 originated, grown up, and developed itself since the Revolution, 
 we need not wonder that a wholesome attrition of habits, opinions, 
 and prejudices, rapidly developed in New- York a marked phase 
 of society. A phase of society which the European visitor of nearly 
 a hundred years ago characterized as " eminently liberal and 
 tolerant, and marked by a happy fusion of national prejudices."* 
 The free and hearty spirit of the veritable Knickerbocker was at 
 that time fairly evolved from the soil of New-York; 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- York 
 history, and justly interpreted the spirit of New- York institutions, 
 can never righteously be plucked from the generous soil which 
 nurtured them, 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- York, at the very inception of her coloni- 
 zation ; all of which they set aside for a different basis of citizenship. 
 That basis, being simply domiciliation, 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, has 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 simply that of mind acting upon mind, 
 without appeal to any admitted standard doctrine — the attrition of 
 man acting upon man, without reference to either identity of race 
 or superiority of origin. 
 
 When therefore the colonists of New- York, 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 any thing 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. 
 
 1 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 powers purely spiritual, similar 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 people that " more 
 light would come." Yet, while our neighbors disdained to borrow 
 the light of toleration from New Netherland, those of their own 
 blood, who brought 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 Roo-er 
 Williams, the good, the liberal, the charitable, driven out with the 
 rest, planted the tree of toleration in Rhode Island. 
 
 But let us look more closely into these modern claims of 
 political Puritanism, of which we now hear so much, as originating 
 the theory and setting in motion the practice of North American 
 liberty. Is the germ of all American freedom traceable to Plymouth 
 
36 
 
 Rock 1 Is the genius of American institutions referable solely to 
 the Puritan origin of New England] 
 
 Guizot calls the reformation begun by Luther " an insurrection 
 of the human mind against the absolute power of spiritual order ! " 
 Now Puritanism, 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 honoring its undaunted antagonism to older forms of des- 
 potism over the rights of conscience — but it was not less a des- 
 potism? 
 
 It was an adventurous spirit, that of old Puritanism, and I. 
 honor it not less for 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 science of liberty — aught save the mental 
 vigor and conscientious hardihood of its stern asserters of narrow 
 doctrine. 
 
 And, speaking still of Puritanism in its political aspect — I will 
 recognize its hard earned triumphs 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 land of stubborn tolerance. 
 
 " Inasmuch as in ten years time, whilst we sojourned among 
 them, we could not bring them to reform any thing amiss among 
 them." 
 
37 
 
 Now the prerogative to meddle with the concerns of your 
 neighbor, here asserted with such unconscious simplicity ; to meddle 
 according to your conscience, and your opinion of what is good for 
 your neighbor, 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 
 impertinence 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 
 hereditary 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 
 upon 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 
 in New Netherland 1 They learned the true principle of individual 
 representation; and that an oligarchy of associated doctrine is in 
 a free country 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 interpret 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 wish 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 Hulland. 
 I take the term in its original purport, when " Puritanism" referred 
 not to religious conviction, but simply to that arrogant assumption 
 over our neighbor, which prompts us to conspire with others to 
 trample apon his individual rights, feelings, habits, and prejudices, 
 in the blind assertion of our infallible church of Opinion — a church 
 whose first altar is always reared in the soul by the anti-christian 
 spirit of " Lam-holier-than-thou .'" 
 
 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 
 through 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 the 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 — compel 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 partizan movement, 
 will smile at the above as unmeaning tirade. The ingenious labors of more thought- 
 ful theorists, tracing pretty much all Amerioan 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 so'l of the Battery, or 
 underlying the pavement of Chestnut -street. 
 
40 
 
 in this State — that of a purer caste of men, originating beyond your 
 own border, who hold up the doings of their 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 home spirit of those who advance 
 themselves as its faithful priests everywhere ; but I deny their 
 inspiration, when, by a New England ordination, they claim to be 
 our interpreters. 
 
 " The Landing of our Pilgrim Fathers " is the landing 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 
 aoil. 
 
