The next day, when I went down to the waterfront with the Boss and Jan, we came upon a crowd of people. They were pointing across to Brooklyn, on our left. And sure enough, you could see the glint of weapons where English troops were gathering by the ferry. And somebody pointed down toward the narrows, and said that to the west of them, on the big hump of land the Dutch call Staten Island, the English had landed more troops.
Meinheer Springsteen was there.
“We’ve a hundred and fifty men in the fort,” he said to the Boss, “and we can muster maybe two hundred and fifty capable of fighting in the town. Even with some slaves, that’s five hundred, maximum. The English colonel has twice that number of trained troops. And they say the English settlers on the long island have mustered troops as well.”
“We’ve cannon in the fort,” said the Boss.
“Short of powder. And ammunition,” he says. “If the English gunships come close, they’ll blast us to bits.” He took the Boss by the arm. “The word is, they’ve demanded we give them the town, and that Stuyvesant won’t budge.”
After Meinheer Springsteen moved on, Jan asked the Boss if the English would destroy us.
“I doubt it, my son,” he said. “We’re worth far more to them alive.” Then he laughed. “But you never know.” Then he went to talk to some of the other merchants.
When we got home, he told the Mistress that none of the merchants wanted to make a fight of it, and she was angry and said that they were cowards.
The following day, Governor Winthrop of Connecticut arrived in a boat. I saw him. He was a small, dark-featured man. And he had another letter from Colonel Nicolls. He and Governor Stuyvesant went into a tavern to discuss it. By now all the merchants were down by the waterfront wanting to know what was going on and the Boss went there too. When he came back he said that some of the merchants had discovered from Governor Winthrop’s men that the English were offering very easy terms if Governor Stuyvesant would give them the town; so after Winthrop left, they demanded of Governor Stuyvesant that he show them the English letter. But instead of showing the letter, Governor Stuyvesant tore it up in their faces; and they were mighty angry. But they took the pieces of that letter and they put them together again. Whereat they found the English were ready to let them keep all their Dutch customs and all their wealth, and let everything go on just exactly the same as before, so long as Governor Stuyvesant would give them the town without any trouble. So that’s what they all wanted to do. Except Governor Stuyvesant, that is.
The Mistress was all for Governor Stuyvesant.
“He did right,” she cried. “He’s the only man among you all.” And she called the merchants a pack of mongrel dogs and some other things I won’t repeat.
Just then someone in the street started shouting, “The English are coming.” And we all ran out and sure enough down at the waterfront we saw the English gunships coming across the harbor toward us. And by and by they lay off the town, with their cannon pointing at us; and they stayed there, just letting us know what they could do if they had a mind to.
Well, the next morning the merchants all signed a petition to the governor telling him to surrender. The Mistress asked the Boss, did he mean to sign, and he said, “I do.” Even Governor Stuyvesant’s own son signed it, which must have been a bitter blow to his father. But still he wasn’t giving in. And we all went down to the fort, and we saw the governor up on the ramparts alone, standing by one of the cannons, with his white hair flying in the wind, and the Boss said: “Damn it, I think he means to fire the cannon himself.” And just then we saw two of the dominies go up and plead with him not to do it, for fear of destroying us all. And finally, being men of God, they persuaded him to come down. So that was how the English got the place.
Back across the ocean, the English were so pleased with their victory that they declared war on the Dutch, hoping to get more of their possessions. But soon the Dutch paid them back by taking some of their rich places in the tropics. The next year they had a terrible plague in London, and then that city burned down in a great fire; and the year after that, the Dutch sailed right up the River Thames to London, and took the King’s best fighting ship and towed it away, and the English were so weakened, there was nothing they could do about it. So then they agreed to a peace. The Dutch took back the places the English had taken from them in the tropics, on account of the slaves and the sugar trade. And the English kept Manhattan. The Mistress wasn’t pleased, but the Boss didn’t mind.
“We’re just pawns in a bigger game, Greet,” he said.
When Colonel Nicolls became the new governor, he told the Dutch people they were free to leave if they desired, but promised them they should never be asked to fight against the Netherlands if they stayed, no matter what the quarrel. He changed the name of the town to New York, on account of the Duke of York owning it, and the territory around he called Yorkshire. Then he gave the city a mayor and aldermen, like an English town. But most of the men on that body were the Dutch merchants anyway, so they were better pleased than they had been when Governor Stuyvesant was ruling them, for Colonel Nicolls was always asking their counsel. He was a friendly man; he’d raise his hat whenever he saw the Mistress in the street. He also started the racing of horses, which was liked.
And by and by, after Governor Stuyvesant had crossed the ocean to the Netherlands, to explain himself for losing the city, the old man came back to his bouwerie here; and Colonel Nicolls treated him very respectful, and the two of them became the best of friends. The English governor was always going out to spend time with the old man at his farm. The Mistress still had no love for the English. “But I won’t deny,” she would say, “that Nicolls is polite.”
