The Origin of Tolerance in America

This year mark's the 400 year anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage down the river that now bears his name. Flying a Dutch flag, the intrepid Englishman discovered the harbor that opened the New World to the old.

A man will be chosen this primary day, win the general election, and take his place in a long line of New York mayors stretching from dour old Stuyvesant through the flamboyant and controversial cross-dressing cousin of Queen Anne, Lord Cornwall; through thieves and rouges like Mayor Walker, who made an unscheduled trip to Europe after the governor started looking too closely at how the City was run to the present mayor.

What is the use of this city of reprobates and what is its unique gift to America and the world? It is the simple art of minding your own business. In a city renowned for crowding, a New Yorker has the gift of being able to see right through you and not give a damn about your color, creed, or national origin.

This gift is not to be taken lightly. Once as a young woman, I witnessed a man chatting with another on a subway bench. Nothing extraordinary, except that the newspaper-bearing gentleman was wearing a hat, socks shoes, and not a stitch more. Not a single passenger on that crowded platform so much as blinked an eye.

As Johnson once said: "A man is rarely more harmlessly employed than when engaged in making money". ... This strange innocence is engendered in the heart of New York. Our New Amsterdam remains spiritually joined to its founding cousin, that odd city with preening ladies of the evening displayed in store windows and coffee shops that sell anything except coffee.

New York was founded by men who knew how to make a buck. And it was this hard-headed Dutch practicality that reigned against all fanaticism and every fevered vision of a city on a hill and gave America the greatest of all gifts: the right to live in peace.

The first Jewish congregation in America, were the Sephardic Jews of New Amsterdam who landed in 1654. These brave people endured a four month sea voyage fleeing religious persecution so that they could ultimately found a little synagogue on obscure Mill Street in downtown New York. The street still stands as does the congregation though relocated further uptown with the growth of the city.They remained the Jews of New York until their Ashkenazic counterparts, who make up the majority of today's Jewish population, began arriving in 1825. Tough old Peter Stuyvesant was forced to swallow his prejudices and welcome them under pressure from Jewish investors in the parent Dutch West Indies Company-the ones running the tab for his new city.

In 1657 thirty brave residents of what is now Flushing, in the borough of Queens, bravely affixed their names to a chiding letter sent to the offices of the Dutch West India Company demanding the right to practice their own religious beliefs in the New World. This letter, known as the Flushing Remonstrance, was the first volley in America's fight against the establishment of a state religion.

If, when strolling New York's South Street Seaport, you notice a printing house bearing the "Bowne" name, know that an ancestral founder of this still-thriving business indirectly led to the inclusion of the guarantee of religious freedom in the Constitution. In 1662 salty old Stuyvesant sought to bring printer John Bowne, and his headstrong Quaker wife back into the embracing folds of the Dutch Reformed Lutheran Church even if they had to fling him into durance vile to accomplish the deed.

Given a chance to escape while on-route to Holland with the papers bearing the accusations against him, Bowne chose to hop off in Ireland instead and returned to Holland on his own where he successfully plead his case with the burghers. The result? A stringing rebuke to a governor foolish enough to prefer ideological purity to the practical concerns of populating a wasteland and making a buck.

Few monuments of the Dutch remain today. The last of the downtown Dutch dwellings went up in smoke during a vicious mid-nineteenth century fire that saw New York remade in yellow brick and later, brownstone www.associatedcontent.com/article/2035311/building_new_york_city.html. Now the only remnant of that time past is a lone Dutch home in upper Manhattan known as the Dyckman Farm house www.dyckmanfarmhouse.org/ and a few other scattered examples in the outer boroughs

New York's first water supply and the site of the first steamship test, the Collect was filled in to become first a notorious slum www.associatedcontent.com/article/2063429/the_general_buried_under_new_yorks.html later the source of a nondescript set of streets like Worth and Baxter that ring the Courts and Municipal offices of a sanitized city. The Dutch "Great Canal" is now Broad Street. The various docks, known as "slips" have now been filled in and only the names: Peck Slip, Pike Slip and so on call forth their watery origins.

The name of the city has changed. The languages spoken in the streets are new. Some ancient streets have been clipped, others built on land reclaimed from harbor. But one thing in New York has never changed: we know when not to pay attention to that naked commuter.

Sources:
www.mapsites.net/gotham/webpages/isaacs/Firstjew.HTM
www.nyym.org/flushing/remons.html
www.robleesonline.org/Beyond_Tolerance.pdf
www.nyym.org/flushing/history.html

For more information on New York City's Transvestite Governor (and mayor, they were the same in those days)
www.associatedcontent.com/article/2067387/new_york_citys_first_transvestite_governor.html

A link to all of my history articles:
www.associatedcontent.com/user/583548/mary_finn.html