It was the Quakers who in 1657 pushed the governor-general’s limited tolerance to the limit. While the English colonists of Long Island rejected the English preacher that governor-general Peter Stuyvesant had sent to guide them, they seemed willing to listen to the Quakers.
“The law of love, peace and liberty in the states extending to Jews, Turks and Egyptians, as they are considered the sonnes of Adam, which is the glory of the outward state of Holland, soe love, peace and liberty, extending to all in Christ Jesus, condemns hatred, war and bondage,” 31 of these Vlishing (now Flushing, part of Queens) farmers, some of whom could sign their names only with an X, bravely wrote in a letter to Stuyvesant 350 years ago this past Thursday. “And because our Saviour saith it is impossible but that offenses will come, but woe unto him by whom they cometh, our desire is not to offend one of his little ones, in whatsoever form, name or title he appears in, whether Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist or Quaker, but shall be glad to see anything of God in any of them.”
The same year, seeing the strategic practicality of a fort located halfway between New Amsterdam and Fort Orange, Stuyvesant sent soldiers up from New Amsterdam to crush the Esopus Indians. Then he told the Hudson Valley settlers he’d only protect them if they built a stockade. The next year, 1658, about 40 settler families took their barns and houses down, and carted them uphill to a promontory bluff overlooking the Esopus Creek flood plain. Calling their stockade Wiltwyck, they reconstructed their homes behind a 14-foot-high wall made of tree trunks pounded into the ground that created a perimeter of about 1,200 by 1,300 feet.
A resolute man of action, Stuyvesant was not given to encouraging civic participation. Though not ineffective, he was undermined by his inability to listen to others.
As history has many times proven, nothing quite encourages democratic institutions like a nasty autocrat. In New York history, the crusty Stuyvesant, governor-general of the New Netherlands colony for several years until the end of Dutch rule in 1664, was the best person to deserve ogre billing. Stuyvesant was by all historic accounts an energetic, arbitrary and impulsive figure with a clear predisposition toward personal rule.
“We derive our authority from God and the (Dutch West Indies) Company, not from a few ignorant subjects.” Stuyvesant had haughtily told a convention of two deputies from each village in New Netherlands in 1653 after they had dared demand reforms.
The spirit of resistance to the man-of-action style Stuyvesant personified nevertheless increased throughout the colony. The people of the melting pot that was the Dutch colony wanted to go about their business unhindered by their orthodox government.
The encroachments of other colonies, along with a depleted treasury, harassed the governor. He overplayed a bad hand. As in Flushing, other people at the rough-and-ready colony proved willing to push back when Stuyvesant pushed, often making their cases in very scrappy language to officials back in Holland.
Religion was one area where great disputation unsurprisingly took place. Stuyvesant supported the Dutch Reformed Church. Wrote Russell Shorto in his sprightly recent book The Island at the Center of the World, “Stuyvesant despised Jews, loathed Catholics, recoiled at Quakers, and reserved a special hatred for Lutherans. Which is to say, he was the very model of a well-bred, 17th-century European. Religious bigotry was a mainstay of society.”
This is the full text of what has become known as the Flushing Remonstrance, 350 years old this week:
Right Honorable,
You have been pleased to send up unto us a certain prohibition or command that we should not receive or entertain any of those people called Quakers because they are supposed to be by some, seducers of the people. For our part we cannot condemn them in this case, neither can we stretch out our hands against them, to punish, banish or persecute them for out of Christ God is a consuming fire, and it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. We desire therefore in this case not to judge least we be judged, neither to condemn least we be condemned, but rather let every man stand and fall to his own Master.
Wee are bounde by the Law to Doe good unto all men, especially to those of the household of faith. And though for the present we seem to be unsensible of the law and the Law giver, yet when death and the Law assault us, if we have our advocate to seeke, who shall plead for us in this case of conscience betwixt God and our own souls; the powers of this world can neither attack us, neither excuse us, for if God justifye who can condemn and if God condemn there is none can justify.
And for those jealousies and suspicions which some have of them, that they are destructive unto Magistracy and Minssereye, that can not bee, for the magistrate hath the sword in his hand and the minister hath the sword in his hand, as witnesse those two great examples which all magistrates and ministers are to follow, Moses and Christ, whom God raised up maintained and defended against all the enemies both of flesh and spirit; and therefore that which is of God will stand, and that which is of man will come to nothing. And as the Lord hath taught Moses or the civil power to give an outward liberty in the state by the law written in his heart designed for the good of all, and can truly judge who is good, who is civil, who is true and who is false, and can pass definite sentence of life or death against that man which rises up against the fundamental law of the States General; soe he hath made his ministers a savor of life unto life, and a savor of death unto death.
The law of love, peace and liberty in the states extending to Jews, Turks, and Egyptians, as they are considered the sonnes of Adam, which is the glory of the outward state of Holland, soe love, peace and liberty, extending to all in Christ Jesus, condemns hatred, war and bondage. And because our Saviour saith it is impossible but that offenses will come, but woe unto him by whom they cometh, our desire is not to offend one of his little ones, in whatsoever form, name or title he appears in, whether Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist or Quaker, but shall be glad to see anything of God in any of them, desiring to doe unto all men as we desire all men should doe unto us, which is the true law both of Church and State; for our Savior saith this is the law and the prophets. Therefore, if any of these said persons come in love unto us, wee cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them, but give them free egresse and regresse unto our Town, and houses, as God shall persuade our consciences. And in this we are true subjects both of Church and State, for we are bounde by the law of God and man to doe good unto all men and evil to noe man. And this is according to the patent and charter of our Towne, given unto us in the name of the States General, which we are not willing to infringe, and violate, but shall houlde to our patent and shall remaine, your humble subjects, the inhabitants of Vlishing.
The end of the story? Not quite. Some 134 years later, the First Amendment added 16 words to the U.S. Constitution that went to the heart of the dispute between the Vlishing farmers and their vexatious government:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The so-called Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the establishment of a national religion by Congress or the preference of one religion over another, or religion over non-religion. It is pleased to see anything of God in any of them.