The next governor was like Colonel Nicolls. He started the mail service to Boston. He took plenty of profit for himself as well. The rich merchants didn’t care, but the poorer part of the Dutch people, which was the greatest number, were not so pleased with the English rule after a while, on account of the English troops in the city, that gave them trouble and expense.
When I was a boy, most of the slaves owned by the West India Company were engaged in building works. The merchants’ slaves were mostly gardening, or loading and unloading the boats at the wharfs. Some were used as extra crew on the ships. But there were women slaves too. They were mostly employed in laundry and the heavier housework; though a few of them were cooking. The men would often be passing in the street, and especially in the evening, you would see them talking to the slave women over the fences as the dusk fell. As you might imagine, children were sometimes the result of this conversing. But although it was against their religion, the owners did not seem to mind that these children were born. And I believe the reason for this was plain enough.
For the trade in slaves is very profitable. A slave bought fresh out of Africa in those days might fetch more than ten times his purchase price if he was brought to the wharf at Manhattan, and in other places even more. So that even if a good part of the cargo was lost upon the way, a merchant might do uncommonly well in the selling of slaves. It was surely for this reason that both old Governor Stuyvesant and our new ruler, the Duke of York, had had such hopes of making Manhattan a big slave market. And indeed, many hundreds of slaves were brought to New Amsterdam in the days of Governor Stuyvesant and, after, some directly from Africa. Many slaves remained in this region, and others were sold to the English plantations in Virginia and other places. So if a slave in New York had children, their master might wait until the children came to a certain age, and sell them; or sometimes he would keep the children and train them for work, while he sold their mother, so that she wouldn’t be spoiling them with too much attention.
There being quite a number of young women around the town, therefore, my interest in them grew, and by the time the English came, I was getting very eager to make myself a man in that regard. And I was always looking out around the town for a slave girl that might be agreeable to giving me some experience in that way. On Su
ndays, when the Boss and all the other families were in church, the black people would come out into the streets to enjoy themselves; and at these times I was able to meet slave girls from other parts of the town. But the two or three I had found were not easy to spend any time with. Twice I was chased down the street for trying to come into the house of the owner of one of them; and another was whipped for talking to me. So I was in some difficulty.
There were women in the town, of course—it being a port—who would give a man all he wanted so long as he paid. And I had a little money. For from time to time, the Boss would give me small coin for spending, if he was pleased with me. Or if he hired me out for a day, as was often done, he would give me a little of what he received. And I had been putting this money by in a safe place. So I was thinking it might be necessary to expend some of this money on a lady of that kind in order to become a man.
One evening I slipped out in the company of some other slaves, and they took me along the Bowery road to a place some distance above the town, where most of the free black people had their dwellings.
We went to a wooden house, which was larger than the others, that was like an inn. The man who owned that house was a tall man, and he gave us some sweet cakes and rum to drink. There were about a dozen black people there, and some of them were slaves. And we had only been there a little while when I noticed an old man asleep in the corner, and wearing a straw hat, and realized that it was the old man I had met in the market when I was a boy, that told me I could be free. So I asked the tall man that owned that house who the old man was, and he said, “That is my father.” He talked to me for a while. I was very impressed with him. He owned the house and some land besides, and he had people working for him, too. He was free as any white man, and had no shortage of money. His name was Cudjo.
After I had been talking to him and drinking rum for a while, I noticed a girl of about my own age come into the house. She sat quietly in the corner near where the old man was asleep, and nobody seemed to pay heed to her. But I glanced at her several times, and wondered if she’d noticed me. Finally, she turned her head and looked right at me. And when she did I saw that her eyes seemed to be laughing, and her smile was warm.
I was about to go over to her, when I felt Cudjo’s hand grip my arm.
“You’d best leave that girl alone,” he said quietly.
“Why’s that?” I asked. “Is she your woman?”
“No,” he answered.
“You’re her father?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I own her. She is my slave.”
At first I didn’t believe him. I did not know that a black man could have a slave. And it seemed strange to me that a man whose own father had obtained his freedom would own a slave himself. But it was so.
“You’re looking for a woman, young man?” Cudjo then asked me, and I said I was. “You ever have a lady friend before?” he inquired, and I said I had not.
“Wait here a while,” he told me, and he went out.
By and by he returned with a young woman. She was somewhere between twenty and twenty-five years old, I guessed. She was almost as tall as I was, and her slow, easy way of walking seemed to say that, however other folks might feel, she was comfortable with the world. She came over to the bench where I was and sat down beside me and asked me my name. We chatted a while and drank together. Then she glanced over at Cudjo and gave him a small nod.
“Why don’t you come with me, honey,” she said.
So I left with her. As we went out, Cudjo smiled at me and said, “You’re going to be all right.”
And I became a man that night.
In the years that followed I became friendly with a number of slave women in the town. Several times the Boss said to me that one of the meinheers was complaining his slave girl was with child and that it was my doing. Some of his neighbors said the Boss should send me to work on a farm out of town. But he never did so.
It was always my aim to please both the Boss and the Mistress equally. But sometimes it was not so easy, on account of them not always agreeing between themselves.
