A History of New York

by Washington Irving

  Will Cottington,

  Alicxsander Partridg.”

  I confess the very sight of this fearful document, made me to quake for the safety of my beloved province. The name of Alexander, however misspelt, has been warlike in every age, and though its fierceness is in some measure softened by being coupled with the gentle cognomen of Partridge, still, like the colour of scarlet, it bears an exceeding great resemblance to the sound of a trumpet. From the style of the letter, moreover, and the soldierlike ignorance of orthography displayed by the noble captain Alicxsander Partridg in spelling his own name, we may picture to ourselves this mighty man of Rhodes like a second Ajax, strong in arms, great in the field, but in other respects, (meaning no disparagement) as great a dom cop, as if he had been educated among that learned people of Thrace, who Aristotle most slanderously assures us, could not count beyond the number four.

  But whatever might be the threatening aspect of this famous confederation, Peter Stuyvesant was not a man to be kept in a state of incertitude and vague apprehension; he liked nothing so much as to meet danger face to face, and take it by the beard. Determined therefore to put an end to all these petty maraudings on the borders, he wrote two or three categorical letters to the grand council, which though neither couched in bad latin, nor yet graced by rhetorical tropes about wolfs and lambs, and beetle flies, yet had more effect than all the elaborate epistles, protests and proclamations of his learned predecessor, put together. In consequence of his urgent propositions, the sage council of the amphyctions agreed to enter into a final adjustment of grievances and settlement of boundaries, to the end that a perpetual and happy peace might take place between the two powers. For this purpose governor Stuyvesant deputed two ambassadors, to negotiate with commissioners from the grand council of the league, and a treaty was solemnly concluded at Hartford. On receiving intelligence of this event, the whole community was in an uproar of exultation. The trumpet of the sturdy Van Corlear, sounded all day with joyful clangour from the ramparts of Fort Amsterdam, and at night the city was magnificently illuminated with two hundred and fifty tallow candles; besides a barrel of tar, which was burnt before the governor’s house, on the cheering aspect of public affairs.

  And now my worthy, but simple reader, is doubtless, like the great and good Peter, congratulating himself with the idea, that his feelings will no longer be molested by afflicting details of stolen horses, broken heads, impounded hogs, and all the other catalogue of heart-rending cruelties, that disgraced these border wars. But if my reader should indulge in such expectations, it is only another proof, among the many he has already given in the course of this work, of his utter ignorance of state affairs—and this lamentable ignorance on his part, obliges me to enter into a very profound dissertation, to which I call his attention in the next chapter—wherein I will shew that Peter Stuyvesant has already committed a great error in politics; and by effecting a peace, has materially jeopardized the tranquility of the province.

  CHAPTER III

  Containing divers philosophical speculations on war

  and negociations—and shewing that a treaty of peace is

  a great national evil.

  It was the opinion of that poetical philosopher Lucretius, that war was the original state of man; whom he described as being primitively a savage beast of prey, engaged in a constant state of hostility with his own species, and that this ferocious spirit was tamed and ameliorated by society. The same opinion has been advocated by the learned Hobbes, nor have there been wanting a host of sage philosophers to admit and defend it.

  For my part, I am prodigiously fond of these valuable speculations so complimentary to human nature, and which are so ingeniously calculated to make beasts of both writer and reader; but in this instance I am inclined to take the proposition by halves, believing with old Horace,45 that though war may have been originally the favourite amusement and industrious employment of our progenitors, yet like many other excellent habits, so far from being ameliorated, it has been cultivated and confirmed by refinement and civilization, and encreases in exact proportion as we approach towards that state of perfection, which is the ne plus ultra of modern philosophy.