 " We grew out of this sacred ground with our pioneer predeces- 
 sors,'^ 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 comprehensive genius in tracing 
 the story of this State, broke forth into prophecy as he dwelt upon 
 our fusion of races upon 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 this 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 Goveneur '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 
 
 Roman-like and far conquering Iroquois. The shallow sophis- 
 tries of Puritan Anglo-Saxonism had not yet been heard within 
 our borders when that philosophic mind of New York ventured 
 upon its far-sighted predictions of what those 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 the Genesee 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 
 thenar ts of peace ! * 
 
 The curious speculative theory of that philosophic statesman is 
 now History. Yes, it has been History for more than twenty 
 years. For the men of New-York were 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 
 colonial enterprise upon which Mr. Morris predicated his generous 
 prophecy. We hear much of the " Empire State," we forget the 
 " Empire Colony " — the province where the two most powerful 
 nations of Europe 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 
 power, 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 Pokanoket, have made the Indian wars 
 of New England familiar to every school-boy, familiar as are the 
 savage forays into Kentucky of a much later day ; yet — while the 
 border conflicts 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 persevering efforts to defend our country in the 
 long period of nearly one hundred and seventy years ; from the 
 first settlement by the Dutch in 1614 to the time when this city 
 was evacuated by the British in the close of 1783." It is fortunate 
 for the existing inhabitants perhaps, 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 
 spirit 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 number 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 prosperous present. We hear 
 much of what our Eastern neighbors endured for the protection of 
 doctrine — it may be healthful to hear what our fathers did for the 
 protection of home. I might now go back to the Indian wars of 
 Governor Kieft, when he made a requisition upon the authorities 
 
 at Albany for " tiuo hundred suits of mail" to repel a threatened 
 
 i 
 
 * 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 Manhattan; an attack which his folly had 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 Albany, 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- York 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 the 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. 
 
 Whether 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 Hudson, it is now difficult to say. 
 But long previous to Leisler's ill-starred attempt to expel them 
 from Canada, and down to the period when Wolfe triumphed at 
 Quebec, the old chronicles which record the formidable descent of 
 Count Frontignac, the massacre of Schenectady, and other inroads 
 of Hurons and Adirondacks, led on by French officers, tell us 
 repeatedly of sudden taxes levied, and men warned to hold them- 
 selves ready in arms, even in the city of New- York itself — so 
 remote from the scene of the never-ending border strife. 
 
 The first really formidable inroad from " New France," as 
 Canada was then called, was that of De Tracey, De Chaumont, 
 
44 
 
 and De Courcelles, in 1666, with twelve hundred French soldiers 
 and one thousand Indians. De Barre's descent with seventeen 
 hundred men, followed in 1685. The burning of Schenectady in 
 1690, made their next attack memorable. In 1691 they were 
 again within fifteen miles of Albany. In 1693 they were repulsed 
 from Schenectady by Peter Schuyler. In 1695 three hundred of 
 their soldiers made a lodgment at Oswego, while five hundred 
 were driven out of New-York by way of Lake Champlain. 
 
 In 1696, one of the best appointed armies that ever displayed 
 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 struggle was renewed, and 
 the province remained an armed camp till the peace of Utrecht in 
 1713. Again the province is in arms and marching 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 1755. 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 (1758) 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 Champlain, 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 sanguinaiy 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 incorporate 
 themselves with us, 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 " with them, it was but just that thejbrwn 
 and lyceum 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 the burial of our identity; 
 the annihilation of our peculiar and original 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 within our borders. 
 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 Cyclopaedias; and however 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 common sense 
 by 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 
 Schuylers, Jays, Morrises, Livingstons and Clintons, learned best to 
 serve their country. "If I do not greatly deceive myself, there is no 
 portion of the history of this country which is more instructive or 
 calculated to embellish our national character, than the domestic 
 history 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 1 
 
 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 political 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 nationality is not to be built up by ob- 
 literating our local esprit clu 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 " Puritania," but they cannot make it so 
 while every election for a town constable reminds us that our fed i 
 erative system (whether 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 that which New York has wrought 
 for herself — look to each graven line, traced by whatever hands, be- 
 tween the dates of 1614 and 1S47, 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 their own country, " acquired power in 
 the struggle for existence and wealth under the weight of taxation ;" 
 surely the determined race which thus built up the Northern Venice 
 in defiance of every principle of political economy, 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 Caesar 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, depopulated, and 
 repeopled Europe; notwithstanding the changes of government, 
 and those which have been wrought by the decline and by the ad- 
 vance of society and the arts ; notwithstanding the differences of 
 religion, and the 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 homestead 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 ancestors," 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 
 upon France or England." And told him this in a speech whose 
 biting 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 Iroquoist 
 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 hear " the principles of our Puritan 
 ancestry" appealed to in a New-York legislature, as authority here, 
 repel with indignation the arrogant assumption 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 discourse before the New York Historical Society, 1811. The names 
 of " the principal women" of the Iroquois or Five Nations, are always appended to 
 their land treaties. See Colden, 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 Mingoes, 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 Discourse. 
 
