In 1688 New York was annexed to New England under the rule of Andros, who was represented in New York by a deputy, Francis Nicholson. Later in the year news came of the Revolution in England. Jacob Leisler, an energetic but uneducated German shopkeeper, who had come out as a soldier in the West India Company's employ, headed the militia in driving Nicholson out and proclaiming the Prince of Orange. Leisler assumed the government; but his rule was rash and arbitrary, although there is no doubt of his patriotic spirit, and soon there arose a demand from the conservative element for his withdrawal. By various subterfuges, however, he retained office for three years. His term was distinguished by his issuance of a call for the first Colonial Congress held in America; it met at Albany, February, 1690, with seven delegates, chiefly from New England, and sought to organize a retaliatory raid against the French and their Algonquian allies, who had recently swept Schenectady with fire and tomahawk. The following year (1691) Leisler was forced to surrender to the royal governor, Col. Henry Sloughter, who soon after, while intoxicated, was induced by Leisler's enemies to sign the death-warrant of his predecessor.
Closing years of the century.
A representative assembly was called, which annulled Leisler's proceedings and formulated a code similar to the earlier charter of liberties. Governor. Benjamin Fletcher (1692-1698) was notoriously corrupt. He levied blackmail on the pirates and smugglers who swarmed in the harbors, and intrigued for money with members of the assembly; but in his dealings with the hostile French and Indians he was firm and successful. In 1698 the Earl of Bellomont was appointed governor, and New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire were jointly placed under his rule. In New York he restored order, reduced crime, and rooted out corruption and piracy, so that when he died (1701), his loss was sincerely regretted.
Characteristics of New York.
New York had gone through a development which down to the end of the eighteenth century marked the colony out from her sisters. No other colony had a history of any importance before the English domination; in no other colony were a foreign race and a foreign language and customs so intrenched. No colony had such an experience of control from England. The history of New York up to 1700 is chiefly a history of administrations. The commercial pre-eminence of New York was hardly shown in colonial times. Its chief importance among the colonies arose out of the relations with the Iroquois.
87. Delaware (1623-1700).
Early Dutch settlers.
We have seen that the Dutch West India Company established (1623) a trading post, called Fort Nassau, on the banks of the Delaware River within the present town of Gloucester, N.J., and four miles below the future site of Philadelphia. The settlers were a portion of the party of Walloons sent out to America in that year. Eight years later (1631), De Vries, Blommaert, and other patroons (page [199]) of New Netherlands founded Swaanendael, near the site of Lewes, Del.; but a quarrel soon arose between the new settlers and the Indians, resulting in the complete massacre of the Swaanendael colonists and the driving away of the garrison at Fort Nassau. In 1635 the patroons owning lands on both shores of Delaware Bay and River sold their possessions to the Dutch West India Company, and a small garrison was sent by the latter to re-occupy Fort Nassau. A party of Englishmen from New Haven attempted that year to settle in the district, but were taken to New Amsterdam as prisoners.
The South Company of Sweden.
A third nation now appeared upon the scene as a competitor for the Delaware country. The South Company of Sweden—which purposed trading in Asia, Africa, and America, but especially in the last—had been chartered in 1624, under the auspices of the enterprising and ambitious Gustavus Adolphus, by Willem Usselinx, an Amsterdam merchant, founder of the Dutch West India Company. Usselinx had become embittered against the Dutch company, which pursued a narrow and exclusive policy; and with him in this new enterprise were associated several who had been formerly connected with the Dutch corporation. Among these were Samuel Blommaert, one of the chief patroons in the Delaware region, and Peter Minuit, a Walloon, once governor at New Amsterdam. Minuit led the first Swedish trading colony to the Delaware River (1638), and erected Fort Christina on the future site of Wilmington, Del.