Dutch Americans

“ Being of the most intensely “Continental” spirit, they, with their fellow Americans, must needs face the storm of the Revolution, which divided households into Tories and Patriots. Lest they should not have enough discipline of tongue, temper, body, and spirit, it pleased Providence to transfer quickly the seat of war from the Eastern colonies into the very garden of the Dutch churches in New York and New Jersey. ”

“ Here, as in Amsterdam, the houses are, many of them, built on piles, and the land is kept land by keeping the water in the canals, locks, and basins. It requires much money, good systems, and much energy to do this, but the Dutch have proved themselves equal to it. We hear here such names as the ‘Hoogstraat’ (one of the streets) , the ‘Schiedamsche dyke,’ etc., regular jaw-breakers. In fact, I think if Americans can understand or be understood in Holland, they need have no fears of not being able to travel in other parts of the globe, so far as ‘language’ is concerned. ”

“ The Dutch kept their freedom in the great contest with Spain, not merely because they warred valiantly, but because they did their duty as burghers in their cities, because they strove according to the light that was in them to be good citizens and to act as such. And we all here to-night should strive so to live that we Americans of Dutch descent shall not seem to have shrunk in this respect, compared to our fathers who spoke another tongue and lived under other laws beyond the ocean ”

“ The Americans were surely not behind the Dutch in the capacity of suffering, although to my mind their cause was not so precious as that of the Hollanders, who had not only to fight against overwhelming forces, but to preserve religious as well as civil liberties. ”

“ The residence of the Plymouth settlers in the Netherlands, and the later conquest of the Dutch colonies, had brought the Americans into contact with the singularly wise and free institutions of the Dutch. ”

“ Simeon de Witt, Surveyor-General of New York StateIn the world’s broad harvest field, and for the uplift of humanity in other lands, the Americans of Dutch descent have wrought nobly. The Dutch were the first to study the religions, languages, and civilizations of the Far East, and the Netherlands Reformed Church was for a time the missionary agent of all Protestant Europe. ”

“ But who is going to impoverish himself to enrich his neighbour? Who, when attacked by an enemy, is going to hand over his own revolver to be shot with? That is what the National Union has proved itself to be up to now—enemies pure and simple of the Government. Let them show more good-will, more conciliation, more honest friendship, and they may expect more consideration from the Government.
Fourthly.—‘Equality of the Dutch and English language is demanded.’ This is a Dutch republic, founded by the Dutch, civilised and reclaimed by the Dutch. Dutch is the official language of the country. ”

“ England fills the world and civilises the world with her redundant population, and all her colonies flourish, and remind you of a swarm of bees which have just left the old hive and are busy in providing for themselves. The Dutch colonies are not what you can call thriving; they have not the bustle, the enterprise, and activity which our colonies possess. The Dutch have never conciliated the natives, and obtained their goodwill; they have invariably resorted to violence, and to a disregard of justice. ”

“ They became, like Switzerland, and unlike Poland and Hungary, a neutral region, which it was for the interest of Europe at large to let alone. None cared to meddle with them; and, on the other hand, they had native virtue and force enough to resist being absorbed into other peoples; the character of the Dutch is as distinct to-day as ever it had been. Their language, their literature, their art, and their personal traits, are unimpaired. They are, in their own degree, remarkably prosperous and comfortable; and they have the good sense to be content with their condition. ”

“ The scenery of Dutch history has episodes as stirring and instructive as those of any civilized people since history began; but it reached its dramatic and moral apogee when the independence of the United Netherlands was acknowledged by Spain. The Netherlands then reached their loftiest pinnacle of power and prosperity; their colonial possessions were vast and rich; their reputation as guardians of liberty and the rights of man was foremost in the world. ”

“ The Dutch republic was the first free nation to put a girdle of empire around the earth. It had courage, enterprise, intelligence, perseverance, faith in itself, the instinct of self-government and self- help, hatred of tyranny, the disposition to domineer, aggressiveness, greediness, inquisitiveness, insolence, the love of science, of liberty, and of money—all this in unlimited extent. ”

“ Few strides more gigantic have been taken in the march of humanity than those by which a parcel of outlying provinces in the north of Europe exchanged slavery to a foreign despotism and to the Holy Inquisition for the position of a self-governing commonwealth, in the front rank of contemporary powers, and in many respects the foremost of the world. It is impossible to calculate the amount of benefit tendered to civilization by the example of the Dutch republic. It has been a model which has been imitated, in many respects, by great nations. ”

“ But when the war was all over, the whole province of the New Netherlands was given up to the English. New Amsterdam's name was changed to New York (1664) , and Holland never again claimed any part of our country. But the Dutch settlers continued to occupy their farms, and there are many people now in America who proudly claim descent from the early settlers of the New Netherlands. Interesting stories are told about the Dutch settlers, the most famous of all being Washington Irving's tales of Sleepy Hollow and of Rip Van Winkle. ”

“ Nor is it strange that so strong a Dutch influence should have entered into the establishment and making of America, when one considers the immense debt which the world owes to Holland. For it may be said without fear of contradiction that in nearly every art which uplifts and adorns human life, in nearly every aspect of human endeavor, Holland has not only added to the moral resources of mankind and contributed more to the fabric of civilization, but has also actually led the way. ”

“ While the inhabitants of this island were embroiled among themselves, the power of France and Holland was every day increasing. The Dutch had overcome the difficulties of their infant commonwealth; and, as they still retained their vigour and industry, from rich grew continually richer, and from powerful more powerful. They extended their traffick, and had not yet admitted luxury; so that they had the means and the will to accumulate wealth, without any incitement to spend it. ”

