A history of New York from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty |
TO THE PUBLIC. |
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 | A history of New York |  |
TO THE PUBLIC.
“TO rescue from oblivion the memory of for
“mer incidents, and to render a just tribute of
“renown to the many great and wonderful tran
“sactions of our Dutch progenitors, Diedrich
“Knickerbocker, native of the city of New York,
“produces this historical essay.”[1]
Like the
great Father of History whose words I have just
quoted, I treat of times long past, over which the
twilight of uncertainty had already thrown its shadows,
and the night of forgetfulness was about to
descend forever. With great solicitude had I long
beheld the early history of this venerable and ancient
city, gradually slipping from our grasp, trembling
on the lips of narrative old age, and day by
day dropping piece meal into the tomb. In a little
while, thought I, and those venerable dutch
burghers, who serve as the tottering monuments of
good old times, will be gathered to their fathers;
their children engrossed by the empty pleasures or
to treasure up the recollections of the past,
and posterity shall search in vain, for memorials of
the days of the Patriarchs. The origin of our
city will be buried in eternal oblivion, and even the
names and atchievements of Wouter Van Twiller,
William Kieft, and Peter Stuyvesant, be enveloped
in doubt and fiction, like those of Romulus and
Rhemus, of Charlemagne, King Arthur, Rinaldo,
and Godfrey of Bologne.
Determined therefore, to avert if possible this
threatening misfortune, I industriously sat myself
to work, to gather together all the fragments of our
infant history which still existed, and like my revered
prototype Herodotus, where no written records
could be found, I have endeavoured to continue
the chain of history by well authenticated traditions.
In this arduous undertaking, which has been
the whole business of a long and solitary life, it is
incredible the number of learned authors I have
consulted; and all to but little purpose. Strange
as it may seem, though such multitudes of excellent
works have been written about this country, there
are none extant which give any full and satisfactory
account of the early history of New York, or of
its three first Dutch governors. I have, however,
gained much valuable and curious matter from an
elaborate manuscript written in exceeding pure and
which was found in the archieves of the
Stuyvesant family. Many legends, letters and
other documents have I likewise gleaned, in my
researches among the family chests and lumber
garrets of our respectable dutch citizens, and I
have gathered a host of well authenticated traditions
from divers excellent old ladies of my acquaintance,
who requested that their names might
not be mentioned. Nor must I neglect to acknowledge,
how greatly I have been assisted by that admirable
and praiseworthy institution, the New York
Historical Society, to which I here publicly
return my sincere acknowledgements.
In the conduct of this inestimable work I
have adopted no individual model, but on the contrary
have simply contented myself with combining
and concentrating the excellencies of the most approved
ancient historians. Like Xenophon I have
maintained the utmost impartiality, and the strictest
adherence to truth throughout my history. I have
enriched it after the manner of Sallust, with various
characters of ancient worthies, drawn at full length,
and faithfully coloured. I have seasoned it with
profound political speculations like Thucydides,
sweetened it with the graces of sentiment like Tacitus,
and infused into the whole the dignity, the
grandeur and magnificence of Livy.
I am aware that I shall incur the censure of numerous
very learned and judicious critics, for indulging
too frequently in the bold excursive manner
of my favourite Herodotus. And to be candid, I
have found it impossible always to resist the allurements
of those pleasing episodes, which like flowery
banks and fragrant bowers, beset the dusty road
of the historian, and entice him to turn aside, and
refresh himself from his wayfaring. But I trust it
will be found, that I have always resumed my staff,
and addressed myself to my weary journey with renovated
spirits, so that both my readers and myself,
have been benefited by the relaxation.
Indeed, though it has been my constant wish
and uniform endeavour, to rival Polybius himself,
in observing the requisite unity of History, yet the
loose and unconnected manner in which many of
the facts herein recorded have come to hand, rendered
such an attempt extremely difficult. This
difficulty was likewise increased, by one of the grand
objects contemplated in my work, which was to trace
the rise of sundry customs and institutions in this
best of cities, and to compare them when in the germ
of infancy, with what they are in the present old
age of knowledge and improvement.
But the chief merit upon which I value myself,
and found my hopes for future regard, is that faithful
veracity with which I have compiled this invaluable
little work; carefully winnowing away all
of fable, which are too apt to spring up and choke the
seeds of truth and wholesome knowledge—Had
I been anxious to captivate the superficial throng,
who skim like swallows over the surface of literature;
or had I been anxious to commend my writings
to the pampered palates of literary voluptuaries,
I might have availed myself of the obscurity that
hangs about the infant years of our city, to introduce
a thousand pleasing fictions. But I have scrupulously
discarded many a pithy tale and marvellous
adventure, whereby the drowsy ear of summer
indolence might be enthralled; jealously maintaining
that fidelity, gravity and dignity, which should
ever distinguish the historian. “For a writer of
this class,” observes an elegant critic, “must sustain
the character of a wise man, writing for the
instruction of posterity; one who has studied to inform
himself well, who has pondered his subject
with care, and addresses himself to our judgment,
rather than to our imagination.”
