You Are There: Fort Amsterdam, 1 September 1664 (CBS, 1950)
In my boyhood, when my father finished his training toward and became an insurance agent, the first agency employer I can remember him having was known as the Stuyvesant Insurance Company, a New York City agency. I had no clue what the name meant, and I can't remember my father talking about the name in later years (he moved to another agency and stayed with that agency until his untimely death in 1966), but in due course I would learn of the last Dutch colonial governor to administer what ultimately became New York City. And, the one to surrender the colony peaceably enough to the British in 1664, after his own people simply refused to resist the British advance.
Peter Stuyvesant was an autocratic colonial governor who left little enough doubt as to whom was the government and whom were the people. When two deputies from each New Netherland village approached him to demand reforms, Stuyvesant was said to have replied, “We derive our authority from God and the (Dutch West Indies) Company, not from a few ignorant subjects.” Yet when he took seven ships and seven hundred men up the Delaware River to take New Sweden and rename it New Amstel, while the cat was away the rats had a little fun—companies of native Americans attacked New Amsterdam during the so-called Peach War.
Stuyvesant's real trouble began in 1664, when King Charles II of England handed his brother James II, the Duke of York and his eventual successor, a large tract of land that included New Netherland itself, sending four ships and 450 men led by Richard Nicolls to seize the colony. That August, Stuyvesant received a demand for surrender, promising “life, estate, and liberty” to one and all who would accept Charles II's authority.
Come 1 September 1664, Nicolls shows Stuyvesant the British weren't anywhere close to kidding—and that's the subject of tonight's program. It is a hazy morning, but the British fleet is only too visible from the southmost tip of Manhattan island, from Fort Amsterdam, as they head upstream and prepare for any kind of action. Leaving Stuyvesant (Barry Kroeger) with a decision to make: accept a surrender ultimatum from Nicolls, or fall into all-out war for Manhattan, the whole of New Amsterdam, and the entire Dutch presence in North America.
Stuyvesant will sign the surrender at his house on Bouwerij (you guessed it: the Bowery in waiting), Nicolls will be declared colonial governor, and New Amsterdam will be re-named New York City, after James II. It leaves Stuyvesant doing what he had once vowed would never be done even at gunpoint—surrender the colony without a battle, which he does when he realises the populace refuses to offer the British any serious resistance.
Eight days later, Stuyvesant will sign official articles of capitulation, and there will prove no small irony in there. He was never exactly renowned for religious tolerance—in fact, he once ordered the public torture of a popular Quaker preacher, declared ordinances against harbouring Quakers (these led to the so-called Flushing Remonstrance protest of 1657, which some historians come to believe seeds the U.S. Constitution's amendment assuring freedom of religion), refused to allow Brazilian Jews to enter and dwell among their Dutch Jewish brethren in the colony, and finally (under pressure from the Dutch West Indies Company, Stuyvesant's original employer) allowed Jews to resettle in the colony while denying them permission to build synagogues and thus forcing them to worship privately.
Those in the 21st Century who know New York City to have been a longtime haven and harbour for Jews may yet reel to know that the last colonial governor for the Dutch who founded the city arguably did his level best to push Jews out of the colony entirely and was given to statements that can be construed without question as anti-Semitic: he once told offices of the Dutch West Indies Company, in the early days of New Amsterdam, of his hope that Jews, “the deceitful race, such hateful enemies and blasephemers of the name of Christ, be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony.”
But when Stuyvesant signs the articles of capitulation before returning to his native Netherlands for the rest of his life, he asks for—and gets—freedom of religion written into the articles formally. This was far less because of any newfound personal religious tolerance than because of a bid to save his people's skins: most of the Dutch colonists were of the Dutch Reformed Church, a Calvinist denomination, and the British, of course, were mostly of the Anglican Church.
Stuyvesant—who famously lost a leg to cannon fire during the Dutch attack on St. Martin Island, a Spanish holding, in 1644—would return to the Netherlands to report on his term as colonial governor, before returning to New York to live out his life on the sixty-two farm acres he owns. One of his pear trees would survive, ultimately standing on the corner of Third Avenue and Thirteenth Street, even bearing fruit as late as 1867.
Lead reporter: Bill Leonard. Field reporters: Don Hollenbeck, Douglas Edwards, Ned Calmet. Additional cast: Everett Sloane, Robert Dryden, Irene Hubbard, Jack Lloyd, Bert Colon. Director: John Dietz. Writer: Irv Tuning.
FURTHER CHANNEL SURFING . . .
Comedy
The Jack Carson Show: A Date with Irene Ryan (CBS, 1947)—Jack (Carson) is feeling rather jaunty this morning, calling on Irene Ryan and urging her to relieve her weariness with a little more romance, an urging he may yet come to regret offering when she bulldozes him into getting her a date—and he decides (Arthur) Treacher is the perfect fall guy . . . er, date. You take it from there. Himself: Arthur Treacher. Tugwell: Dave Willock. Norma Jean: Norma Jean Nilsson. Announcer: Del Sharbut. Music: Freddy Martin Orchestra. Director: Sam Fuller. Writer: Leonard L. Levinson.
Crime Drama
The Green Hornet: George Haven's Secret (Blue Network, 1946)—A judge investigating graft by two city officials is killed by a man impersonating Reid's (Bob Hall) notorious alter-ego while the Sentinel publisher was asleep at home early during the night, prompting Reid to ratchet up a manhunt he launched after one of the two officials—who was left for dead and made to look like a suicide—was prepared to cooperate in bringing down the other official, including going to the crusading judge. For a show classified as a juvenile crime drama, this is very adult stuff, all things considered. Mike Axford: Gilbert Shea. Lenore Case: Leonore Allman. Kato: Rollon Parker. Director: George W. Tremble. Writer: Fran Striker.
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