the possession of the bold invaders.
A few days after, Fort Orange, on the Hudson, capitulated, and the name Albany was bestowed upon it. A treaty was here concluded with the chiefs of the Five Nations, whose hostilities had occasioned so much distress to the Dutch. Sir Robert Carr meanwhile entered the Delaware, and plundering and ill using the Dutch, soon reduced them to submission. Thus it was that, by a claim firmly persisted in, and enforced without the shedding of a single drop of blood, New Netherland became an integral part of the growing and important colonial empire of England. The Dutch inhabitants readily acquiesced in the change of rulers, and even the sturdy Governor Stuyvesant, attached to the country, spent the remainder of his life in New York.
It seems but fair, at this point in the history of New York, to quote the words of Mr. Brodhead, who claims that the Dutch have hardly received justice at the hands of American historians. "The reduction of New Netherland was now accomplished. All that could be further done was to change its name; and, to glorify one of the most bigotted princes in English history, the royal province was ordered to be called New York . . . . The flag of England was at length triumphantly displayed, where, for half a century, that of Holland had rightfully waved; and, from Virginia to Canada the King of Great Britain was acknowledged as sovereign This treacherous and violent seizure of the territory and possessions .of an unsuspecting ally was no less a breach of private .justice than of public faith. It may, indeed, be affirmed, that among all the acts of selfish perfidy which royal ingratitude conceived and executed, there have been few more characteristic, and none more base. . . . The emigrants who first explored the coasts and reclaimed the soil of New Netherland, and bore the flag of Holland to the wigwams of the Iroquois, were generally bluff, plainspoken, earnest, yet unpresumptuous men, who spontaneously left their native land to better their condition, and bind another province to the United Netherlands. They brought over with them the liberal ideas, and honest maxims, and homely virtues of their country. . . . They came with no loud-sounding pretensions to grandeur in purpose, eminence in holiness, or superiority in character. They were more accustomed to do than to boast; nor have their descendants been ambitious to invite and appropriate excessive praise for the services their ancestors rendered in extending the limits of Christendom, and in stamping upon America its distinguishing features of freedom in religion, and liberality in political faith. . . . . . . . . .Much of what has been written of American history has been written by those who, from habit or prejudice, have been inclined to magnify the influence, and extol the merit of the Anglo-Saxon race, at the expense of every other element which has assisted to form the national greatness. In no particular has this been more remarkable than in the unjust view which has
