Council. . . . that a foreigner or an Englishman is required to dictate what ye have to say?" The Director was not wanting in skill to play upon the prejudices of his countrymen. But it was useless; the burghers were too much in earnest to be moved by any such appeal. To the memorial, which complained of the government as both arbitrary and incompetent, Stuyvesant could make no satisfactory answer, and the end of the discussion that followed between him and the convention was a denial, on his part, of the right of the people to selfgovernment, or even to hold a public meeting; on the part peal to Hol- of the convention a sturdy and persistent assertion of their land. rights, and the dispatch of an agent to Holland with an appeal to the West India Company for protection and redress.

Renewed ap

The colonies of Southern New England, meanwhile, were living in a state of perpetual agitation and dread of the Indians, persisting in the assertion that the Dutch were at the bottom of these troubles, and that the safety of the English lay in the conquest of New Netherland. There was, at least, this much ground for their fears, that Ninigret and his band were all the while on the war-path against the Indians of Long Island, who were in alliance with the English. The savage thirst for blood might easily enough take a new direction, and the frontiersmen, whether living in their isolated clearings in the forest, or gathered into small and feeble hamlets, could feel no certainty that the appalling war-whoop of the Indian might not at any moment come as the swift warning of sudden death to all their households. The terrible suspense in which these people lived is enough to explain the intense feeling toward the Dutch. As reports of Indian outrages on Long Island spread through the Connecticut towns, it was almost inevitable that they should be supposed Connecticut. to be instigated by the Dutch, and that the Connecticut colonies were safe from such calamities only so long as Ninigret was prevented from re-crossing the Sound. That safety, it was obvious, would be permanent and absolute, if the Dutch themselves could be brought into subjection to English rule.

English feeling in

So intense was this feeling in the border towns of Stamford and Fairfield, that their people accused their own government of want of courage and energy, and were almost at the point of open rebellion. The general court at New Haven, although it had resolved that "the Massachusetts had broken their covenant with them in acting directly contrary to the articles of confederation," in the refusal to declare war knew better, perhaps, than the affrighted people of the border towns, how little real reason there was to apprehend any alliance between the Dutch and the Indians. It is quite possible that the dread of a savage massacre was used to inflame animosity against

1653.]

THE GATHERING AT FAIRFIELD.

147

the Dutch, and as a pretext for the invasion of New Netherland; and the real grievance on the part of the other colonies against Massachusetts was that she would not be led into a war of annexation under a false pretence.

Hostile pre

Fairfield.

But Stamford and Fairfield were in deadly and earnest fear of the Indians, to whose hostility they were more exposed than any of the other towns along the Sound, and they firmly believed parations at the Dutch were as dangerous as the savages. Fairfield especially had been alarmed by the appearance of two Dutch vessels sent out by Stuyvesant in pursuit of Baxter during his cruise in the Sound, though they were deterred from venturing within the harbor by a proclamation of the New England Commissioners, prohibiting any Dutch vessels from entering the ports of the English colonies. In the autumn that town determined that there must be war, and that the way to bring it about was to begin. One of the principal magistrates

of the colony, Mr. Ludlow, was appointed commander in chief, and volunteers were called for. The step was a bold one, and might have been successful but for the lateness of the season; for the governments of Connecticut and New Haven were compelled by this insubordination in the border towns to consider seriously whether they would not declare war against the Dutch even without Massachusetts.

But the coming winter settled the question for the present, and in the meantime they awaited an answer to an appeal that had been

An appeal

made to the Protector and to Parliament for aid. A special agent was sent to England on this errand, but Governor Hopkins to England. of Connecticut was then in London, and great reliance was properly placed upon his diligence and ability as the representative of New England interests.1

Had the New Netherland been a Puritan colony, the Puritans would have rejoiced to see how, in the events of the year, she was the evident object of the protection of a special Providence. In the beginning of these troubles, had not Massachusetts so firmly refused to unite with the other members of the confederacy in a declaration of war, the province would probably have been thus early annexed to New England, for the Dutch were altogether too weak to have successfully resisted an attack from the combined power of the English colonies. Had Fairfield and Stamford moved a little earlier, New Haven and Connecticut would have been unable to resist the popular hostility to the Dutch and the popular determination to acquire their territory, aggravated and intensified now by an Indian panic. That New England was dilatory was the salvation of New Netherland thus far, when delay again averted a danger more threatening than any that had yet menaced her.

New England prepares for war.

