296

NEW ALBION. NEW SWEDEN

CHAP. of their sachems, "but no presents of goods, or of guns,

XV.

or of powder and shot, shall draw me into a conspiracy against my friends the English." The naval successes 1653. of the Dutch inspired milder counsels; and the news of peace in Europe soon quieted every apprehension.

The provisionary compact left Connecticut in possession of a moiety of Long Island; the whole had often, but ineffectually, been claimed by Lord Stirling. 1634. Near the southern frontier of New Belgium, on Dela21. ware Bay, the favor of Strafford had also obtained for 1641 Sir Edward Ployden a patent for New Albion. The 1648. county never existed, except on parchment. The lord

June

to

palatine attempted a settlement; but, for want of a pilot, he entered the Chesapeake; and his people were absorbed in the happy province of Virginia. He was never able to dispossess the Swedes.1

With the Swedes, therefore, powerful competitors for the tobacco of Virginia and the beaver of the Schuylkill, the Dutch were to contend for the banks of the Delaware. In the vicinity of the river, the Swedish company was more powerful than its rival; but the whole province of New Netherlands was tenfold more populous than New Sweden. From motives 1651. of commercial security, the Dutch built Fort Casimir, on the site of Newcastle, within five miles of Chris tiana, near the mouth of the Brandywine. To the Swedes this seemed an encroachment; jealousies en1654. sued; and at last, aided by stratagem and immediate superiority in numbers, Rising, the Swedish governor, overpowered the garrison. The aggression was fatal to the only colony which Sweden had planted. The 1655. metropolis was exhausted by a long succession of wars;

1654,

1 B. Plantagenet's Description of New Albion, 1648, in the library of the Library Company, Philadel

phia. Hazard, i. 160, &c. Winthrop, ii. 325.

XV

Nov.

the statesmen and soldiers whom Gustavus had edu- CHAP cated, had passed from the public service; Oxenstiern, after adorning retirement by the sublime pursuits of philosophy, was no more; a youthful and licentious queen, greedy of literary distinction, and without capacity for government, had impaired the strength of the kingdom by nursing contending factions, and then capriciously abdicating the throne. Sweden had ceased to awaken fear or inspire respect; and the Dutch company fearlessly commanded Stuyvesant to "revenge 1654. their wrong, to drive the Swedes from the river, or 16. compel their submission." The order was renewed; and in September, 1655, the Dutch governor, collecting 1655 a force of more than six hundred men, sailed into the Delaware with the purpose of conquest. Resistance had been unavailing. One fort after another surrendered: to Rising honorable terms were conceded; the colonists Sept were promised the quiet possession of their estates; and, in defiance of protests and the turbulence of the Scandinavians, the jurisdiction of the Dutch was established. Such was the end of NEW SWEDEN,' the colony that connects our country with Gustavus Adolphus and the nations that dwell on the Gulf of Bothnia. It maintained its distinct existence for a little more than seventeen years, and succeeded in establishing permanent plantations on the Delaware. The descendants of the colonists, in the course of generations, widely scattered and blended with emigrants of other lineage, constitute probably more than one part in two hundred of the present population of our country. At

1 Albany Records, xiii. 349-358, 367, 2, 7; iv. 157, 166, 186, 204, &c. 222. Acrelius, an accurate historian, Campanius, a heedless Of late writers, Clay's SweVOL. II. 38

one.

dish Annals. Compare Swedish
Records, translated and printed in
vols. iv. and v. of Hazard's Hist.
Register.

25.

1

298

XV.

AMSTERDAM OBTAINS A PROVINCE.

CHAP. the surrender, they did not much exceed seven hundred souls. Free from ambition, ignorant of the ideas which were convulsing the English mind, it was only as Protestants that they shared the impulse of the age. They cherished the calm earnestness of religious feeling; they reverenced the bonds of family and the purity of morals; their children, under every disadvantage of want of teachers and of Swedish books, were well instructed. With the natives they preserved peace. A love for Sweden, their dear mother country, the abiding sentiment of loyalty towards its sovereign, continued to distinguish the little band; at Stockholm, they remained for a century the objects of a disinterested and generous regard; affection united them in the New World; and a part of their descendants still preserve their altar and their dwellings round the graves of their fathers.1

1656

The conquest of the Swedish settlements was followed by relations bearing a near analogy to the provincial system of Rome. The West India Company desired an ally on its southern frontier; the country above Christiana was governed by Stuyvesant's deputy; Dec. while the city of Amsterdam became, by purchase, the proprietary of Delaware, from the Brandywine to Bombay Hook; and afterwards, under cessions from the na1658, tives, extended its jurisdiction to Cape Henlopen. But did a city ever govern a province with forbearance? The 1657. noble and right honorable lords, the burgomasters of Amsterdam, instituted a paralyzing commercial monopoly, and required of the colonists an oath of absolute obedience to all their past or future commands. But Maryland was free; Virginia governed itself. The

1659.

1656,

1 Kalm's Travels. W. Penn's Letter. Clay's Swedish Annals.