Chapter 8
Work site, new governor’s residence
New Amsterdam
October 18, 1636
Wolfert Dijkstra watched as Guss Teuling placed the charge and attached the fuse. The fuses were quite good, and though electrical ignition would be better, copper wire was still far too expensive to waste. But good quality black powder was available and up-timer knowledge allowed something close to a shaped charge.
After setting the fuse, and then repeating the process, Wolfert and Guss retreated to the place where the measured fuses connected. Then, after Wolfert retreated behind the berm they had thrown up, Guss lit the master fuse and joined him. They sat there, looking at Guss’ pocket watch until the fuses burned down. Then there was a series of explosions rather than one single blast, and the director-general’s former residence collapsed into a pile of rubble, and the Fresno scrapers moved in.
Wolfert regretted using the explosives, but not very much. This wasn’t Europe, after all, but America. The whole continent was full of trees. Still, it felt wasteful. But they didn’t have the time to tear the building down by hand, not if they were going to start on the basement before the hard freeze set in. Besides, it wasn’t going to waste. It was going to be charcoaled to use as fuel for steam engines and forges.
Brechtje’s boarding house,
temporary Government House
Adam Olearius heard the explosions, because the future site of Government House wasn’t too far from Brechtje’s boarding house. But he paid it little attention, because he was looking at a large sheet of paper with considerable misgivings. Not because he disapproved, but because he knew this proclamation was going to be unpopular. It wouldn’t affect just the slaves in New Amsterdam. There were slaves all through the New Netherlands, growing crops, and managing livestock for the patroons.
This was a royal proclamation. And right there at the top was the title in Dutch. “Emancipation Proclamation.”
It went on to describe how the slaves and half slaves were to be freed. First, they would be sold to the crown at a set price that was fairly close to the recorded prices for slaves over the last few years. Then they would be manumitted by the king in the Low Countries. At that point, they were free to work for whomever was willing to pay them. The proclamation didn’t include indentured servants, because the indentured servants presumably entered into their indenture voluntarily in exchange for money or passage to the New World.
It gave the present slave owners until December 1 to sell their slaves to the government. Thereafter, all persons held as slaves or half slaves were to be freed from bondage, in the name of Jesus and by the Act of the King.
That didn’t give the slave owners a lot of time to complain. That was deliberate on Adam’s part. Because of the rapid growth of the colony—some of it stimulated by the projects that Adam himself would be starting—labor costs were going to go through the roof. In fact, that had already started. The price of a slave was a third again what it had been the previous year, and it would go up even more if allowed. Which, of course, was the reason for the last clause in the proclamation:
The sale of slaves to anyone but the government is henceforth prohibited. The export of slaves and half slaves from the New Netherlands is also prohibited.
There were over five thousand copies of this proclamation in the supplies. Almost enough, they had thought when they left, to give a copy to every person in New Amsterdam. They were all copies. The original, on vellum, signed by the king and Frederik Hendrik, and stamped with the Royal Seal of the Low Countries, along with a proclamation that officially made slavery illegal in the Netherlands itself, was in Brussels, on display in the palace in a fancy wooden case with a plate glass top. Or at least, it ought to be by now. They would know once they got the transatlantic radio up and running.
There were two big radios in their gear, one for the directional transatlantic communication between New Amsterdam and Amsterdam, and hence into the radio communications network that tied the Low Countries together and connected them to the USE.
And the broadcast radio, which, along with cheat sheets for building crystal sets, would allow proclamations like the one in Adam’s hand to be sent out over the airwaves to all the subjects of King Fernando in the New Netherlands. Neither of those radios was ready yet, much less the thousands of crystal sets needed to hear the broadcasts.
Adam put away his distractions and added the sheet to the pile on his desk. “Very well,” he said to his secretary, Jaco van Vliet. “See to the distribution, and batten down the hatches.”
Then he went on to the next thing. The judicial system in the New Netherlands was a disaster waiting to happen. Established in 1625 and superseded on Adam’s arrival, it was based on a contract between the Dutch West India Company and the colonists who were here at the time. The local board of directors was both the legislature and the court, and handled appeals by locals from local magistrates. For now, all Adam could do was confirm, on an interim basis, the current magistrates, making them responsible to the crown instead of the company. He did make the appointments provisional, at least until he got to know the magistrates.
At the moment, with the population growing so fast and the former Director-General having made his appointment on the basis of who paid the biggest bribe, Adam was unwilling to make permanent appointments.