The prayers of New Haven and Connecticut were listened to by Cromwell, and he wrote to the governors of the colonies urging them to zeal and activity, and promising the help of four well-manned ships. All the colonies, except Massachusetts, responded. Connecticut was to raise two hundred men, to be increased, if necessary, to five hundred; New Haven promised a hundred and thirty-three; Plymouth promised fifty, to be under the command of the old soldier, Miles Standish, and that Captain Willetts, who was one of Stuyvesant's commissioners on the boundary question four years before. But Massachusetts declined to furnish her quota, though she permitted a force of volunteers to be recruited in Boston. The ships sent by Cromwell were to be under the command of one Major Sedgwick and a Captain Leverett, and in good season they sailed from England. Three of the four, however, consumed four months in a voyage by way of the Western Islands, and news of the peace between England and Holland, concluded in May, 1654, received soon after their arrival in New England, put an end to the proposed expedition. Its only result was the seizure of Fort Good Hope-in spite of Underhill's former capture, which was the final dispossession of the Dutch of any territory on the Connecticut River.

Great were the rejoicings at the reception of this news at New Amsterdam, where the formidable preparations in New England for

1 Trumbull's History of Connecticut.

1654.]

FAILURE OF THE CONVENTION'S APPEAL.

149

an invasion of the Dutch colony had aroused such alarm as to bring about some temporary harmony between Stuyvesant and his The conflict opponents, and had united them in some preparations for averted. defence. The Director appointed a day of public thanksgiving. "Praise the Lord," he said in his proclamation, " praise the Lord, O England's Jerusalem; and Netherland's Sion, praise ye the Lord! He hath secured your gates, and blessed your possessions with peace, even here, where the threatened torch of war was lighted; where the waves reached our lips, and subsided only through the power of the Almighty!" 1

There came at the same time other tidings hardly less gratifying to the Director. The agent, Le Bleeuw, who was the bearer of the remonstrance to the West India Company, had been received with great coldness and severity, and he was forbidden to return to New Netherland. The directors wrote to Stuyvesant that the complaints of the citizens were unreasonable, and that they had nothing to object to in his administration of affairs, except, indeed, that he was too lenient in his dealings with these seditious persons; that he "ought to have acted with more vigor against the ringleaders of the gang, and not 1 Albany and New Amsterdam Records, cited by O'Callaghan.

The appeal

of the convention disapproved.

have condescended to answer protests with protests." They commanded him now to punish them as they deserved, and especially those delegates from Gravesend, the Englishmen Baxter and Hubbard. The only concession made by the chamber at Amsterdam to the popular party was that the offices of city schout and provincial fiscal should not be held by the same person, and a commission for the former office was sent to Kuyter, who, more fortunate than his old companion, Melyn, had long before been forgiven for his past offences. He had, however, been recently murdered by the Indians somewhere on Long Island, and Stuyvesant permitted his friend, Van Tienhoven, to still remain both schout and fiscal without regard to the orders of the directors of the Company. The other injunction for the punishment of ringleaders he observed more faithfully, for he visited Gravesend and ejected Baxter and Hubbard from the magistracy. Baxter fled to New England, but returned again within two months, and not long after he and Hubbard were arrested in the act of raising the English flag and reading a proclamation declaring Gravesend to be subject to the laws of the Republic of England. Van Tienhoven, who had gone from New Amsterdam to quell the disturbance, arrested both and threw them into prison, where they remained for months.

During all these busy and turbulent years the Director-general had had little leisure to bestow upon affairs on the South River. It was not till 1651 that he took any decisive steps to exercise his power as governor of New Netherland over the Company's territory on the Delaware. Printz's Hall on Tinicum Island, at that time still knew its lord and master; its timbers still creaked under his massive tread, and its windows rattled at his stentorian voice. But Printz returned soon after to Sweden. There might have been some lively and entertaining passages of history had the two hot-headed and imperious governors known each other earlier; but it was only when peace between England and Holland released Stuyvesant, for a season, from internal dissensions and perils from without, that events on the South River demanded his active interference.

For years the few Dutch settlers of that region were left to an almost hopeless contest with their neighbors. Their fort Fort Nassau-about four miles below the present city of Philadelphia, and a little more above the mouth of the Schuylkill,1 was too far up the river to be of any practical use, even had its garrison been larger than the usual number of about half a dozen men. The only Indians whose trade was of much value were the Minquas, and they were on the Schuylkill. But that river was com1 A Dutch word signifying Hidden-creek or Skulk-creek.

The Swedes on the

Schuylkill.