Part 10

Breuckelen was equally fortunate in a schoolmaster—Carel de Beauvois—a cultured French Protestant from Leyden, who was appointed in Breuckelen in 1661. Besides his duties, in the church, of precentor and Scripture reader, it was stipulated that:

“He shall properly, diligently, and industriously attend to the school, instill in the minds of the young the fear of the Lord, and set them a good example; to open the school with prayer and close with a Psalm, also to exercise the scholars in the questions in the _groat regulen_ of the Rev. pious and learned father Do. Johannes Megapolensis, Minister of the gospel in N. Amsterdam.”

Here was a hamlet of but thirty-one families who were not satisfied until they could listen to the ablest preaching of the day, and were also favored with superior educational facilities.

Meanwhile the Dutch order was changing. The neighboring village of Gravesend was being settled by the English. From Connecticut came Quakers, who sowed the seeds of non-conformity and inculcated a new and strange doctrine, that taxes should not be levied to maintain the clergy, a principle especially attractive to those whose tithes were paid with a grudging hand.

[Illustration: BUSHWICK TOWN-HOUSE AND CHURCH, 1800.]

At the end of the Dutch régime there were four or five little scattered hamlets within the present borough. The Wallabout had the larger French and Huguenot population. Eastward the English settlers were coming into farming competition with their Dutch neighbors.

There was no great alarm or disappointment manifested on Long Island when on a morning in August, 1664, a British fleet was found to have assembled in the Narrows. Colonial militia under the British flag from New England came through the Sound and encamped on the Breuckelen shore. On September 8, 1664, New Amsterdam yielded, and Governor Nicolls raised the flag of Great Britain on the fort. Then New Amsterdam became New York; Long Island and Staten Island, and probably part of Westchester County, were made an English “shire,” and Breuckelen, after some changes of spelling, was known as “Brooklyn in the West Riding of Yorkshire.”

This settlement of Dutch and Huguenots, maintained under the Colonial government of New Amsterdam, in the score of years before the British conquest had acquired a distinctive character. Contrary to a prevalent opinion, these first Dutch settlements, in a sound and vigorous sense, were essentially democratic. In the absence of class privileges—the spirit to refer all questions to the supreme consideration of the general welfare; to subordinate individual claims to the rights and advantage of the public—Breuckelen and Vliessingen (Flushing) compared favorably in civic life with contemporary villages in New England. As Holland had been dyked against the sea by close, unremitting, and intimate co-operation—a spirit further developed in the protracted struggle for independence—so the smaller Dutch colonies in New York, while they kept their agricultural character, retained a collective rather than an individual ideal, which tended to exclude none from equal social opportunities. They never had to struggle with the incubus of a modified feudalism, which, though inevitably breaking up, was leaving its impress of regard for rank and class privilege in the American colonies of British origin.

Colonial life under British rule was marked by more rigid laws as the communities grew. The careful protection of common-lands was strictly attended to, especially the town forests of Brooklyn against the encroachment of those who would surreptitiously cut away the timber. Trustees of the common woodlands were appointed; but in the year 1702 these lands were equitably divided and all allotted to each householder in Brooklyn to insure their better protection.

Gradually the English language was spoken in the churches and upon ceremonious occasions. A waggish tale of Domine Schoonmaker of Flatbush relates his difficulties in a wedding service. Fluent and eloquent in his mother tongue, he essayed the ceremony in English, with the manner, gestures, and all the courteous dignity of the old school. His English failed him at the very close of the service. Conscious of the literalness of his extemporized translation of the formula, he finished with a bow, adding with solemnity and modulated emphasis, “I pronounce you two to be _one beef_.”

English customs gradually came in vogue. More aristocratic usages superseded the democracy of the Dutch settlers. Slavery existed in Brooklyn as in New York. Brick and stone buildings arose along Fulton Street. Twice, in 1745 and 1752, the Colonial legislature of the Province met in Brooklyn, on account of the prevalence of smallpox in New York.

The rural character of the town is well illustrated by an event in 1759. A large bear then passed along the farms in South Brooklyn, and being pursued took to the water near Red Hook, where he was shot from a boat.