He had department heads that he’d brought with him, Attorney General, Chief of Sanitation, Customs and Levies, all the important departments, but they had no staff yet, and Adam’s biggest problem was he didn’t know who to trust.
* * *
Two doors down, Anne was sitting with Brechtje, trying to figure out where to set up her clinic. Brechtje was pretty insistent that she not set it up in the boarding house. “I lost my husband and child to the pox. I’ll not lose anyone else.” Brechtje took a breath and added, “I’ll help you find a place, but not here.”
“All right,” Anne agreed. She already knew that Wolfert had lost his wife and last child in childbirth. “We need a solid building, and something that can be cleaned and kept clean. Cleanliness may or may not be next to godliness, but dirty is certainly next to dead in this day and age.”
Then they got into particulars.
October 19, 1636
Adam’s secretary knocked on the door to the room he was using as an office. It was next door to the tavern room. When he looked up, Jaco said, “Dominie Everardus Bogardus is here to see you.”
“Show him in,” Adam agreed, curiously. As of their arrival, there were several reverends in the New Netherlands, but Bogardus was one of the first to come here.
The man shown in was middling tall, and starting to put on a bit of weight. Adam, from the rumors, knew he was not one to back down when faced with obstinate officials.
Bogardus bowed, but not like he had any practice doing so, then straightened and said, “I thank the Good Lord for showing His Majesty, the king in the Low Countries, that slavery is against the will of God.”
Adam figured that the one who showed King Fernando that was Rebecca Abrabanel, but he wasn’t going to argue. “Have a seat, Dominie,” he said, waving to one of the chairs in front of his new up- time-designed desk. “I am pleased and a bit surprised to hear that you approve. Many of the patroons seem less than thrilled by His Majesty’s decree.”
“Thieves”—Bogardus waved a hand dismissing all the complainers—“who cry they are being robbed when the lives they stole are returned to their rightful owners.”
“I tend to agree,” Adam said. “There aren’t a great many black people in Europe, but I have met Doctor Nichols, and the notion of him being denied the opportunity to become a doctor seems much worse than theft.”
“What I don’t understand, Governor, is why His Majesty is choosing to pay the thieves, ransoming the victims of this abomination and filling the coffers of its perpetrators.”
“I agree again, and so does His Majesty, but we live in the world of ‘realpolitik.’” Adam used the Amideutsch word and waited to see if Bogardus would understand or need an explanation.
Bogardus nodded and said, “I have read both Rebecca Abrabanel’s A Call to Arms and Scalia’s book.
I incline toward her view of the situation.”
Adam, who himself preferred Scalia’s approach to Rebecca’s, nevertheless nodded. Anne, after all, leaned to Rebecca’s approach. “It’s a question of what even a king can do. Especially a king whose army is three thousand miles of ocean away. In effect, His Majesty had to choose between freeing the slaves and punishing the slave owners. He didn’t have enough force at hand to do both. Sometimes throwing money at a problem is a necessary part of the solution.”
Again Bogardus nodded. “I understand. What can you tell me about His Majesty’s position on religion? I know he is Catholic, but is he going to attempt to impose his popery on us here?”
“No. His Majesty isn’t imposing Catholicism, even on those parts of the Low Countries that are Protestant. Instead, religious toleration is the law in all of the Low Countries and all of her colonies. You will not be forced to attend Catholic services or Lutheran services, but neither may you force a Catholic or a Lutheran to attend yours. His Majesty does support the Catholic Church, as Frederik Hendrik supports the Dutch Reformed Church. Jews may practice their faith in safety in the Low Countries in both those parts that were Catholic and Protestant before the treaty that ended the siege of Amsterdam and reunited the Low Countries was signed.”
Bogardus didn’t seem all that pleased with this revelation, but he did nod again. “While popery hasn’t until now been legal here, it has been tolerated in the occasional visitor.”
“I’m afraid that from now on, it’s going to be more than toleration of the occasional visitor, Dominie Bogardus. Several of our party are Catholic, and we have a Catholic priest with us.”
“Why would you do such a foolish thing?”
“Both the king and queen are Catholic. And while they are now willing to accept religious toleration in the hope of peace, they aren’t willing to let their Catholic subjects be treated with less toleration than anyone else.”
They talked for almost an hour, and found themselves in agreement about a lot, disagreement about some, and parted on cordial terms, with Adam promising to attend at least the next Sunday’s services.