Thrice happy therefore, is this our renowned
city, in having incidents worthy of swelling the
theme of history; and doubly thrice happy is it in
having such an historian as myself, to relate them.
For after all, gentle reader, cities of themselves, and
in fact empires of themselves, are nothing without
an historian. It is the patient narrator who cheerfully
records their prosperity as they rise—who
props their feeble memorials as they
totter to decay—who gathers together their scattered
fragments as they rot—and who piously at
length collects their ashes into the mausoleum of
his work, and rears a triumphal monument, to
transmit their renown to all succeeding time.
“What,” (in the language of Diodorus Siculus)
“What has become of Babylon, of Nineveh, of
Palmyra, of Persepolis, of Byzantium, of Agrigentum,
of Cyzicum and Mytilene?” They have
disappeared from the face of the earth—they have
perished for want of an historian! The philanthropist
may weep over their desolation—the poet
may wander amid their mouldering arches and
broken columns, and indulge the visionary flights
of his fancy—but alas! alas! the modern historian,
whose faithful pen, like my own, is doomed irrevocably
to confine itself to dull matter of fact, seeks
in vain among their oblivious remains, for some
memorial that may tell the instructive tale, of
their glory and their ruin.
“Wars, conflagrations, deluges (says Aristotle)
destroy nations, and with them all their monuments,
their discoveries and their vanities—The torch of
science has more than once been extinguished and
rekindled—a few individuals who have escaped
by accident, reunite the thread of generations.”
the guardian priest, who keeps the perpetual
lamp of ages unextinguished—Nor is he without
his reward. Every thing in a manner is tributary
to his renown—Like the great projector of inland
lock navigation, who asserted that rivers, lakes and
oceans were only formed to feed canals; so I affirm
that cities, empires, plots, conspiracies, wars, havock
and desolation, are ordained by providence
only as food for the historian. They form but the
pedestal on which he intrepidly mounts to the view
of surrounding generations, and claims to himself,
from ages as they rise, until the latest sigh of old
time himself, the meed of immortality—The world
—the world, is nothing without the historian!
The same sad misfortune which has happened
to so many ancient cities, will happen again, and
from the same sad cause, to nine-tenths of those
cities which now flourish on the face of the globe.
With most of them the time for recording their
history is gone by; their origin, their very foundation,
together with the early stages of their settlement,
are forever buried in the rubbish of years;
and the same would have been the case with this
fair portion of the earth, the history of which I
have here given, if I had not snatched it from obscurity,
in the very nick of time, at the moment
that those matters herein recorded, were about entering
into the wide-spread, insatiable maw of oblivion—if
by the very locks, just as the monster's adamantine
fangs, were closing upon them forever! And here
have I, as before observed, carefully collected, collated
and arranged them; scrip and scrap, “punt
en punt, gat en gat,” and commenced in this little
work, a history which may serve as a foundation,
on which a host of worthies shall hereafter raise a
noble superstructure, swelling in process of time,
until Knickerbocker's New York shall be equally voluminous,
with Gibbon's Rome, or Hume and Smollet's
England!
And now indulge me for a moment, while I
lay down my pen, skip to some little eminence at
the distance of two or three hundred years a head;
and casting back a birds eye glance, over the waste
of years that is to roll between; discover myself
—little I—at this moment the progenitor, prototype
and precursor of them all, posted at the head of
this host of literary worthies, with my book under
my arm, and New York on my back, pressing
forward like a gallant commander, to honour and
immortality.
Here then I cut my bark adrift, and launch it
forth to float upon the waters. And oh! ye mighty
Whales, ye Grampuses and Sharks of criticism,
who delight in shipwrecking unfortunate adventurers
upon the sea of letters, have mercy upon this
my crazy vessel. Ye may toss it about in your
but do not, for the sake of the unlucky mariner
within—do not stave it with your tails and send it
to the bottom. And you, oh ye great little fish!
ye tadpoles, ye sprats, ye minnows, ye chubbs, ye
grubs, ye barnacles, and all you small fry of literature,
be cautious how you insult my new launched
vessel, or swim within my view; lest in a moment
of mingled sportiveness and scorn, I sweep you up
in a scoop net, and roast half a hundred of you for
my breakfast.
| A history of New York | |