“ We rode back past miles of fertile meadows, all wrung from the sea, where cattle were cropping the rich grass on what was once the bottom of the deep; and thus on every hand were the signs of Dutch thrift and abundance.
And so we take our leave of Holland with a most friendly feeling. We are glad to have seen a country where there is so much liberty, so much independence, and such universal industry and comfort. To be sure, an American would find life here rather slow ”

“ No nationality in the world has earned its liberty more worthily than the Dutch, or has more right to something of self-glorification on the score of it. The land on which it dwells is, if not its own creation, its salvage. ”

“ Free toleration is allowed to all religious sects. Protestants are largely in the majority, the proportion being as twenty to twelve. Education is generally diffused among the people. In 1863 the revenue of the Netherlands amounted to forty-one millions of dollars. The Dutch have extensive colonial possessions in the East and West Indies, and on the west coast of Africa. The regular home army contains fifty-nine thousand officers and men. ”

“ Their national industry was untiring; their prosperity unexampled; their love of liberty indomitable; their pugnacity proverbial. Peaceful in their pursuits, phlegmatic by temperament, the Netherlands were yet the most belligerent and excitable population of Europe. Two centuries of civil war had but thinned the ranks of each generation without quenching the hot spirit of the nation. ”

“ Human enterprise has reclaimed and guards it, and has converted the whole into one of the most productive regions in Europe. Not only has it turned an expanse of foggy, unwholesome fens into a vast model farm, but it has built prosperous cities, and filled them with the products of art and civilization. The Dutch race has stretched its hands everywhere, and the earth is full of evidences of its courage and foresight. ”

“ Of the white races in the Colony the French element has been completely absorbed in the Dutch. They and the German settlers are mainly pastoral people. The Dutch, who have retained in a debased form their own language, also engage largely in agriculture and viticulture. Of fine physique and hardy constitution, they are of strongly independent character; patriarchal in their family life; shrewd, slim and courageous; in religion Protestants of a somewhat austere type. Education is somewhat neglected by them, and the percentage of illiteracy among adults is high. ”

“ Differing with England on the policy which led the latter to weaken and humiliate France, jealousies sprung up between the two countries, and Dutch commerce became the object of the most vexatious and injurious efforts on the part of England. Remonstrance was vain; resistance impossible; and the decline of the republic hurried rapidly on. The Hanseatic towns, the American colonies, the northern states of Europe, and France itself, all entered into the rivalry with Holland, in which, however, England carried off the most important prizes. ”

“ No body of Christians on the North American continent entered more profoundly in mind, or realized more fully in practice, the spiritual democracy of believers than the people of the Reformed Dutch Church. The names of pickaninnies and papooses, adult slaves and warriors, servants, “proselytes,” black, red, and white, on the pages of Dutch Church registers sparkle among the undying glories of American colonial life. ”

“ The influence of our Dutch ancestors can still be seen not only in New York's Hudson River Valley but also in Pennsylvania along the Schuylkill River and in communities like Holland, Michigan, where many people trace their roots to settlers from The Netherlands. Generations of Dutch immigrants have enriched the United States with the unique customs and traditions of their ancestral homeland—a country that has given the world great artists, celebrated philosophers, and leaders of international business. ”

“ The great questions of the origin of government, the balance of dynastic forces, the distribution of powers, were dealt with by the ablest heads, both Dutch and English, that could be employed in the service of the kingdom and republic. It was a war of protocols, arguments, orations, rejoinders, apostilles, and pamphlets; very wholesome for the cause of free institutions and the intellectual progress of mankind. ”

“ Of some things the American traveller is to-day constantly convinced: that there is less intellectual veneer in Holland than in any other country in Europe; that there is more solid and abiding culture of the very highest kind, and that the modern Dutch family represents a repose of mind, a simplicity of living, and a contented happiness with life in general that we, as a nation, might well envy. ”

“ The Dutch thus made their settlement before the Puritans were planted in New England, and from their first coming, "being seated in Islands and at the mouth of a good river their plantations were in a thriving condition, and they begun, in Holland, to promise themselves vast things from their new colony." ”

“ In New York I should be a Little American; in Constantinople a Little Turk. But I wanted to talk about Holland. A holiday in Holland serves as a corrective to exaggerated Imperialistic notions.
There are no poor in Holland. They may be an unhappy people, knowing what a little country it is they live in; but, if so, they hide the fact. To all seeming, the Dutch peasant, smoking his great pipe, is as much a man as the Whitechapel hawker or the moocher of the Paris boulevard. I saw a beggar once in Holland—in the townlet of Enkhuisen. ”

“ Who can estimate and properly accredit to the different nations of Europe their just due in the immigrants they sent to this country in its founding and subsequently in building up the United States as the greatest free republic on earth and the hope of the liberty-loving world? The Dutch must be among the early named with excellent traits of character, and the Patroons deserve credit for first colonizing them here. ”

“ It is, however, a satisfaction to think that the part played by this country in causing the misfortunes of Holland—a country to which civilisation is indebted for immense advances, both material and intellectual—was comparatively small. From about the middle of the seventeenth century to the peace of Utrecht, in 1713, the Dutch Republic was involved in almost constant wars with its Continental neighbours, and the herring-fishery and the trade in general suffered severely, and never afterwards regained the prosperity they formerly enjoyed. ”

“ Hence there were two parties in the Netherlands,—the party of the Stadtholder, which was subservient to the policy of the British government, and the popular party, which looked with favour upon the American cause. The popular party was far the more numerous, including all the merchants of the most mercantile of countries, and it was especially strong in the city of Amsterdam. A brisk trade—illicit from the British point of view—was carried on between Holland and the United States, chiefly through the little Dutch island of St. ”