  The first conflict between man and man was the mere exertion of physical force, unaided by auxiliary weapons—his arm was his buckler, his fist was his mace, and a broken head the catastrophe of his encounters. The battle of unassisted strength, was succeeded by the more rugged one of stones and clubs, and war assumed a sanguinary aspect. As man advanced in refinement, as his faculties expanded, and his sensibilities became more exquisite, he grew rapidly more ingenious and experienced, in the art of murdering his fellow beings. He invented a thousand devices to defend and to assault—the helmet, the cuirass and the buckler; the sword, the dart and the javelin, prepared him to elude the wound, as well as to launch the blow. Still urging on, in the brilliant and philanthropic career of invention, he enlarges and heightens his powers of defence and injury—The Aries, the Scorpio, the Balista and the Catapulta, give a horror and sublimity to war, and magnify its glory, by encreasing its desolation. Still insatiable; though armed with machinery that seemed to reach the limits of destructive invention, and to yield a power of injury, commensurate, even to the desires of revenge—still deeper researches must be made in the diabolical arcana. With furious zeal he dives into the bowels of the earth; he toils midst poisonous minerals and deadly salts—the sublime discovery of gunpowder, blazes upon the world—and finally the dreadful art of fighting by proclamation, seems to endow the demon of war, with ubiquity and omnipotence!

  By the hand of my body but this is grand!—this indeed marks the powers of mind, and bespeaks that divine endowment of reason, which distinguishes us from the animals, our inferiors. The unenlightened brutes content themselves with the native force which providence has assigned them. The angry bull butts with his horns, as did his progenitors before him—the lion, the leopard, and the tyger, seek only with their talons and their fangs, to gratify their sanguinary fury; and even the subtle serpent darts the same venom, and uses the same wiles, as did his sire before the flood. Man alone, blessed with the inventive mind, goes on from discovery to discovery—enlarges and multiplies his powers of destruction; arrogates the tremendous weapons of deity itself, and tasks creation to assist him, in murdering his brother worm!

  In proportion as the art of war has increased in improvement, has the art of preserving peace advanced in equal ratio. But as I have already been very prolix to but little purpose, in the first part of this truly philosophic chapter, I shall not fatigue my patient, but unlearned reader, in tracing the history of the art of making peace. Suffice it to say, as we have discovered in this age of wonders and inventions, that proclamation is the most formidable engine in war, so have we discovered the no less ingenious mode of maintaining peace by perpetual negociations.

  A treaty, or to speak more correctly a negociation, therefore, according to the acceptation of your experienced statesmen, learned in these matters, is no longer an attempt to accommodate differences, to ascertain rights, and to establish an equitable exchange of kind offices; but a contest of skill between two powers, which shall over-reach and take in the other. It is a cunning endeavour to obtain by peaceful manoeuvre, and the chicanery of cabinets, those advantages, which a nation would otherwise have wrested by force of arms.—In the same manner that a conscientious highwayman reforms and becomes an excellent and praise-worthy citizen contenting himself with cheating his neighbour out of that property he would formerly have seized with open violence.

  In fact the only time when two nations can be said to be in a state of perfect amity, is when a negociation is open, and a treaty pending. Then as there are no stipulations entered into, no bonds to restrain the will, no specific limits to awaken that captious jealousy of right implanted in our nature, as both parties have some advantage to hope and expect from the other, then it is that the two nations are as gracious and friendly to each other, as two rogues making a bargain. The
ir ministers professing the highest mutual regard, exchanging billets-doux, making fine speeches and indulging in all those little diplomatic flirtations, coquetries and fondlings, that do so marvelously tickle the good humour of the respective nations. Thus it may paradoxically be said, that there is never so good an understanding between two nations, as when there is a little misunderstanding—and that so long as they are on no terms, they are on the best terms in the world!

