Torn to bits, read anyway

What happened

At the end of August 1664 an English fleet carrying a thousand men anchored off New Amsterdam, against Stuyvesant's 150 soldiers and 250 citizens under arms, and Colonel Richard Nicolls demanded the town. On Tuesday morning, 2 September, Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut came ashore with a letter from Nicolls promising that the Dutch could keep their trade and come and settle freely under the English king. Director General Peter Stuyvesant opened it before his council and the burgomasters in the fort. They wanted it read to the people gathering outside, and he refused. Fiske writes that he "flew into a rage and tore the letter into small pieces." Several magistrates walked out in offense. Nicholas Bayard, a clerk of twenty, gathered the fragments, pieced them together and made a true copy. The workmen left the palisades, hurried to the Stadt-Huys and demanded the letter, and Stuyvesant gave way. The copy was read out, the people called for surrender, and Stuyvesant's own son signed the remonstrance asking him to yield. On 7 September he surrendered New Amsterdam without a fight. Rothbard writes that the people "were intelligent enough to regard their lives and liberties more highly than they did a remote and artificial patriotism" (CiL, p. 313). After a generation of Company rule under Kieft and Stuyvesant, they were offered liberty by the enemy at the gate, and they took it.