49 
 
 zation here, on the soil which you tread — plant yourselves upon 
 your own peculiar story, and let the barriers of history repel the 
 offensive encroachment. 
 
 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 1618, by the people who then 
 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 in 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 patents, securing perfect liberty of conscience. 
 
 If the question be of religion itself, as the sanction of our fran- 
 chises, recall the sixth of September 1645, proclaimed by the 
 governor-general of New Netherland as " a day of general thanks- 
 giving to God Almighty, to be observed in churches of every persuasion 
 throughout the province, in pious acknowledgment of the blessings 
 which he has been pleased to bestow upon this country.''^ 
 
 * 1773, March 8th, 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 the 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, 
 by the treaty of Breda. 
 
 t See note at the end. 
 
 X O'Callaghan's History of New Netherland. 
 4 
 
50 
 
 And lastly, if the question be of civilization, and the onward 
 spirit of the age, point to the genial and gentle habits of that 
 people, who, stern in their patriotism as they were free-hearted in 
 their sports,* furnished three martyrs to political liberty (in 1691,) 
 neither of whom were Puritans ; each of whom represented a 
 prominent type of our population. 
 
 " I stand here in the name of the freeholders of New-York," 
 said Milbourne, one hundred and fifty years ago, in the convention 
 at Albany. "I pronounce the charter of the English King null. 
 The people of New-York have the power to choose their own 
 officers, and every incumbent shoukl 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 right which has called William of Orange 
 to the throne of England— the voice of my countrymen. The only 
 council which I acknowledge is the c mmittee chosen by the free 
 and open election of the freemen of this province in their respective 
 
 counties. 
 
 Leisler perished on the scaffold for that rule, and Governettr, 
 the third of these patriots, barely escaped with his life.t 
 
 These three gallant men, tl e Netherlander, the Englishman, 
 and the Huguenot, 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 oidinary 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 sho it :— 
 
 " With the customary bell-ringing at the City Hall was published the renewed 
 order concerning the planting of the Maypole, and the damage which maybe 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 kuown to the 
 burgomasters at the City Hall immediately thereafter, when Pleasures 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 New-Yorkers pre- 
 served their memory 1 Why that first triumph of an independent 
 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 the martyrs? 
 
 Ask the sachems of that patriotic institution! 
 
 It is treasured at least among your city archives upon the same 
 roll which gives the name of Peter de la Noye, the first man that 
 was ever elected by the freeholders and freemen of Manhattan to 
 the mayorality of New- York % 
 
 Ask our living civic fathers !* 
 
 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 effigy of that public 
 spirited merchant dignifies the otherwise traditionless halls of your 
 modern Exchange? 
 
 Ask your Chamber of Commerce ! 
 
 For many years the Leislerian 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 df irrefragable 
 testimony to the noble 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 Leisler's 
 party was regarded as the New- York, and not the English party A 
 
 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 hamlet, and hoarding up the 
 
 * In the Corporation Manual, published yearly, the names of the officials under 
 the first popular government of New-York, are to this day omitted. The word* 
 [" 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 in the 
 humblest sphere, have contributed aught to the glory of the com- 
 monwealth. Had the progess truths for which Melbourne perished 
 — had the eternal principles of right and wrong, whose distinctions 
 Leisler died in upholding — had these been promulgated in 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 types 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- York, 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 
 identified with our.-elv *s 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 colonists before the 
 Revolution are said to have conceded to the Englishman as the 
 highest type for social imiation. 
 
 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 story, to 
 the whole tissue and spirit of whi< h 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 be construed as a concession to 
 Puritan superiority, or permit that his sympathetic reveience 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 
 herensignia! 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 
 have flown, ours has 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 pinions 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 
 rnor, •• 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 
 Uw papers, much less to enter upon their distribution. Upon his refusal, thev 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 3 1st 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 they repaired 
 to the tort, 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 whiel they fixed the effigy. In the 3 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 they 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 o( the British ministry, and was looked up to in a commercial point of 
 new 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 Marims Wiixktt, Alexander McDoigall, 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. Duyckrnan, 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 Phoenix, Frederick Jay, Samuel 
 Broome, John De Lancey, Augustus Van Home, Abraham Duryec, 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, Wiiliam 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 they 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 Dunlap, vol. L, and Appendix, vol. ii. 
 

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