  As I am of all men in the world, particularly historians, the most candid and unassuming, I would not for an instant claim the merit of having made the above political discovery. It has in fact long been secretly acted upon by certain enlightened cabinets, and is, together with divers other notable theories, privately copied out of the common place book of an illustrious gentleman, who has been member of congress, and enjoyed the unlimited confidence of heads of department. To this principle may be ascribed the wonderful ingenuity that has been shewn of late years in protracting and interrupting negociations.—Hence the cunning measure of appointing as ambassador, some political pettifogger skilled in delays, sophisms, and misconstructions, and dexterous in the art of baffling argument—or some blundering statesman, whose stupid errors and misconstructions may be a plea for refusing to ratify his engagements. And hence too that most notable expedient, so popular with our government, of sending out a brace of ambassadors; who having each an individual will to consult, character to establish, and interest to promote, you may as well look for unanimity and concord between them, as between two lovers with one mistress, two dogs with one bone, or two naked rogues and one pair of breeches. This disagreement therefore is continually breeding delays and impediments, in consequence of which the negociation goes on swimmingly—inasmuch as there is no prospect of its ever coming to a close. Nothing is lost by these delays and obstacles but time, and in a negociation, according to the theory I have exposed, all time lost is in reality so much time gained—with what delightful paradoxes, does the modern arcana of political economy abound!

  Now all that I have here advanced is so notoriously true, that I almost blush to take up the time of my readers, with treating of matters which must many a time have stared them in the face. But the proposition to which I would most earnestly call their attention is this, that though a negociation is the most harmonizing of all national transactions, yet a treaty of peace is a great political evil and one of the most fruitful sources of war.

  I have rarely seen an instance in my time, of any special contract between individuals, that did not produce jealousies, bickerings, and often downright ruptures between them; nor did I ever know of a treaty between two nations, that did not keep them continually in hot water. How many worthy country neighbours have I known, who after living in peace and good fellowship for years, have been thrown into a state of distrust, cavilling and animosity, by some ill starred agreement about fences, runs of water, and stray cattle. And how many well meaning nations, who would otherwise have remained in the most amiable disposition towards each other, have been brought to loggerheads about the infringement, or misconstruction of some treaty, which in an evil hour they had constructed by way of making their amity more sure.

  Treaties at best are but complied with so long as interest requires their fulfillment; consequently they are virtually binding on the weaker party only, or in other words, they are not really binding at all. No nation will wantonly go to war with another if it has nothing to gain thereby, and therefore needs no treaty to restrain it from violence; and if it has any thing to gain, I much question, from what I have witnessed of the righteous conduct of nations, whether any treaty could be made so strong, that it could not thrust the sword through—nay I would hold ten to one, the treaty itself, would be the very source to which resort would be had, to find a pretext for hostilities.

  Thus therefore I sagely conclude—that though it is the best of all policies for a nation to keep up a constant negociation with its neighbours, it is the utmost summit of folly, for it ever to be beguiled into a treaty; for then comes on the non-fulfilment and infraction, then remonstrance, then altercation, then retaliation, then recrimination and finally open war. In a word, negociation is like courtship, a time of sweet words, gallant speeches, soft looks and endearing caresses, but the marriage ceremony is the signal for hostilities—and thus ends this very abstruse though very instructive chapter.

  CHAPTER IV

  How Peter Stuyvesant was horribly belied by his adversaries

  the Moss Troopers—and his conduct thereupon.

  If my pains-taking reader, whose perception, it is a hundred to one, is as obtuse as a beetle’s, is not somewhat perplexed, in the course of the ratiocination of my last chapter; he will doubtless, at one glance perceive, that the great Peter, in concluding a treaty with his eastern neighbours, was guilty of a most notable error and heterodoxy in politics. To this unlucky agreement may justly be ascribed a world of little infringements, altercations, negociations and bickerings, which afterwards took place between the irreproachable Stuyvesant, and the evil disposed council of amphyctions; in all which, with the impartial justice of an historian, I pronounce the latter to have been invariably in the wrong. All these did not a little disturb the constitutional serenity of the good and substantial burghers of Mannahata—otherwise called Manhattoes, but more vulgarly known by the name of Manhattan. But in sooth they were so very scurvy and pitiful in their nature and effects, that a grave historian like me, who grudges the time spent in any thing less than recording the fall of empires, and the revolution of worlds, would think them unworthy to be recorded in his sacred page.