The ethics of 1774 approved the aid of lotteries to build an orthodox church in Brooklyn, which the public were assured should be of no doubtful laxity, but a church conformable to the discipline of the Church of England, and under the patronage of Trinity Church, New York.

In the matter of amusements in 1774, New Yorkers came to Brooklyn for many of their sports. Here horse-races were run. In that year an ambitious innkeeper on “Tower Hill”—a site along the present Columbia Heights between Middagh and Cranberry Streets—announced that there would be a _bull baited_ there every Thursday afternoon.

At the outbreak of the Revolution, Brooklyn numbered between three and four thousand persons grouped in four neighborhoods. There were then three ferries to New York. At the old (Fulton) ferry was a famous tavern which figured often in the times of British occupation. The two principal villages were then called Brooklyn-church and Brooklyn-ferry.

At the first movements of the Patriot party in New England the people of Kings County were little stirred. Suffolk County, at the eastern end of Long Island, more readily responded to the first news from Massachusetts. After the battle of Lexington, Brooklynites assembled and passed resolutions and elected delegates to the Provincial Congress.

The modern visitor to the Borough of Brooklyn has difficulty to realize that what is now densely built up, and covered by grading and asphalt, marks the battle-ground of one of the greatest engagements of the Revolution. The houses of Charlestown cover the battle-ground of Bunker Hill, but that was a struggle over a single redoubt, while Brooklyn is built upon a line of battle nearly three miles in length. In the Civil War, Northern people recall the great disaster of the first battle of Bull Run, fought with modern armies and improved weapons. Yet in that all-day conflict, with the disastrous rout and pursuit, the Union loss in killed, wounded and prisoners probably was not as great numerically as the loss suffered by the American forces in the half-day of fierce fighting in Brooklyn. The Federal forces at Bull Run suffered in killed, wounded, and missing 2896, while the patriot losses in this, the first pitched battle of the Revolution, were estimated at 3300 by the British, of whom 1097 were prisoners (three being generals); and late American historians are inclined to accept this estimate as approximately correct.

In the summer of 1776, a formidable fleet assembled in the lower Bay of New York. These vessels bore from Nova Scotia the armies that had evacuated Boston, and another fleet of nine war vessels and thirty-five transports brought in the forces under Clinton that had been repulsed in the attack on Fort Moultrie at Charleston. At last, on the 12th of August arrived the Hessian forces in eighty-two transport-ships guarded by six war vessels. On board were 7800 Hessians and 1000 English guards.

The observer at the Narrows must have daily beheld a naval pageant such as can no more be seen in modern warfare. From the first distant glimpse of the line of sails standing in for Sandy Hook, until they finally manœuvred to their crowded anchorage by Staten Island, the effect was most picturesque. It was not a fleet of dark, sullen sea-dogs, with only an inconspicuous hull built to carry a destructive armament. The coloring of these vessels against the green background of Staten Island in the olden days of oak and hemp would have delighted a painter. The upper works outside were sometimes dark blue or canary yellow, surmounted by waving lines of gilt. Below were black streaks running fore and aft near the water-line; as the ships slowly lifted in a seaway, they disclosed a white under-surface that must have made an admirable target for the opposing gunner. The grand air of the frigates was further enhanced by elaborate ornamentation with emblematic devices about the carved figure-head, and heavy gilded scrollwork above the stern-lights, and high stern-gallery. From the bluffs along the Narrows, the view down upon the decks would show that all inboard surfaces, even the gun-carriages and the inner side of portholes, were painted blood-red—so as not to have the carnage of battle too much _en évidence_.

At one time over four hundred transports, guarded by thirty-seven men-of-war, had gathered. Lord Howe on the land, and his brother, Admiral Howe, on the sea were in joint command.

[Illustration: SECTION OF MAP OF BROOKLYN, 1776.]

The patriot forces had carefully entrenched a line of defensive works, laid out by General Nathaniel Greene. The good judgment with which these forts were placed was attested by the deliberate adoption of almost the same line of redoubts and forts in the subsequent defences of Brooklyn by the engineers in the campaign of 1814, when Brooklyn was again prepared to resist British attack.

