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and the other the first governor of New York to represent the popular party, Jacob Leisler.

Little is known of Peter Minuit (Minnewit) before he appeared in America as director of the colony of New Netherland. All sources agree that he was born in Wesel on the Rhine, and was a Protestant. He arrived in New Amsterdam in May, 1626, with almost absolute power over the colony. Where his predecessors had been unsuccessful he built the foundation for the greatest metropolis on the American continent. It was he who bought from the Indians the Island of Manhattan (22,000 acres) for sixty Dutch guilders, or about twenty-four dollars in gold. Having obtained a secure title to the land, he next erected the first stone fort, at the Battery, and called it Fort Amsterdam. This kept the Indians in check and increased the number of settlers about the fort. The colonists soon became as busy and enterprising as their transatlantic kinsmen in the Low Countries. The Dutch West India Company supplied cattle and horses and land for the asking, while the crops raised were sufficient for the support of the colonists. Their most profitable occupation was the fur trade with the Indians. The Dutch at New Amsterdam became the rivals and superiors of the Pilgrim Fathers as fur traders. Their exportation of furs, that in 1624 had reached the sum of 25,000 guilders, in 1628, when the colony numbered 270 souls, rose to 56,000, and in 1631 to 130,000 guilders. The population steadily increased in the intervening years. Several ships arrived annually with settlers who were brought over by the company at twelve and one half cents per day for passage and board and on their arrival received as much land as they could cultivate. As early as 1631 the shipbuilders of New Amsterdam, under Minuit's administration, built the New

Netherland, estimated differently at six to eight hundred tons burden, and armed with thirty guns, one of the largest ships afloat' at that time, and an object of envy for the mother country.2

Minuit cultivated amicable relations with the New England colonies, but insisted upon his territorial rights. In 1629 the Dutch West India Company established the patroon system, which was destined to have an unfavorable effect on the development of the colony. Patroons were originally members of the West India Company, who assumed semi-feudal rights over large tracts, nominally bestowed on them on condition that they would plant a colony of fifty persons on the land within four years. They became manor lords carrying on colonization as a private affair. This unfortunate system aroused a great deal of opposition, and Minuit was made the scapegoat, though he had never favored the patroons beyond obeying the commands of the company. Minuit was recalled in August, 1631, and departed in 1632, leaving the colony in a most prosperous condition. After having tried in vain to get justice in Holland, he determined to offer his services to the king of Sweden.

Gustavus Adolphus is known as a mighty war lord and defender of the Protestant faith, but little is commonly heard of his far-reaching plans of colonial development. William Usselinx, a native of Antwerp, was the first to suggest to Gustavus Adolphus the enormous possibilities of colonial expansion. Not favored at home, the genius of Usselinx was given a sphere of activity under the ambitious ruler of Sweden. The Swedish South Company was

1 Cf. Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies, vol. i, p. 124.

"The Royal George, 1200 tons, was built for the East India Company at Blackwall (London) about 1640.

founded in 1626–27 for trade and colonization west of the Straits of Gibraltar, and extensive privileges were to be given the company for twelve years. The king himself signed for 400,000 Swedish talers. The German cities of Stralsund and Stettin desired to become members, so also the Duke of Pomerania, and much was hoped for from the rich city of Danzig. Livland, with its German population, wished to subscribe 150,000 talers, and Emden, eager to expand its commerce, was anxious to obtain a seat and voice among the directors of the company. But the death of Gustavus Adolphus wrecked these ambitious plans. The chancellor, Oxenstierna, kept Usselinx in charge until the latter seems to have given up hope. His place as leader of the company was then taken by Minuit, who arrived in Stockholm not earlier than 1636 and quickly gained the confidence of the great statesman. Minuit directed Swedish colonial ambitions toward an attainable goal by turning the attention of the chancellor to the country between Virginia and New Netherland, the land that, some years after, William Penn received as a grant from the English crown. It included the present states of Delaware and Pennsylvania, and parts of New Jersey and Maryland, territory that in the next century became the most fertile soil for the expansion of the Germanic race. Distinct advantages which Minuit possessed were, first, his exceptional experience and keen insight, and secondly, the prestige that Sweden had recently won on the battlefields of Europe.

Toward the end of the year 1637, with a warship and transport bearing fifty immigrants well provisioned, he left for the New World, arriving in Delaware Bay in April, 1638, and successfully kept the English in Virginia and the Dutch at New York from interfering with his schemes

of colonization. By means of a bold front and wise direction he kept his stand securely, knowing minutely the weaknesses of his neighbors on either hand. He built Fort Christina in honor of the Swedish queen, about two miles from the confluence of the Minquaskill and the Delaware, very near the present city of Wilmington. No one understood the fur trade better than Minuit, and even in his first year he drew 30,000 guilders of trade away from New Netherland. Colonists swarmed to the banks of the Delaware, New Sweden claiming the territory on its banks. By 1640 the colony had received many new accessions, some from Holland. It is not unreasonable to suppose that a number of Germans were among the settlers of New Sweden, since the German cities of the Baltic had shown such an active interest in the beginnings of the Swedish West India Company. Minuit died at his post in 1641, and was buried at Fort Christina. No one dared attack the colony during his lifetime. Its independence was retained fourteen years longer,' until in 1655 it became part of New Netherland under the energetic governor, Stuyvesant.

About fifty years later, in the early history of New York, there lived another German leader of men, Jacob Leisler, the second German governor of New York and first representative of the popular party, for whose cause he suffered martyrdom. He was born in Frankfort-on-theMain, and arrived in New York in 1660, as a soldier in the service of the Dutch West India Company. He acquired wealth through trade with the Indians, and by

1 John Printz, Governor of New Sweden from 1642 to 1653, according to trustworthy authority was a German nobleman (Johann Printz von Buchau) and had been a commander under Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years' War. Seidensticker, Bilder aus der deutsch-pennsylvanischen Geschichte, p. 3 (Geschichtsblätter, vol. ii). New York: Steiger, 1886.

marriage became connected with the Dutch aristocracy of New York. Instead of becoming a manor lord and proprietor, then the great goal of provincial ambition, Leisler devoted himself to trade and business, to the full extent of his extraordinary energy. He soon became one of the wealthiest citizens of New York, his estate being valued at 15,000 guilders, and only six citizens being richer than himself. One of the three barks owned in New York in 1684 belonged to him, and in the year before he had been appointed a member of the Admiralty Court by Governor Dongan. He was capable of humanitarian ventures, as when, in 1689, he bought a piece of land, the present site of New Rochelle in Westchester County, for the Huguenots who had landed in New York. An evidence of wealth also was the ransom of five hundred pounds, paid when he was captured by the pirates of Tunis in 1678.1

But Leisler was as public-spirited as he was wealthy. He gave little attention to party strife and to the intrigues by which leading families gained influence with the governor, but whenever an occasion of moment arrived, Jacob Leisler was the man that impressed the people with his exceptional integrity, liberality, and firmness. When, in 1675, Governor Andros fined a number of burghers because of their opposition to "Popery," Leisler refused to pay, preferring imprisonment to the renunciation of his principles. At another time, when a poor Huguenot family landed in New York and were to be sold as redemptioners, he instantly paid down the sum demanded for their transportation, thus delivering the refugees from years of servitude.

Conditions in New York favored the development of 1 Cf. Kapp, p. 39.

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