The Sun.
London, England, 1870-07-16 00:00:00

NEW YORK STATE HISTORY.

The Hon. Horatio Seymour, Democratic candidate for
the Presidency at the last election, has addressed the
College of History at Cornell University, his topic being
" The History of New York Considered in Reference to
its Topography and Geography." The first settlers of our
State, he said, were Hollanders. They came from the
Netherlands when that land was one of the great Powers
and one of the bulwarks of civil and religious liberty. It
fought for that liberty during eighty long years ; fought
not for itself alone, but for every people. No nation
had a prouder history, or could boast of greater warriors,
statesmen, and scholars. The great principle at the base
of the Government was freedom, and in the spirit of free-
dom its sons founded their American colony. Fortunately
for us, they chose for their colonial enterprise the mouth
of the Hudson. Few other spots presented such
a picture of religious toleration as did the bay of New
York. Before the primeval forests were swept away
there might be found Hugenots on the lower end of Man-
hattan Island, Waldenses on Staten Island, Walloons
around Wallabout bay, and Swedes on the southern boun-
dary—men of many religions dwelling together in peace.
The Dutch, unlike the English, were fortunate in their
colonial agents, who were men able to exercise great
control over the Indians. Perhaps .no man in
our colonial period had a greater influence upon
the future of the continent than Peter Schuyler,
the ancestor of our great General Schuyler, and
a character who was comparatively little known.
It was to the Dutch that we owed the praise of Ran-
dolph, who said that in no other of the provinces was
there the same knowledge of government. Our State did
its full share in the Revolution, and after the Revolution
it furnished the founder of the two conflicting schools of
politics—Alexander Hamilton, who advocated a Federal
policy, and George Clinton, who established the States
Rights party, whose principles were, afterward adopted
and advocated by Jefferson. John Adams wrote to John
Jay that of all the Constitutions of the new States ours
was the ablest. This was a consequence of the fact that
at the outset the policy of the Hollander drew to our
shores men of all nationalities. It is an almost un-
paralleled incident that at the close of the Revolutionary
struggle the nine most prominent families of the State
represented nine different nations. A portion of these
might be mentioned. There were the Clintons of Irish
descent, and the Livingstons of Scotch : John Jay, our
great jurist, was of French Huguenot blood ; Schuyler
was a Hollander Herkimer, whose influence was so
great in the interior, was a low German ; Steuben, who
settled among us after his battle, was a Prussian ; and
Hamilton was of English lineage. They could all speak
the languages of the countries with which they were
connected. The diverse influence of our nation's early
colonists may be traced in the West. There every
teacher of a common school, every professor in a college,
comes more or less directly from New England. The same
is true of the men who direct the Western workshops.
But in the courts and the Legislature you will find New
Yorkers or the sons of New Yorkers. Our decisions are
their law and our constitution has been copied by every
north-western community.