The fortifications of Brooklyn in 1776 extended in an irregular line from Fort Defiance at Red Hook opposite Governor’s Island across to Fort Box on Bergen’s Hill near the corner of Court Street and First Place. At the junction of Clinton and Atlantic Streets, or a little easterly, was a steep conical hill called the Ponkiesburgh, and on top, surmounting a line of spiral trenches, a redoubt, called Corkscrew Fort. Between Atlantic, Pacific, Nevins, and Bond Streets was a redoubt mounting five guns called Fort Greene. Thence the line ran zigzag across the present Fulton Street, to the west of the junction of Flatbush and Fulton Avenues, along the hill slope to Fort Putnam, on the eminence now called Fort Greene Park, a commanding height where were mounted five guns. The number of guns mounted upon the works from Fort Putnam to Fort Defiance was thirty-five—mainly eighteen-pounders—an armament in part captured from Ticonderoga.

[Illustration: BROWER’S MILL, GOWANUS.

THE YELLOW MILL IS SEEN IN THE DISTANCE.]

From this fort the line extended northwesterly to a spring at the verge of the Wallabout, near the corner of Flushing and Portland Avenues. This interior line of defence was nearly two miles long. Between these forts were lines of trenches further defended by trees and sharpened stakes, forming an abatis, in the construction of which the Continental woodsmen were always proficient. Within this line of defence was Fort Stirling, which was back near Columbia Heights.

It is difficult after a century of grading and building to conceive that an extensive morass then covered nearly all the lands south of the present Hamilton Avenue, save about the small island height at Red Hook. Gowanus, with several large ponds raised by Brower’s Mill-dam, flooded and made impassable nearly all the area extending from Fourth Avenue to Smith Street. This was crossed by a narrow causeway along Freeke’s Mill-pond. On the higher lands beyond, extending from Greenwood along Prospect Park towards East New York, were dense woodlands, that were only practicable for an advancing army by certain passes or narrow wood-roads. The principal route from the Narrows to Brooklyn was along the site of Third Avenue by a good road then known as the Shore Road.

The battle of August 27, 1776, was fought almost entirely outside this line of fortifications. Knowing that the British forces had been moving towards Brooklyn from the Narrows, General Putnam had posted troops in detachments in order to check the hostile columns as they should come through the wood-roads and passes. It was natural to expect the principal British advance by the Shore Road, as there they would be at all times within supporting distance of the fleet.

On August 26th the Hessians under de Heister had occupied Flatbush, and Lord Cornwallis had reached nearly to Flatlands.

In the forenoon of the 27th, Stirling commanded the patriot right, extending from the shore near the foot of Twenty-third Street up Greenwood Heights about to the corner of Fifth Avenue and Third Street. This position was to repel the expected attack by the route of the Shore Road. Sullivan commanded the centre, which was an irregular congeries of militia posted along the summits of hills in Prospect Park and across the Flatbush Road. Colonel Miles with the 1st Pennsylvania regiment occupied the hills near the Clove Road to the south of Bedford, with some Connecticut levies continuing the line still further eastward. Instead of a co-ordinated supporting line of battle, these dispositions were intended as little more than a body of skirmishers, too widely strung-out to be opposed to an actual attack.

The beginning of a movement of British troops at daylight on the Shore Road, and the evident efforts of the fleet to sail up the Bay, which the light wind and ebb tide prevented, indicated that the hardest fighting would be by the right under Stirling. The entire patriot force inside and without the entrenchments was 5500. The British force was over 16,000 men. While the troops were facing each other along this position, a strong flanking column under Sir Henry Clinton, with Lord Howe the commander-in-chief, had stealthily marched from Flatbush to East New York, during the night, and had followed a sunken road through the present Cemetery of the Evergreens, called the Jamaica Pass. This was about five miles to the east of Sullivan’s position. Before daylight, at about a mile from the Pass, the column halted and sent forward a force which captured the American patrol and officers, and soon after a detachment secured the Pass. The light infantry advanced at the first appearance of day, and occupied the heights of Bushwick, followed by the guards with the field-pieces under Lord Percy, and the 49th regiment with four guns and the baggage brought up the rear.

After breakfasting, the flanking column marched along the turnpike to Bedford, where they arrived at half-past eight o’clock; thence they advanced along the rear of Miles’s troops, who were unconscious that they were being surrounded.

