To Nicolls’ European eye the Dutch metropolis, with its earthen fort, enclosing a windmill and high flag-staff, a prison and a governor’s house, and a double-roofed church, above which loomed a square tower, its gallows and whipping-post at the river’s side, and its rows of houses which hugged the citadel, presented but a mean appearance.  Yet before long he described it to the Duke as “the best of all his majesty’s towns in America,” and assured his royal highness that, with proper management, “within five years the staple of America will be drawn hither, of which the brethren of Boston are very sensible."...

The reduction of New Netherlands was now accomplished.  All that could be further done was to change its name; and, to glorify one of the most bigoted princes in English history, the royal province was ordered to be called “New York.”  Ignorant of James’ grant of New Jersey to Berkeley and Carteret, Nicolls gave to the region west of the Hudson the name of “Albania,” and to Long Island that of “Yorkshire,” so as to comprehend all the titles of the Duke of York.  The flag of England was at length triumphantly displayed, where, for half a century, that of Holland had rightfuly waved; and from Virginia to Canada, the King of Great Britain was acknowledged as sovereign.

Viewed in all its aspects, the event which gave to the whole of that country a unity in allegiance, and to which a misgoverned people complacently submitted, was as inevitable as it was momentous.  But whatever may have been its ultimate consequences, this treacherous and violent seizure of the territory and possessions of an unsuspecting ally was no less a breach of private justice than of public faith.

It may, indeed, be affirmed that, among all the acts of selfish perfidy which royal ingratitude conceived and executed, there have been few more characteristic and none more base.

    [1] From Brodhead’s “History of New York.”

    [2] Now called Governor’s Island.

    [3] A fortification from which has come the modern name of Wall
    Street.

BACON’S REBELLION IN VIRGINIA

(1676)

BY AN ANONYMOUS WRITER[1]

There is no nation this day under the copes of Heaven can so experimentaly speak the sad effects of men of great parts being reduc’t to necessity, as England; but not to rake up the notorious misdemeanours of the dead, I shall endeavour to prevent the sad effects of so deplorable a cause, by giving you an account of the remarkable life and death of this gentleman of whom I am about to discourse.  And because when a man has once ingag’d himself in an ill action, all men are ready to heap an innumerable aspersions upon him, of which he is no ways guilty, I shall be so just in the History of his Life as not to rob him of those commendations which his Birth and Acquisitions claim as due, and so kind both to Loyalty and the wholsom constituted Laws of our Kingdom, as not to smother any thing which would render him to blame.