For instance, the Mistress did not always like the Boss’s friends. The first she took a dislike to was Meinheer Philipse. You’d have thought she would have liked him, because he was Dutch, and his wife and the Mistress had always been close. They were rich, too. But the Mistress said Meinheer Philipse was getting too English for her liking, and forgetting he was Dutch. The Boss seemed to like him well enough, though.
The second came into our lives the following way.
The Boss loved to be on the water. He was always looking for an excuse. Sometimes he would take the family out to some place in a boat. One time we went to the little island just off the tip of Manhattan, that they called Nut Island, with a big basket of food and drink, and passed the whole afternoon there. Another time we went further across the harbor, to the place they call Oyster Island.
One day the Boss said that he was going to a place out on the long island, and that Jan and I were to accompany him.
We set out from the dock and went up the East River. When we came to where the river divides and we entered the channel that leads eastward, the waters began to churn and rush so violently that I was full of fear. Even Jan looked pale, though he didn’t want to show it. But the Boss just laughed and said: “This is Hell Gate, boys. Don’t be scared.”
Once we passed through, the waters grew calm, and after a while he turned to me and said: “This is the Sound, Quash. On this side,” he pointed to the left, “the coast runs all the way up Connecticut and Massachusetts. On that side,” and he pointed to the right, “Long Island runs out for a hundred miles. Now are you glad you came?”
For that was the most beautiful place I ever saw in my life. There was a clear blue sky above, and I could feel the sun on me. Everywhere you looked, the water was calm, and the land rose so gently, with beaches and great banks of reeds, and there were seabirds skimming over the waves. I thought I was in paradise.
We sailed for some hours until we came to a small village on the island side of the Sound, with a wharf where we loaded the boat with supplies that the Boss was going to sell in the city. But toward the time we were finishing, a man came to inspect us. He was an English merchant. Soon he was looking thoughtfully at the Boss, and the Boss looked at him, and the man said: “Did I once sell you a silver dollar?”
“I believe you did,” said the Boss.
And after that they fell into conversation for half an hour. I did not hear all of it, but I was standing near them when the Englishman said that he’d married a couple of years ago, and that he was mighty glad he’d come back across the ocean from London. Finally, as we were leaving, I heard the Boss say that the man should come to live in New York, where he might do very well; and the Englishman said he reckoned he would.
That man’s name was Master. And he was going to cause plenty of trouble with the Mistress.
I had one chance to please the Mistress very much.
In the American colonies, everyone knew their lives depended on the disputes of our masters across the ocean. Five years after the last dispute between the English and the Dutch had ended, trouble started again. Only this time it was more of a family business.
King Charles II of England was close to his cousin King Louis XIV of France, and he hadn’t forgotten the drubbing he got from the Dutch. So in 1672, when King Louis attacked the Netherlands, King Charles joined in. But things still didn’t go too well for them, because when the French with all their troops came into the Netherlands, the Dutch opened their dykes and flooded the land so the French couldn’t cross. The next summer we heard that Dutch ships were coming up the coast, burning the English tobacco ships off Virginia and causing all kinds of trouble. And at the end of July, we saw the Dutch warships anchoring off Staten Island.
Now there was a young gentleman in the city then, by the name of Leisler. He was a German, I believe, but he had come to Manhattan and married a rich Dutch widow and
done well for himself in business. He was all for everything Dutch, and the Mistress for that reason had quite a liking for him. While the Boss was out, he came round to the house, and I heard him telling the Mistress that many people were wondering whether to welcome the Dutch and tell them they could throw the English out of Manhattan again, if they had a mind to.
“Some of the merchants think a deputation should go out to Staten Island,” he said. “But I’m worried about those guns in the fort. There’s forty-six cannon there which could do harm to the Dutch ships.”
When Leisler had left, the Mistress looked thoughtful. When the Boss came back, she told him what Leisler had said. The Boss already knew about the rumors, and he told everyone to stay in the house. Then he went out again to find out more.
He hadn’t been gone long before the Mistress called: “Have you got a hammer, Quash?” Well, I did have a hammer, in the workroom at the back. So she looked around the workroom and saw some big metal pegs that the Boss had used for securing a tent. “Take those too,” she said. “You come with me.”
I was afraid to go, on account of what the Boss had said, but I daren’t say no to her either. So we went to the fort.
The sun was getting low, but there were a lot of people about. The captain of the fort was in charge. He had some soldiers, but he was trying to muster the volunteers, who were mostly standing around on the area they call the Bowling Green, just in front of the fort. The Mistress didn’t take any notice of the captain. She just walked into the fort with me, and she called to some of the volunteers to come with her. I suppose about twenty of us went in together. Then the Mistress went straight to the gun emplacements, and before anyone realized what she was doing, she took a spike and the hammer from me, and she starts hammering the spike into the powder hole of one of the cannon, so that it can’t be fired. Some of the soldiers saw it, and they started to shout, and try to interfere with her, but she didn’t take any notice, and she hammered that spike down into that cannon so hard that it was stuck fast. Spiking the guns, they call that.