“Finally, if the leaders of the party who claimed to be ‘all the decency,’ and were the first to cry out mob, had behaved themselves honorably and honestly there would have been no ‘Buckshot War,’ and perhaps they would not have so soon been compelled to witness the 'Last Kick of Anti-Masonry.'”
The piper was now to pay and it took many years to heal the political sores. The Anti-Masonic crusade had come to an end, and from that date Masonry and Odd Fellowship, those “twin sisters of iniquity,” as Thaddeus Stevens designated them, thrived more than ever. The term “Buckshot War,” was a thorn in the side of its leaders.
De Vries Finds Entire Dutch Colony Destroyed,
December 6, 1632
The Dutch were the first Europeans to pursue explorations in the New World, and as early as 1609, sent Henry Hudson on an expedition to America, where he arrived at the head of Delaware Bay, August 28 of that year. Hudson later sailed up the New Jersey Coast and anchored off Sandy Hook, September 3; nine days later entered New York Bay through the Narrows, and entered the great river that since has borne his name.
The Dutch East India Company received glowing reports from its navigator and immediately set in motion other expeditions to the New Netherlands.
Before 1614 a fleet of five vessels, under command of Captain Cornelius Jacobson Mey, arrived in Delaware Bay, and two years later Cornelius Hendrickson sailed up the Delaware and discovered the mouth of the Schuylkill, the present site of Philadelphia.
In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was chartered and in 1623 Captain Mey built Fort Nassau about five miles above Wilmington, Del., on the eastern shore. Another settlement of a few families was made farther north upon the same side of the river, but in 1631 no white man had made a settlement on the west bank of the Delaware River.
In that year there came to the southern cape, now Henlopen, a party of colonists from Holland, under David Pieterson De Vries, of Hoorn, “a bold and skillful seaman,” and the finest personage in the settlement of America.