Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [57]
The company’s managers didn’t see it that way. Under pressure from Amsterdam’s Jewish leaders, they rebuked Stuyvesant for his intolerance and pointed out to him that it would be “unreasonable and unfair” to expel the Jews from New Amsterdam, because they had done so much for the defense of Brazil and also—no small point—“because of the large amount of capital, which they have invested in this Company.” They ought to have the same civil and political rights in America as in Holland, the directors concluded, “without giving the said Jews a claim to the privileges of exercising their religion in a synagogue.” Stuyvesant obediently withdrew an order expelling the Jews from New Amsterdam “forthwith,” but his persistent harassment of them forced the directors of the company to rebuke him again in 1656. The next year he reluctantly admitted the Jews to full citizenship in New Netherland. Although neither he nor the company was ready to let them build their synagogue, they were allowed to worship in a private house on the corner of the Heere Gracht (Broad Street) and Slyck Steegh (Mill Lane). Asser Levy, one of the Recife refugees, pressured Stuyvesant for even more extensive civil rights. He eventually won the right to serve in the militia, to engage in retail trade, to be licensed as a butcher, and to own a house—the first Jew to do so in New Amsterdam or anywhere in North America.
Stuyvesant had no better luck with the various radical sectarians, mostly English, who arrived in New Amsterdam during the later 1650s. Unlike the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and other mainstream Calvinists whose views broadly conformed to the Reformed creed, these newcomers appeared to reject all existing forms of religious and political authority. In 1656 one William Wickendam—“a troublesome fellow, a cobbler from Rhode Island,” said Megapolensis—began to preach at Flushing, claiming “he had a commission from Christ.” When he started baptizing people in the East River as well, it became obvious that Wickendam was some kind of Baptist or Mennonite. Stuyvesant promptly threw him out of the colony.
One year later, in 1657, a boatload of English Quakers showed up and astounded everyone with their behavior. Their ship flew no flag and fired no salute; their leader, one Robert Fowler, spoke with Stuyvesant but (Megapolensis said) “rendered him no respect, but stood still with his hat firm on his head, as if a goat.” Fowler departed on the next tide, leaving behind two young women who immediately “began to quake and go into a frenzy and cry out loudly in the middle of the street, that men should repent, for the day of judgment was at hand.” Megapolensis added dryly, “Our people, not knowing what was the matter, ran to and fro, while one cried ‘Fire,’ and another something else.” The schout marched them both off to prison “by the head,” and they too were soon on their way out of the colony.
Only a few months later, another Quaker, one Robert Hodgson, began preaching to enthusiastic crowds in the English towns of Long Island. Stuyvesant, informed of Hodgson’s arrest at Hempstead, had him bound to a cart and dragged back to Manhattan, there to be thrown in a dungeon, tried and convicted without an opportunity to defend himself, and sentenced “to work at the wheelbarrow two years with the negroes.” When he refused, Stuyvesant had him hung in chains and whipped until near death. After a number of appeals for clemency from the shocked inhabitants of New Amsterdam, Stuyvesant deported the unfortunate Hodgson to Rhode Island—“a place of