New York at War

by Steven H. Jaffe

  As during other moments of passion and stress in the city’s history, the backlash against Islamic Americans in the wake of 9/11 implicitly denies the important contributions to the city’s history of some New Yorkers: people like Abdel Rahman Mosabbah, who foiled the bomb plot against the B train; Emad Salem, who helped the FBI catch the 1993 bombers; the Muslim vendor Aliou Niasse, who alerted police to Shahzad’s bomb-laden SUV in Times Square; and the Muslim first responders who sought to rescue New Yorkers at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. These men and women were no more “typical” of Muslims than were Ramzi Yousef or Omar Abdel-Rahman, but their stories suggest another legacy in New York, one just as validly part of the city’s history. That is the legacy of Paddy M’Caffrey and other Irish New Yorkers who sheltered black children during the Draft Riot; it is the legacy of an unnamed Jew who helped William Powell’s family escape a racist mob; it is the legacy of businessman Robert Bernhard, who tried to shield a student demonstrator from the blows of another mob on Wall Street in 1970. New York’s wars have pitted New Yorkers against each other, testing and straining the limits of their tolerance and common humanity. It is a test whose challenges will recur.4

  In the early morning hours of September 16, 2001, four New Yorkers—two white and two Latino—entered the café of Labib Salama, an Egyptian emigrant, on Steinway Street in Astoria, Queens. They began to overturn tables, smashing dishes and a mirrored wall—retribution for the attack on America perpetrated five days earlier. Salama had no link to either the 9/11 attack or to jihadism; his crime was to be an Arab New Yorker with an identifiably Arab business. Police quickly arrested the four, but Salama refused to press charges. “There’s enough hatred already. We don’t want to make more. Let them go,” he told the patrolmen. An hour later, the four assailants returned, thanked Salama, and helped the café owner and his friends clean up the debris they had left behind. Salama, his Egyptian friends, and the four sat drinking coffee and chatting until well after sunrise, sharing their thoughts and emotions about the terrorist violation of their city. As the four men departed, Salama told them, “Next time you want to come and be friendly with us, you don’t have to hit us and then say you’re sorry. Just come and be friendly in the first place.”5

  In those few hours, Labib Salama and his four new friends experienced the worst and best of New York’s long legacy of war.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the friends and colleagues who, in various ways, helped me to write this book. Marc Aronson provided encouragement and lively conversation throughout the planning and writing stages; our lunches often helped me to bring my evidence and arguments into sharper focus. Jan S. Ramirez, Amy Weinstein, and Katherine Edgerton of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum adroitly and graciously answered my research questions. So did Daniella Romano of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation; Ken Yellis, content developer for the project The Brooklyn Navy Yard: Past, Present, and Future; and Robin Parkinson of Exhibition Art & Technology. The libraries and librarians of Summit, Millburn, Westfield, and Chatham, New Jersey, and of Princeton University and the New-York Historical Society provided congenial environments in which to read, think, and write.

  Presentations by Mike Wallace at the Gotham Center for New York City History and at Columbia University helped to illuminate the city before and during World War II. Mark Levine shared with me his public school dog tag from his 1950s Brooklyn childhood—a type of artifact I was half-ready to consign to the realm of urban myth until he showed me one. Joshua Brown and Wendy Fisher helped me to understand New York’s anti–Vietnam War movement, in which both were active participants.

  I benefited from an insightful reading of the book proposal by Robert W. Snyder and from a similarly thoughtful scrutiny of a portion of the manuscript by Benjamin J. Kaplan. The book profited when Luke Dempsey employed his eagle eye to help me cut a bulky manuscript down to a more manageable length. Special thanks go to Robert Frankel, who served above and beyond the call of duty, reading every draft chapter of the manuscript and offering suggestions that saved me from numerous infelicities and errors.

  My agent, Sam Stoloff of the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, supported what I was trying to do with enthusiasm and good humor. Lara Heimert, my editor at Basic Books, has strengthened the book with her keen understanding of the big picture and skill at separating the wheat from the chaff. I am indebted to both of them, and to associate editor Alexander Littlefield, senior project editor Sandra Beris, art director Nicole Caputo, Mike Morgenfeld and his mapmaking team, and editorial assistant Katy O’Donnell. Copyeditor Beth Wright added important finishing touches to the manuscript.

  The enthusiasm of family members and friends helped to sustain me through the long process of researching and writing New York at War. In particular I would like to thank Deborah Jaffe and David Drake, Amy Worth and Joe Mayer, Roses Katz, Al Katz, Janice Katz, David Hines, Norman Worth and Charlotte Leigh, Kenneth Hechter, and Shirley Berger and Charles Cartwright for their support. Norman Worth generously shared with me his memories of being an air raid messenger in Borough Park, Brooklyn, during World War II, and his experiences as a soldier in the Korean War. His daughter Wendy, my first wife, would have been proud of his contribution to this book.

  Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank Jill, Toby, and Matt, who have ridden the author’s roller coaster with me since the project’s inception. Their collective love, support, sense of humor, and patience truly made the writing of this book possible. I hope they like the finished product.

  Notes

  Introduction

  1 Edward Robb Ellis, The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History (New York: Coward-McCann, 1966), 596; Allan Nevins, editor, The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828–1851 (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1927), 2:730.

  Chapter 1

  1 Samuel Purchas, Henry Hudson’s Voyages from Purchas His Pilgrimes (Chester, VT: Readex Microprint, 1966), 592. As with several of the quotations included in this book, for the sake of the modern-day reader I have modernized the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation of the original text here, which is excerpted from Robert Juet’s logbook published in London by Samuel Purchas in 1625.

  2 Ibid., 592. The name “Lenape” can be used interchangeably with “Munsee” and “Delaware.” All refer to the native people of the New York City area and their kin in the mid-Atlantic region. For recent reassessments of their history, see Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009); Amy C. Schutt, People of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); and Eric W. Sanderson, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2009).

  3 Purchas, Henry Hudson’s Voyages, 592.

  4 Ibid.

  5 Ibid., 586, 592.

  6 Ibid., 592.

  7 Ibid., 592–595.

  8 Henri and Barbara van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land: The Story of Dutch New York (New York: Viking Press, 1978), 14; Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 21.

  9 Robert G. Albion, The Rise of New York Port: 1815–1860 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939), 19–20, 23–25, 28–35.

  10 Charles McKew Parr, The Voyages of David de Vries, Navigator and Adventurer (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1969), 46. For the Dutch-Spanish war and Dutch trade generally, see Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

  11 Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 240.

  12 Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 101.

  13 Willem Frijhoff, “New Views of the Dutch Period of New York,” de Halve Maen: Magazine of the Dutch Colonial Period in America 71, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 26; Ron van Oers,
Dutch Town Planning Overseas During VOC and WIC Rule (1600–1800) (Zutphen, Netherlands: Walburg Pers, 2000), 9–16.

  14 “Special Instructions for the Engineer and Surveyor,” in Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island (New York: R. H. Dodd, 1915–1928), 6:10–11; “Special Instructions for Cryn Fredericksz,” in Documents Relating to New Netherland, 1624–1626, in the Henry E. Huntington Library, trans. and ed. A. J. F. van Laer (San Marino, CA: The Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, 1924), 132, 135–136, 139–140; Frans Westra, “Lost and Found: Crijn Fredericx—A New York Founder,” de Haeve Maen 71, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 7–12.

  15 “From the ‘Historisch Verhael,’ by Nicholas van Wassenaer, 1624–1630,” in Narratives of New Netherland 1609–1664, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 88–89.

  16 Ibid., 89.

  17 “Novum Belgium, by Father Isaac Jogues, 1646,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives , 259; Edward Robb Ellis, The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History (New York: Coward-McCann, 1966), 31; Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 187, 207.

  18 Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, vol. 3, New England and the Middle Colonies, Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 409 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1932), 405, 410, 426; Edgar J. McManus, A History of Negro Slavery in New York (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1966), 3–4, 7–8, 11.

  19 A. J. F. van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vol. 4, Council Minutes, 1638–1649 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1974), 269, quoted in Shorto, Island, 84–85; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 34.

  20 Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diana diZerega Wall, Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 144.

  21 Michael Kammen, Colonial New York: A History (New York: Scribner, 1975), 46; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 10; “The Representation of New Netherland, 1650,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 300; Donna Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 19; Paul Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 64.

  22 “Letter of Reverend Jonas Michaelius, 1628,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 126–127; Anonymous, “Journal of New Netherland, 1647,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 274.

  23 Jacobs, New Netherland, 36, 116; “‘Historisch Verhael,’” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 84–85; Evan Haefeli, “Kieft’s War and the Cultures of Violence in Colonial America,” in Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History , ed. Michael A. Bellesiles (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 33.

  24 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 106–108, 109–110.

  25 Stokes, Iconography, 4:148–149.

  26 Jacobs, New Netherland, 133.

  27 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 110.

  28 Merwick, The Shame, 95–101, 109, 114, 172.

  29 Jacobs, New Netherland, 51–54, 57, 388, 438–439; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 34.

  30 “From the ‘Korte Historiael Ende Journals Aenteyckeninge,’ by David Pietersz. De Vries, 1633–1643 (1655),” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 208–209; van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 110–112.

  31 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 112–113; Merwick, The Shame, 123–124; Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1960), 66–67.

  32 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 112–113.

  33 Parr, Voyages, 60–63.

  34 “From the ‘Korte Historiael’ . . . by de Vries,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 191.

  35 Ibid., 234; van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 116; Parr, Voyages, 212.

  36 “From the ‘Korte Historiael’ . . . by de Vries,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 225–226; van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 117–118.