Fearfully outnumbered as they were, the Americans were now attacked in front by the Hessians advancing from Flatbush under General de Heister, and in the rear by this flanking column. The result was disastrous. Sullivan’s command was cut to pieces and himself captured. Terrible slaughter occurred in the woods and the slopes towards Fourth Avenue. The only escape not closed by the British was across the mill-dam and marshes of Gowanus.

Meanwhile Cornwallis was detached to attack Stirling’s line, which had still held its position on the western side of Prospect Heights. Desperate indeed was the plight of this devoted remnant of the army, outnumbered on all sides. General Grant, the British commander in front, had pressed forward (after having repeatedly been driven back) and finally surrounded and captured Atlee’s riflemen. Stirling gallantly determined to attack Cornwallis, and drive him back and so get an opportunity to cross by Brower’s Mill-dam to the defences of Fort Box. Here was the heroism of the day. Taking command of Smallwood’s gallant Maryland regiment and forming in the vicinity of Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street, Stirling led these brave young Marylanders three times in a charge on Cornwallis’s lines. Closing their ranks as they were cut down by grape and canister, the Maryland onset drove the British back behind the stone Cortelyou house. Once they forced the gunners from their guns, but at last, overwhelmed by numbers, the survivors fell back, leaving 256 killed out of 400. It was the sight of this brilliant charge and the spirited but frightfully unequal contest that caused Washington to wring his hands in anguish and say: “Good God! what brave fellows I must lose this day!”

While these Marylanders gallantly sacrificed their lives to hold Cornwallis in check, a large portion of Stirling’s command crossed the Gowanus Creek and brought the tattered colors of Smallwood’s regiment and over twenty prisoners within the lines. The battle was over at noon. The bodies of the gallant Maryland heroes—the flower of the army—were afterward buried on a small knoll or island. Third Avenue runs across it, between Seventh and Eighth Streets, but its site is far below the present street level.

In estimating the service of these Marylanders, it is to be recalled that they were young, never before under fire, and were led without their own colonel, who was detached the day before for a court-martial in New York. When the charges were made, the troops had already been several hours fighting, and had to re-form under fire, after it was plain that the battle was lost. The attacks were up an ascent, against superior numbers, strong artillery, and an overwhelming body of seasoned veterans. Even the assault and death of Montgomery at Quebec were not more gallant. Unlike that hopeless attack, the Marylanders accomplished their purpose by their sacrifice, and stopped the advance of Cornwallis. The brilliancy, dash, and steady persistence of this charge have not been properly recognized.

After the repulse of the patriot army, the battle ceased. The prudence of Lord Howe would not permit the English army to move upon the entrenchments. Bunker Hill with its terrible memories was too recent.

The next day, the 28th, Washington reinforced the Brooklyn troops, increasing their number to 9000. Among them were Colonel Glover’s battalion of fishermen and sailors from Salem and Marblehead. On that day heavy rain prevented an attack. In the afternoon the British began regular siege approaches towards Fort Putnam by a trench starting from the present Clinton Avenue near the corner of De Kalb Avenue.

A council of war decided on evacuation. Even in this extremity Washington caused an elaborate statement of reasons to be drawn up as the grounds of his action. That night, aided by the dense fog, the entire body were rowed over by Colonel Glover’s Marblehead boatmen. The skill and admirable mastery of detail in this retreat were Washington’s. For many hours he sat on his horse at the ferry, patiently superintending the embarkation. At least on one occasion he had to check a rush of impetuous and alarmed men from crowding into the boats. Finally with the last crew he embarked. The retreat of the entire force from Long Island was safely effected. At four o’clock only empty trenches were revealed to the invaders.

In Prospect Park is a monument to the heroism of this gallant Maryland regiment. At different streets are memorial tablets to mark the lines of defence. Perhaps some day a statue of Washington, near the old ferry, will mark the spot where his prudence and skill saved the American Army.

[Illustration: MONUMENT TO MARYLAND’S “400.”]

During the British occupation the noble forests of Brooklyn were destroyed. One may search in vain for any oaks or elms about the City that are really ancient.