Dominie Bogardus’ church
October 23, 1636
Adam and Anne sat in the front pew of Dominie Bogardus’ church, and Anne was pleased to see that a fair portion of the congregation was black. Bogardus had approached Adam the day after the Emancipation Proclamation was spread, thanked him and the king for their piety in freeing the slaves, and immediately invited them to attend Sunday services.
Adam reported that Everardus Bogardus was a logical and effective thinker, if a bit more certain of his righteousness than Adam would prefer.
The sermon began, and it was on the Good Samaritan and religious toleration, with King Fernando in the role of the Good Samaritan, the person lost to the true faith, but still a servant of God. He wasn’t giving an inch on the notion that there might be something true or of value in the Catholic Church, but at the same time he wasn’t pushing for their expulsion. Rather, he was exhorting his fellow Calvinists to act as good examples, to show them the proper path by example, rather than by coercion. And insisting that the religious wars that had ripped across Europe didn’t belong in this new land. “Let America, in this history as well as that other, be the beacon of freedom and religious toleration for all the world.”
It was a good and rousing sermon and effectively endorsed the new government, even if the king was a papist.
* * *
After they left the church, Anne said to her husband: “One thing I’ve really been surprised by since we arrived in New Amsterdam is how many black people live here. They must be at least one quarter of the population. From the little I remember from my high school history classes, enslaved Africans didn’t start arriving in North America in any numbers until later in the century.”
“That’s an effect of the Ring of Fire, I think. Hundreds have arrived just in the last couple of years because of the expansion of New Amsterdam. That’s been largely driven by the emigration of disgruntled Counter-Remonstrants from the reunited Low Countries.”
“Are there that many of them here now? A lot of the people I’ve met don’t seem to be especially concerned about the new political . . . what do I call it? Dispensation, I guess.”
Adam shrugged. “Many of them aren’t, perhaps even a majority. The expansion of the city driven by the Counter-Remonstrants also attracts other people—many of whom aren’t even Dutch. Prosperity recognizes neither creed nor color, you might say.”
Anne was frowning. “What’s your sense of how well the abolition of slavery will go?”
“Too early to tell for sure, but I’m optimistic. One advantage we have is that the only major issue is economic. I’ve read quite a bit on the history of the America you came from, and the sort of savage and brutal racial animosity that existed there just isn’t present here.”
“No, I’ve noticed that. Look at Eduart and Nailah, for instance.” She was still frowning, though. “But that’s a not yet situation. If slavery continues much longer, you’ll see that vicious racism come to life. It’s the only way slave owners can keep justifying themselves.”
“Quite true.” He smiled at his wife. “But I think that will be another effect of the Ring of Fire—a much shorter lifespan for slavery.”
“It’s not called the Ring of Fire for nothing,” said Anne darkly.
Anne’s future hospital
October 24, 1636
Anne looked at the building. It was wood, rough planking filled in with daub and whitewashed. It had a wood-shingle roof, a fireplace, and a wooden floor. It would take some work.
She turned to look at Wolfert. He had a team at the former Director-General’s residence, but what they were doing right now was mostly digging a big hole, so Wolfert’s presence wasn’t needed there.
“What do you think it needs?” Anne asked him.
“It depends on you. Are you still insistent on having your clothes and bedding washed here?”
“Yes, at least for now,” Anne said. “I know you want Nailah to get the contract, but sterilization is important in this. And that means really hot water and or a sterilizing agent like strong lye soap, and neither of those things goes well with washing by hand.”
Wolfert’s former half slave, Nailah, was now a free woman, and employed by Wolfert as the nanny for his two children. Wolfert had taken the cash that he received for her contract and handed it to her as an advance on wages. She had handed it back to the clerk as a deposit in her Wisselbank account. She and her fiancé were saving for their own place.
She was also the washerwoman for the neighborhood, and wanted to become the washerwoman for the hospital.
“The washing machines you want her to use are expensive.”
Anne was okay with that, except that she didn’t want anyone doing hand-in-tub washing of the linens for the hospital. She wanted them machine-washed and rinsed in sterile water. And in New Amsterdam in 1636, that meant boiled water. Wolfert was right. Boiling that much water was expensive in fuel. There were other methods that would be used in other places, but for the hospital where you were going to have a lot of sick people crowded together, boiling was what Anne wanted. And she wanted it done right here in the hospital, where the cleaning staff would be less tempted to skimp on fuel and where the sheets, gowns, and so on would be less likely to get dirty on the trip from cleaning room to bed.