  The reader is therefore to take it for granted, though I scorn to waste in the detail, that time, which my furrowed brow and trembling hand, inform me is invaluable, that all the while the great Peter was occupied in those tremendous and bloody contests, that I shall shortly rehearse, there was a continued series of little, dirty, snivelling, pettifogging skirmishes, scourings, broils and maraudings made on the eastern frontiers, by the notorious moss troopers of Connecticut. But like that mirror of chivalry, the sage and valourous Don Quixote, I leave these petty contests for some future Sancho Panza of an historian, while I reserve my prowess and my pen for achievements of higher dignity.

  Now did the great Peter conclude, that his labours had come to a close in the east, and that he had nothing to do but apply himself to the internal prosperity of his beloved Manhattoes. Though a man of great modesty, he could not help boasting that he had at length shut the temple of Janus, and that, were all rulers like a certain person who should be nameless, it would never be opened again. But the exultation of the worthy governor was put to a speedy check, for scarce was the treaty concluded, and hardly was the ink dried on the paper, before the crafty and discourteous council of the league sought a new pretence for reilluming the flames of discord.

  In the year 1651, with a flagitious hardihood that makes my gorge to rise while I write, they accused the immaculate Peter—the soul of honour and heart of steel—that by divers gifts and promises he had been secretly endeavouring to instigate the Narrohigansett (or Narraganset) Mohaque and Pequot Indians, to surprize and massacre the English settlements. For, as the council maliciously observed, “the Indians round about for divers hundred miles cercute, seeme to have drunke deep of an intoxicating cupp, att or from the Monhatoes against the English, whoe have sought there good, both in bodily and sperituall respects.” To support their most unrighteous accusation, they examined divers Indians, who all swore to the fact as sturdily as if they had been so many christian troopers. And to be more sure of their veracity, the knowing council previously made every mother’s son of them devoutly drunk, remembering the old proverb—In vino veritas.

  Though descended from a family which suffered much injury from the losel Yankees of those times; my great grandfather having had a yoke of oxen and his best pacer stolen, and having received a pair of black eyes and a bloody nose, in one of these border wars; and my grandfather, when a very little
boy tending the pigs, having been kidnapped and severely flogged by a long sided Connecticut schoolmaster—Yet I should have passed over all these wrongs with forgiveness and oblivion—I could even have suffered them to have broken Evert Ducking’s head, to have kicked the doughty Jacobus Van Curlet and his ragged regiment out of doors, carried every hog into captivity, and depopulated every hen roost, on the face of the earth with perfect impunity—But this wanton, wicked and unparalleled attack, upon one of the most gallant and irreproachable heroes of modern times, is too much even for me to digest, and has overset, with a single puff, the patience of the historian and the forbearance of the Dutchman.

  Oh reader it was false!—I swear to thee it was false!—if thou hast any respect for my word—if the undeviating and unimpeached character for veracity, which I have hitherto borne throughout this work, has its due weight with thee, thou wilt not give thy faith to this tale of slander; for I pledge my honour and my immortal fame to thee, that the gallant Peter Stuyvesant, was not only innocent of this foul conspiracy, but would have suffered his right arm, or even his wooden leg to consume with slow and everlasting flames, rather than attempt to destroy his enemies in any other way, than open generous warfare—Beshrew those caitiff scouts, that conspired to sully his honest name by such an imputation!

  Peter Stuyvesant, though he perhaps had never heard of a Knight Errant; yet had he as true a heart of chivalry as ever beat at the round table of King Arthur. There was a spirit of native gallantry, a noble and generous hardihood diffused through his rugged manners, which altogether gave unquestionable tokens of an heroic mind. He was, in truth, a hero of chivalry struck off by the hand of nature at a single heat, and though she had taken no further care to polish and refine her workmanship, he stood forth a miracle of her skill.