The mention of the Wallabout and the present site of the Navy Yard recall some of the most painful memories of our history—the horrors of the prison-ships. Few indeed are the Revolutionary families that have not had deep sorrows connected with the ships _Whitby_, _Good Hope_, _Old Jersey_, _John_, _Falmouth_, and other hulks, where the martyrs ended their severe captivity. The bodies of the victims—having been removed from time to time—are now, it is hoped, in their final resting-place on the westerly front of Fort Greene Park opposite the Plaza. As yet no monument, not even an inscription, marks the spot where were reverently laid the bones of 11,500 martyrs to American liberty.

[Illustration: NAVY YARD. IN FOREGROUND 5.5-INCH B.-L. GUN, WITH MOUNT AND SHIELD, TAKEN FROM SPANISH CRUISER “VIZCAYA” AFTER DESTRUCTION OF SPANISH FLEET JULY 3, 1898, ALSO SUBMARINE MINE FROM GUANTANAMO.]

The Navy Yard, starting in 1824, has become the foremost in the country. Here are gathered trophies of the Nation’s battles on many seas. In a little enclosure near the Commandant’s office, are grouped captured ordnance, with a howitzer that did service under Hull on the _Constitution_. Trophies from the Spanish war have lately been added to this collection. Here are the guns taken from the burnt and shattered _Almirante Oquendo_ and _Vizcaya_, and by them is mounted a submarine contact mine from the defences of Guantanamo, which the _Texas_ broke adrift without exploding the deadly contents. Not far away was built the ill-fated battleship _Maine_. In these docks were outfitted many of the fleet that fought the battle of Santiago. In the Spanish war, the Brooklyn Navy Yard was where most of the yachts and merchant steamers, purchased in emergency, were converted into cruisers. Under Naval Constructor Bowles, the unparalleled record was made in 1898 of thirty-four vessels thus converted and fitted out for service in the auxiliary navy in ninety-three days!

At the southern shore of the enlarged Brooklyn are the forts and batteries defending this part of Long Island. Under the modern defences of Fort Hamilton, still is preserved Fort Lafayette, an island structure of masonry, valueless for war, but ever to be kept for its associations. Built in 1812 to defend the Narrows, its name was changed at the time of Lafayette’s return in 1824. In 1861, it was used to imprison those from Maryland and the border States, whose loyalty the Federal Administration distrusted. When the Judges of Brooklyn issued writs of _habeas corpus_ to bring up these political suspects, and inquire into the justice of their captivity, the remedy was to hurry the prisoners to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, beyond the reach of the process of New York courts.

[Illustration: FORT LAFAYETTE, N. Y. NARROWS.]

Here also, in 1862, a division commander of McClellan’s army was held prisoner. General Charles P. Stone, a graduate of West Point, was blamed for the disaster at Ball’s Bluff. By secret orders of Secretary Stanton, he was arrested at midnight, hurried to New York, and kept forty-nine days in solitary confinement in Fort Lafayette, without trial, charges, or answer to his appeals for a hearing! Congress finally vindicated him and set him free, after one hundred and eighty-nine days’ imprisonment.

[Illustration: BROOKLYN INSTITUTE MUSEUM.]

The interior of the Fort was burned out in the winter of 1869. Its armament has never been replaced. The dark red circular walls stand at the opposite end of the Bay from the Statue of Liberty, and furnish an impressive contrast, in their memories of an American Bastille.

[Illustration: HENRY WARD BEECHER.]

On the completion of the new Shore Road, following the contour of the Narrows, an admirable approach upon the bluff overlooking the Bay will lead the visitor to this Golden Gate of the commerce of New York.

The traditions of home rule, local self-government, and civic conscience have come down from the early Brooklyn agitations against the government of Peter Stuyvesant. Brooklynites before consolidation with the greater city had a liberal home-rule charter that was first administered under Mayor Seth Low. Through his government, the “Brooklyn plan” became the ideal of other municipalities.

The ancient zeal for education and schools has not declined. Besides the college, academy, and public schools, two Brooklyn institutions distinctively illustrate the modern trend of popular municipal education. The Pratt Institute, with its wide and helpful teaching in the industrial arts, is perhaps the most famous of all Brooklyn benevolences. But the enlarged and expanding Brooklyn Institute, with its multiform departments, its generous field of lectureships, and its museum, is destined to become the model for organizations planned to diffuse popular culture in cities.