  37 “From the ‘Korte Historiael’ . . . by de Vries,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 227–228; van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 118–119.

  38 “From the ‘Korte Historiael’ . . . by de Vries,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 228.

  39 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 109.

  40 “From the ‘Korte Historiael’ . . . by de Vries,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 229.

  41 Ibid., 229–232.

  42 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 137; Merwick, The Shame, 135–136, 157–158.

  43 Jacobs, New Netherland, 139; Merwick, The Shame, 175.

  44 “From the ‘Korte Historiael’ . . . by de Vries,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 234.

  45 Merwick, The Shame, 220–222; Ellis, Epic, 67–69.

  46 Ellis, Epic, 67–69; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 68–70.

  47 This, however, is not to suggest that the Lenape ceased to be a military presence, albeit a diminished one. As late as the 1760s, British colonial authorities had to take into account the belligerence of Lenape groups in Pennsylvania, in New Jersey, and on the New York frontier. See Grumet, Munsee Indians, 75–79, 140–141, 190–191, 197–198, 224, 226, 227, 239–240, 261–267.

  Chapter 2

  1 Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island (New York: R. H. Dodd, 1915–1928), 4:128, 137–138; “From the ‘Korte Historiael Ende Journals Aenteyckeninge,’ by David Pietersz. De Vries, 1633–1643 (1655),” in Narratives of New Netherland 1609–1664, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 196. The English statesman was Sir William Batten, surveyor of the navy, whose anti-Dutch comment was recorded by Samuel Pepys in his famous diary; see Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 234.

  2 Stokes, Iconography, 4:133.

  3 Ibid., 4:138–139; Henri and Barbara van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land: The Story of Dutch New York (New York: Viking Press, 1978), 232.

  4 Stokes, Iconography, 4:146.

  5 Ibid., 4:149.

  6 Ibid., 4:133–135; “Report on the Surrender of New Netherland, by Peter Stuyvesant, 1665,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 460.

  7 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 150–157; Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 41–42.

  8 Edward Robb Ellis, The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History (New York: Coward-McCann, 1966), 41; van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 159; Stokes, Iconography, 4:118–119; “The Representation of New Netherland, 1650,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 331, 342–343, 347, 352.

  9 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 28.

  10 Ibid., 139, 213, 219–222.

  11 Stokes, Iconography, 4:212; ibid., 314.

  12 Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 40; van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 89–93.

  13 Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 305–312; Stokes, Iconography, 4:142; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 59–61.

  14 Michael Kammen, Colonial New York: A History (New York: Scribner, 1975), 60–63.

  15 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 239–242, 249; Stokes, Iconography, 4:147.

  16 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 383, 445.

  17 Ibid., 242–243.

  18 Ibid., 383–384.

  19 Ibid., 381–383; Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 285–288.

  20 Introduction, “Letter of the Town Council of New Amsterdam, 1664,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 449–450; van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 447–450.

  21 “Letters of the Dutch Ministers to the Classis of Amsterdam, 1655–1664,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 414; Kammen, Colonial New York, 72.

  22 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 450–458.

/>   23 Stokes, Iconography, Volume 4, 201.

  24 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 274–275, 431.

  25 Ibid., 455, 457; “Report by Stuyvesant, 1665,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 460; Stokes, Iconography, 4:239.

  26 Stokes, Iconography, 4:240; van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 459.

  27 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 459–460; Stokes, Iconography, 4:240; Kammen, Colonial New York, 71–72; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 73.

  28 Stokes, Iconography, 4:243–244; Kammen, Colonial New York, 71–73; van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 460–461; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 73.

  29 Stokes, Iconography, 4:244; “Report by Stuyvesant, 1665,” in Jameson, ed., Narratives, 465.

  30 Van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 461–462.

  31 Stokes, Iconography, 4:244; Kammen, Colonial New York, 71–72; van der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land, 463, 473–474.

  32 Jacobs, New Netherland, 185–186; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 82; Donald G. Shomette and Robert D. Haslach, Raid on America: The Dutch Naval Campaign of 1672–1674 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), 165–169, 172–175.

  33 Shomette and Haslach, Raid, 311–313.

  Chapter 3

  1 Robert C. Ritchie, Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 87–88, 96–98.

  2 Ibid., 50–55, 64–65.

  3 Ibid., 113–116, 282; Jacob Judd, “Frederick Philipse and the Madagascar Trade,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly 55, no. 4 (October 1971): 354–374; James G. Lydon, Pirates, Privateers, and Profits (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Gregg Press, 1970), 49.

  4 Lydon, Pirates, Privateers, 39–47; Ritchie, Captain Kidd, 132–135.

  5 Ritchie, Captain Kidd, 39, 78, 251 n28.

  6 Ibid., 210–211, 222–227.

  7 Cathy Matson, Merchants and Empire: Trading in Colonial New York (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 63.