“I know, Wolfert, but a hospital needs sterilization more than just about any place else. And that includes linens.”
“In that case, we will need a cistern to hold water for the piping . . . ”
They talked about the design and function of the hospital, the installations of screens on the windows so that they wouldn’t have to deal with flies in the summer, and all the rest.
He pronounced that she could start using the place in another week, but only part of it at first. He would still have crews working on the rest of it for a while.
Brechtje’s boarding house,
temporary Government House
October 26, 1636
Eduart Jansen walked over to the table where the soldiers sat, still not at all certain about this. When he mentioned the possibility to Nailah, she’d been ambivalent. The governor’s guards were hiring and while Wolfert Dijkstra was a decent boss, the truth was that day labor on a construction site didn’t pay all that well. And it paid even worse in winter when half the time they couldn’t work because it was snowing or sleeting, or the ground was frozen.
But a soldier got regular pay every month. Put that together with what Nailah was already getting as the nanny for Mister Dijkstra’s kids, and they could get married now.
Nailah liked the idea of getting married now but wasn’t thrilled with the idea that he might get shot.
Sergeant van der Molen was seated at a long table with a dozen other soldiers. The soldiers ate in shifts so as not to overburden the cook. And in spite of that, Mistress Brechtje Mulder had hired another cook and a maid. He looked up as Eduart approached. “What do you need?”
“I was . . . well . . . I was thinking about joining the Governor’s Guards.”
The sergeant looked him up and down, sniffed and said, “Maybe. The Governor’s Guards is an elite unit, lad. We don’t take just anyone. Every man of us is literate and most of us have a second skill.”
It was true, Eduart knew that. And he was literate. Well, he could read well enough, though his writing wasn’t all that great. “I can read. I read the cheat sheets to the other workmen on the site sometimes.”
“That’s good. Are you free for some testing?”
That was the reason he was here. The rain meant that he couldn’t work today. “I can take your tests,” Eduart affirmed.
"p7"The rest of the day he spent being tested. His reading, his writing, obeying instructions, loading and firing the Dutch rifles. Which he got to do standing in the rain and lying in the mud north of town. It wasn’t a fun day. The sergeants and Captain de Kuiper made their position clear. They were testing a lot of things, but the most important of them all was “could he take it.”“It” being a combination of things: fear, cold, mud, physical and mental abuse, and obeying orders that made no sense without complaint.
They also wanted to know why he was interested in joining, and what his particular religion was. On finding out that he was a Gomarist, the sergeant shouted in his face that he was a Roman Catholic, and that Eduart should stay home and live as long as he could, because as a heretic he was going to hell.
Captain de Kuiper then informed him that he was a Lutheran, and both of them were going to hell, the sergeant for being a Catholic and Eduart for being a Calvinist. Which particular brand of Calvinist mattering not at all, since they were all going to hell. All of this being shouted in his face while he stood at attention unable to speak.
They asked him if he could take orders from a Catholic, a Lutheran, a Jew, or even an out-and-out heathen if they were put in command over him.
He could. Nailah was a Christian now, but she still respected her tribal gods from before she was taken as a slave. And Eduart couldn’t believe in, much less follow, a God who would lock Nailah out of heaven.
Almost surprisingly, Eduart passed the tests.
* * *
That evening at dinner, Eduart’s application to join the Governor’s Guards came up. By now it was customary for Adam, Anne, and a varying group of others to have dinner and discuss the happenings of the day.
Today it was Captain Johan de Kuiper, Sergeant Peter van der Molen and Lady Maria Amilia Alaveres.
“Is he handsome?” Amilia asked.
Anne rolled her eyes, and Amilia giggled. Amilia possessed an open, honest, and unapologetic interest in the opposite sex. It was so far an academic interest, because she was fully aware of the economic, and even political, value of her virginity.
“I’m afraid he’s taken,” Sergeant van der Molen said. “In fact, his expressed reason for wanting to join our little band is that the regular pay will mean he and his girl Nailah can get married.”
“That doesn’t sound Dutch?” Anne asked. “It’s African. Some sort of a tribal name.”
“You mean she’s black?”
“She’s Wolfert Dijkstra’s nanny. I saw her when he brought her in a day or so after you announced the Emancipation Proclamation. She’s darker than Sharon Nichols.”
“And Eduart Jansen?”
“A blond lad, with blue eyes.”
