DUTCH HEROES OF THE NEW WORLD
[Speech of William S. Stryker at the fifth annual dinner of the Holland Society of New York, January 10, 1890. The vice-President, Robert B. Roosevelt, presided, and called upon General Stryker to respond to the toast, "The Dutch Soldier in America.">[
Mr. President:—As well-born Dutchmen, full, of course, to-night of the spirit which creates Dutch courage, it is pleasant for us to look across the seas, to recall the martial life of our progenitors and to speak of their great deeds for liberty. It is conducive to our family pride to trace back the source of the blessings we enjoy to-day through all the brilliant pages of Netherland history to the time when the soldiers of freedom—the "Beggars"—chose rather to let in the merciless ocean waves than to surrender to the ruthless invader. [Applause.]
We love to say that we can see in the glory of free institutions in this century the steady outgrowth of that germ of human liberty which was planted by the sturdy labor, which was watered by the tears and blood, and fructified by the precious lives of those who fought by land and sea in the battles of the sixteenth century. [Applause.]
Although we make our boast of the indomitable courage, the many self-denials, the homely virtues of our forefathers, think you that we in America are degenerate sons of noble sires? I trow not! [Renewed applause.]
That irascible old Governor who stamped his wooden leg on the streets of New Amsterdam, who ruled with his iron will and his cane the thrifty burghers of this young city, did he not, when called upon to show a soldier's courage, wage a successful contest with savage foes, with the testy Puritans of Connecticut and with the obdurate Swedes on Christiana Creek?
Before the old Dutch church in Millstone on the Raritan River, in the summer of 1775, a hundred of the young men of the village were drilled every night. They had on their long smock-frocks, broad-brimmed black hats, and leggings. Their own firelocks were on their shoulders, twenty-three cartridges in their cartouches, the worm, the priming-wire, and twelve flints in their pockets. These were the bold minute-men of New Jersey, and Frederick Frelinghuysen was their gallant Dutch captain, who stood ready to march, in case an alarm bonfire burned on Sourland Mountain, to fight any enemy. [Applause.]
When fighting under Bradstreet on the Oswego River in the old French war, when laboring against great odds at Fort Edward, when retarding the British advance after the evacuation of Ticonderoga, when urging on a force to the relief of Fort Stanwix, when planning the campaign which ended in the capture of Burgoyne, and placing laurels, now faded, on the head of Gates, the character of our own Knickerbocker General, Philip Schuyler, the pure patriot, the noble soldier, is lustrous with evidences of his sagacious counsels, his wonderful energy, and his military skill. [Renewed applause.]
The good blood of the patroons never flowed purer or brighter than when, as soldiers, they battled for a nation's rights. In the fight at Saratoga, Colonel Henry Kiliaen Van Rensselaer greatly distinguished himself and carried from the field an ounce of British lead, which remained in his body thirty-five years. Captain Solomon Van Rensselaer fought most courageously by the side of Mad Anthony Wayne in the Miami campaign. Being seriously wounded in a brilliant charge, he refused to be carried off the field on a litter, but insisted that, as a dragoon, he should be allowed to ride his horse from the battle and, if he dropped, to die where he fell. [Applause.]
Worn and bleeding were the feet, scant the clothing of our ragged Continentals, as, turning upon their foe, they recrossed the icy Delaware on Christmas night, surprised Rall and his revellers in Trenton's village, punished the left of Cornwallis's column at Princeton, and then, on their way to the mountains of Morris County, fell by the wayside with hunger and wretchedness, perishing with the intense cold. But, in the darkness of the night, a partisan trooper, with twenty horsemen, surrounded the baggage-wagons of the British force, fired into the two hundred soldiers guarding them, and, shouting like a host of demons, captured the train, and the doughty captain with my own ancestral name woke up the weary soldiers of Washington's army with the rumbling of wagons heavily laden with woollen clothing and supplies, bravely stolen from the enemy. [Applause.]
The poisoned arrows whistled in the Newtown fight as the New York contingent pressed forward toward Seneca Castle, the great capitol-house of the Six Nations. The redskins and their Tory allies, under Brant, tried hard to resist the progress of that awful human wedge that was driven with relentless fury among the wigwams of those who had burned the homes in beautiful Wyoming, who had despoiled with the bloody tomahawk the settlement at German Flats, and had closed the horrid campaign with the cruel massacre at Cherry Valley. Bold and daring in this revengeful expedition was Colonel Philip Van Cortlandt, a name honored in all Dutch civil and military history. [Continued applause.]
As a leader of three thousand cavalrymen the youthful General Bayard [great cheers], proud of his Dutch descent, fell on the heights of bloody Fredericksburg. Like the good knight, he was "without fear and without reproach." Full of zeal for the cause, the bravest of the brave, his sword flashed always where dangers were the thickest. When a bursting shell left him dead on the field of honor, his brave men mourned him and the foe missed him. [Cheers.]
In the leaden tempest which rained around Drury's Bluff, a boyish officer led a column of riflemen, gallant and daring. His uniform was soiled with the grim dirt of many a battle, but his bright blue eye took in every feature of the conflict. The day was just closing when an angry bullet pierced his throat as he was cheering on his men, and the young life of my college friend, Abram Zabriskie, of Jersey City, as chivalric a Dutch colonel as ever drew a blade in battle, was breathed out in the mighty throes of civil war. [Applause.]
As we picture to ourselves the appearance of that grand figure of William of Orange, as he led his heroic people through and out of scenes of darkness and hunger and death into the sweet light of freedom; as we turn the pages of history that recount the deeds of glory of Vander Werf, the burgomaster of Leyden; of Count Egmont and Count Horn, of de Ruyter and Van Tromp, let us not forget that the same sturdy stock has developed in the New World the same zeal for human rights, the same high resolves of duty, the same devotion to liberty. If ever again this nation needs brave defenders, your sons and mine will, I trust, be able to show to the world that the patriotism of Dutchmen, that true Dutch valor, still fills the breasts of the soldiers of America! [Prolonged cheering.]