all our relations and friends, that they should in time to come be forgetful of any injury done to us, or either of us, so that on both sides the discord and dissension (which were created by the Devil in the beginning) may with our ashes be buried in oblivion, never more to rise up for the trouble of posterity. All that for our dying comfort we can say concerning the point for which we are condemned, is to declare as our last words, before that God whom we hope before long to see, that our sole aim and object in the conduct of the government was to maintain the interest of our sovereign Lord and Lady and the reformed Protestant churches of these parts."

Leisler's honesty of purpose.

Concerning Leisler's essential integrity of purpose there can be little doubt. His methods were arbitrary and many of his acts tyrannical, and the bitter hatred felt for him had doubtless adequate cause. It has been the fashion with some writers 1 to treat him as a mere demagogue actuated by no other motive than vulgar ambition. But this theory does not explain his conduct. Insane as was his persistence after Ingoldsby's arrival, it is not reasonable to suppose that during the two years of his rule over New York he can ever have deliberately intended to resist King William and bring about a revolution. Nor can it for a moment be allowed, as has sometimes been insinuated, that the anti-Catholic panic was either got up by Leisler or used by him as a blind for concealing his real intentions. There can be no doubt, as we have already seen, that there was

1 Brodhead, for example, can see no good in Leisler.

plenty of apparent ground for the panic, or that Leisler's impulse in assuming the government was thoroughly honest. Unquestionably he believed himself, in holding New York against Papist conspirators, to be doing a great and needed service to his Protestant king; and when he found himself simply ignored and set aside without a word, his mind was confronted with a fact too deep for him to fathom. There is something very pathetic in his utter inability to grasp the fact that there was nowhere a missive from the king addressed to him by name.

Had things gone as Leisler hoped and expected, the aristocratic party and the friends of Andros and Tories like Dudley, and all who had accepted honours or office from James II., would have been snubbed by the new king, while his own prompt action in saving New York would have been cordially recognized by making him gov- His motives.

ernor or at least a member of the coun

cil, and thus the cause of democracy would be furthered and helped. Thenceforth the name of Leisler would be inseparably associated with the firm establishment of representative government and the first triumph of democracy in the province of New York. In this dream Leisler was mistaken because he totally misconceived so many essential facts in the case, but the kind of ambition which it discloses is not a vulgar kind or such as to make it proper to stamp him with the name of demagogue. Even as it is, even in spite of his blunders and his failure, in spite of the violence and fanaticism which stain his record, Leisler stands

as one of the early representatives of ideas since recognized as wholesome and statesmanlike. Moreover, the name of the man who called together the first Congress of American colonies must always be pronounced with respect.

The execu

advised.

As for the execution of Leisler and Milborne, it was of course entirely legal. They had caused a wanton loss of life while resisting the king's commissioned officers, and there was no court of that day, as there is no court of the present day, which would not regard such an offence as tion was ill- properly punishable with death. Nevertheless it was afterwards generally admitted that the execution was a mistake. It made martyrs of the two victims. Increase Mather declared that they were "barbarously murdered," and there were many in New York who said the same. Four years afterward Parliament reversed the attainder against Leisler and Milborne, and their estates were restored to their families. But the legacy of hatred remained, and the spirit of dissension so earnestly deprecated in Leisler's dying speech, far from being buried in oblivion with his ashes, renewed its life from year to year, and it was long before it ceased to vex men's minds.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CITADEL OF AMERICA.

Command

ing position and Quaker

of the Dutch

colonies.

WHETHER from a commercial or a military point of view, the Dutch and Quaker colonies occupied the most commanding position in North America. It is that part of the continent which sends streams flowing in divergent courses into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Gulf of Mexico. Through deep chasms in the Alleghanies, which run irregularly across it, those superb rivers, the Hudson, Delaware, and Susquehanna, flow into the Atlantic; while the Mohawk, coming from the west, serves to join the valley of the Hudson with the Great Lakes; and in like manner the lovely Juniata, rushing down to join the Susquehanna, has its head-waters not far from the spot where the currents of the Alleghany and Monongahela unite to form the Ohio. With such pathways in every direction, whether for peace or for war, the New Netherland (curious misnomer for a region so mountainous) commanded the continent; and could the Dutch settlement at Manhattan have been adequately supported, it might have threatened or prevented the ascendency of England in the New World. It was partly owing to this advantage of position that the League of the

VOL. II.

Iroquois was enabled to domineer over the greater part of the country between the Atlantic and the Mississippi; and through the divergent river valleys and across the chain of mighty fresh-water seas those ferocious but long-headed barbarians in their bark canoes established those lines of trade which modern civilization, with its steamboat and railway, has simply adopted and improved. For a century after its conquest by the English, New York, with the western mountains of Pennsylvania, served as a military bulwark for New England and for the southern colonies. The hardest fighting done in the War of Independence was the struggle for the possession of this vantage-ground; and in the second war with England the brilliant victories of Perry and Macdonough maintained on Lakes Erie and Champlain the sanctity of the citadel of America.

The war

It was not, however, until the great immigration of Presbyterians from Ireland and the crossing of Lake Erie by the French that the Pennsylvania frontier acquired its military significance. with France. At the period with which we are dealing in the present volume, the vital point to be defended in the citadel was the stretch of lakes and woodlands between Albany and Montreal. The upper Connecticut valley and the Maine frontier also presented opportunities to a watchful enemy. The danger was sufficiently constant to be an important factor in the policy of all the northern colonies; in New York it was often the dominant factor. Of the twenty-five years which intervened between the accession of William and Mary and