Anne wasn’t surprised. The dehumanization of Africans had not always been true, nor had it happened all at once or at the same rate everywhere. It was a product of hundreds of years of slavery and occurred most strongly where the slaves were treated most harshly. It was, in cold hard fact, a conscious and intentional lie, meant to answer the question, “How can you treat people this way?” by the claim that they weren’t people to begin with.
Here in New Amsterdam, where slavery was just getting started and slaves weren’t treated much worse than indentured servants, it was barely there at all. There was quite a bit of racial intermarriage, in fact.
“I’m less concerned with why he’s interested in joining,” Adam said, “than I am in why you’re considering taking him.”
“Because there are a lot more Gomarists than we thought were going to be here. After His Majesty invested Amsterdam . . . well, few believed he was going to be as gentle on the Protestants as he promised.” He looked over at his sergeant and added, “After all, who can trust the word of a Catholic when they can just buy an indulgence for all their lying?”
Lady Maria Amilia Alaveres stuck her tongue out at him.
“I don’t let it bother me, Your Ladyship,” said Sergeant van der Molen. “After all, he’s only a Lutheran,” He looked at Adam. “No offense, Governor.”
“If you two will put aside your ongoing attempt to restart the religious wars that Europe has inflicted on itself these last hundred and more years, I want to know more about the military situation here,” Adam said.
“Yes, sir. Well, with all the concern over how the Cardinal-Infante was going to treat the Protestants, plus the fact that a lot of the local Calvinists were less than thrilled to have a Catholic king, there were suddenly a lot more Dutchmen willing to take the risk of colonization. They wanted a nice, big ocean between them and the Cardinal-Infante and King Philip of Spain.
“Also, by then the story of America rebelling against England in that other history was common, if rather distorted, knowledge. So there was the notion that with an ocean between them and the Catholics, they could start a new republic conceived in Calvinism and dedicated to the proposition that all the nasty Catholics and Lutherans were too far away to do anything about it.
“A surprising number of the newly arrived Calvinists, mostly the Gomarists, came here with the intent that when they were strong enough, they would repeat the Dutch rebellion, but this time— with a whole ocean between them and Madrid—they would win. So not only are there more people here than we thought, but they are of—” He paused, looking for just the right phrase. “—a more boisterous nature.”
His phrasing didn’t help. They all knew that both the Dutch Revolution and the American Revolution had won in Anne’s timeline. And they were out here with no more than fifty soldiers and about the same number of officials and technicians, looking at a colony that was at least four times the size they’d been expecting, and twice as likely to rebel as they’d thought.
“But isn’t this lad a Gomarist himself?” Amilia asked. The captain nodded.
“Can we trust him?” Adam asked.
“I think so, sir,” Captain de Kuiper said. “He seems truly in love with his girl, and he’s admitted that while nominally a Christian, she’s about half pagan in her actual beliefs. I don’t think he’s all that likely to be spying for the revolutionaries.
“And he’s a bright enough lad, but straightforward in his thinking. Not subtle, if you know what I mean.”
“Good enough,” Adam said. “The fact that he’s a Calvinist and, especially, a Gomarist, will help as long as he’s loyal. But keep an eye on him, because if things are as bad as you’re suggesting, the revolutionaries are going to approach him before long.”
“And we should attend the wedding,” Amilia said.
By now Anne was moderately politically astute, but Amilia had grown up in that world and she breathed it with every breath.
Bogardus’ church
October 29, 1636
Saturday was still cloudy with intermittent rain, so Wolfert wasn’t losing a construction day by letting his crews off for the wedding.
The church was packed, and the groom was in his brand-new uniform. The bride was in her best clothes, which were none too good, but Nailah was unwilling to spend money that might be needed later on a fancy dress that would only be used once. And there was no father of the bride to foot the bill for the wedding.
Wolfert did pay Bogardus’ fee and rental on the church building, and he gave the bride away.
It was a lovely ceremony, attended by soldiers and slaves, as well as the new royal governor and his lady. There were full slaves, half slaves and those already manumitted; soldiers, sailors, crafters, and a marked absence of patroons for a wedding that brought out the governor.
It was one more shot across the bow of the patroons, who wanted even at this very early date to categorize Africans as “not people,” so they wouldn’t have to treat them as people.
But for all that, for Eduart and Nailah it was a day to look into one another’s eyes and swear undying love each for the other. As they said their vows and accepted Dominie Everardus Bogardus’ blessings upon their union, the politics faded away to nothing and only the glow of their love shone in the dim and cloudy day.