Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New AmsterdamAbbott, John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot)
History
Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam
Abbott, John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot)
New York (State) -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775; Stuyvesant, Peter, 1592-1672
"The Dutch soldiers were taken prisoners, and given up to
the merchant-man that was there, in payment for his
services; and they were transported into Virginia to be
sold. All sorts of tools for handicraft tradesmen, and all
plough gear, and other things to cultivate the ground, which
were in store in great quantity, were likewise seized,
together with a sawmill ready to set up, and nine sea buoys
with their iron chains.
"Even the inoffensive Menonists, though thoroughly
non-combatant from principle, did not escape the sack and
plunder to which the whole river was subjected by Carr and
his co-marauders. A boat was dispatched to their settlement,
which was stripped of everything, even to a very nail."
At New Amsterdam, Colonel Nicholls paid more respect to the terms of
the treaty. Citizens, residing there, were not robbed of their private
property. But the gentlemen of the West India Company, in Holland,
found all their property mercilessly confiscated. Colonel Nicholls
seized on everything upon which he could lay his hand. He seemed
anxious to eradicate every vestige of the former power. This property
was sold at auction that it might thus be distributed among a large
number of individual owners. The Colonel shrewdly imagined that he
might thus interest all these persons in the maintenance of the new
power.
History has but one voice, and that of the severest condemnation, in
reference to these transactions on the part of the English government.
Mr. O'Callaghan writes:
"Thus was fitly consummated an act of spoliation which, in a
period of profound peace, wrested this province from the
rightful owners, by violating all public justice and
infringing all public law. The only additional outrage that
remained was to impose on the country the name of one
unknown in history, save as a bigot and a tyrant, the enemy
of religious and political freedom wherever he ruled. New
Netherland was accordingly called New York."
Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, in his outline of the State of New York
writes, "In the history of the royal ingrates by whom it was planned
and for whose benefit it was perpetrated, there are few acts more
base, none more characteristic."
Mr. Brodhead, in his admirable History of the State of New York, says,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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