Stuyvesant Bound by Donna Merwick

Author:Donna Merwick [Merwick, Donna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Colonial Period (1600-1775), Biography & Autobiography, Historical
ISBN: 9780812208023
Google: E2gUBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2013-03-25T01:41:14+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Dismissal and Return

We might think of Stuyvesant’s words as performers meant to act for him in certain theatrical ways. In the “Answer” of late 1666, we can see him giving supplementary lines to some actors who had taken the stage for him in the “Report,” and adding other characters to them.

Now, for example, he was asking the committeemen to put themselves in his place as he read the reassuring letter of the directors dated April 21, 1664, just four months before the English attack. It told him of the English king’s impending appointment of bishops to New England and therefore English Long Islanders and resident New Englanders preferring to “live free under us.” It told of the real possibility of fruitful negotiations of boundaries. Just imagine, he put to the committee, the “hope servants residing so far off can draw from such and similar experiences.” We had only local knowledge. But the Company had the advantage of direct news from Old England. It is “so near to them,” he wrote, while we “so far from them . . . [had news] from a third and fourth hand.”1

As to his new sources of supporting evidence, more people, he wrote, are now in Holland who were in New Amsterdam when the frigates arrived. They are prepared to make sworn depositions as to his proper conduct. Their testimonials can be set alongside earlier arguments, now supported by stronger documentation. He has copied folios from a book containing his annual petitions for powder. He can produce proof from pages carrying roughly 12,000 words. He is able to table pages from the General Powder Account for the final four years. He can now present pages from three volumes from a Book of Monthly Payments (10, 11, 13) and from Equipage Books, Nos. 9, 10, and 12, forwarded to him by van Ruyven. He was now in a position to hand over excerpts from the Gunner’s Delivery Books of 1661 to 1664, and the Book of Equipment and Munitions of War, 1663, No. 11, folio 24.2

He had four further testimonials confirming the unserviceable condition of the fort’s powder. One was deposed about six months earlier, on April 8 here at The Hague. Another was notarized eleven days later in Amsterdam. He could table a testimonial of the late principal of the New Amsterdam Latin School as a third statement confirming the uselessness of the powder. These statements were confirmed by two English officers who accompanied the frigates and found the powder to be old and decayed. Jacques Cousseau, an elected official of New Amsterdam and a reputable wholesale merchant trading between Holland and the Manhattans, had now testified that in 1664 he heard merchants pronounce it unfit for use. In his opinion, the powder was not considered “worth half price.” Eight additional declarations reached the committee, as did the signed memorandum of three leading New Amsterdammers, including van Ruyven.3

With this substantial evidence, Stuyvesant focused the committee on two arguments. He addressed the Company’s contention that his responsibility was to defend the fort and allow the city to be reduced.

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