1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In "A History of New York," Washington Irving employs a satirical and humorous narrative style to explore the early history and whimsical character of New Amsterdam, the Dutch settlement that would eventually become New York City. Written in the guise of a fictional historian, Diedrich Knickerbocker, Irving blends historical facts with inventive anecdotes and comic exaggeration, providing a rich tapestry of colonial life. This work reflects the early 19th-century American fascination with establishing a unique national identity, utilizing the past to shape contemporary understandings of American culture and politics. Washington Irving, an eminent figure of American literature, was deeply influenced by his travels and the nascent American ethos during the post-Revolutionary period. His keen interest in the folklore and history of New York, combined with his European experiences, culminated in this remarkable work. Irving's innovative style and pioneering spirit not only cemented his place as one of America's first great writers but also inspired subsequent generations to delve into historical narrative. "A History of New York" is essential reading for anyone interested in the roots of American culture, humor, and identity. Irving'Äôs witty and engaging storytelling invites readers to experience the founding moments of one of the world'Äôs greatest cities, making this book a delightful exploration of both history and literature.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Ähnliche
A History of New York
Table of Contents
Introduction
In the voice of a fussy antiquary spinning tall tales into civic memory, Washington Irving turns New York’s origins into a battle between history and humor. From the outset, the book proposes that the stories a city tells about itself can be as consequential as any document or decree. Through a genial, mock-learned narrator, Irving stages a tug-of-war between sober chronicle and exuberant invention, inviting readers to relish the spectacle of facts waltzing with fables. The result is a portrait of New Amsterdam that is as much about the art of storytelling as it is about the founding of a metropolis.
A History of New York is considered a classic because it helped establish a distinctly American voice in prose, showing that the New World could generate its own literature, its own comedy, and its own myths. Irving’s blend of erudition and mischief created a model for literary satire in the United States, influencing the tone and techniques of later humorists and essayists. The book’s enduring status rests not only on its craft but also on its idea: that national histories are shaped as much by imagination and rhetoric as by dates and archives. This insight keeps the work alive across generations.
Written by Washington Irving and first published in 1809, A History of New York appears under the persona of Diedrich Knickerbocker, a fictional Dutch-American antiquarian. Issued in two volumes, it offers a burlesque chronicle of New Amsterdam from mythical beginnings to the close of Dutch rule. Irving’s purpose is not to deceive but to delight and to interrogate how history is made, how authority is claimed, and how civic legends arise. His intention is satirical and affectionate, crafting a narrative that entertains while it examines the conventions of historical writing, preserving a lively sense of place without revealing specific outcomes.
Irving’s adoption of the Knickerbocker persona was a masterstroke of literary framing. By presenting the work as the manuscript of a quaint historian whose learning is deep and delightfully errant, he built a narrative voice that could mock and honor its subjects at once. The pretense of a discovered history allowed him to parody scholarly apparatus while sounding plausibly authoritative. Readers encounter a chronicle that seems obsessively documented, yet it constantly winks at its own methods. This double perspective, simultaneously inside and outside the historian’s study, made the book an early exploration of narrative reliability and the theatrics of authorship.
Stylistically, the book is a symphony of mock-heroic prose, playful footnotes, and theatrical digressions. Irving deploys classical allusions alongside homely details, inflating small civic squabbles into epic campaigns and then deflating grand pretensions with a well-placed aside. The language revels in cadence, piling clause upon clause to achieve a comic crescendo before landing with a quietly devastating observation. In doing so, he satirizes pedantry without scorning learning itself. The apparatus of the historian becomes a stage set, and the reader is invited backstage to see how props and scenery shape the performance of truth.
The setting is early New York, seen first as New Amsterdam and described with a mixture of fact, lore, and affectionate caricature. Irving sketches landscapes, town habits, and civic rituals, grounding the narrative in recognizable particulars even as he embroideries the record. The bustling harbor, the stubborn burghers, the councils and proclamations all form a recognizable civic world. He honors archival fragments while putting them to comic work, demonstrating how memory grows around kernels of evidence. The book becomes a meditation on how a place acquires character, how customs harden into tradition, and how tradition can be both burden and treasure.
The two-volume design guides readers from cosmogony to colony, from origin myths to municipal disputes, and onward to the threshold where one regime gives way to another. It is a journey through the phases of settlement, governance, and identity formation, narrated by a commentator whose convictions are hilariously unshakable. Though the episodes are comic, the architecture is purposeful, tracing how civic narratives accumulate until they feel inevitable. Irving’s pacing lets the satire breathe, alternating between panoramic surveys and close studies of officials and ordinances, so that the world of New Amsterdam feels at once grandly conceived and lived-in.
At its heart, the book is a satire of authority that manages to be disarming rather than cruel. Irving delights in the vanity of chroniclers and magistrates, yet he extends a warm regard to the stubborn virtues of his Dutch progenitors. The humor exposes self-importance, but it also protects communal memory from the abrasion of time. In this balance lies the book’s singular charm: it counsels skepticism without cynicism, reverence without piety. By laughing at the mechanisms of official history, readers are encouraged to value the humane impulses that survive beneath proclamations, decrees, and the puffery of reputation.
The work’s influence has been lasting and tangible. The very term Knickerbocker entered the American lexicon as a nickname for old New York, a testament to the cultural reach of Irving’s persona. His playful historiography helped set the template for American comic prose, encouraging later writers to challenge solemn narratives with wit and invention. Beyond literature, the book shaped how New Yorkers imagined their past, giving the city a genial ancestral mask it could don in pageants, essays, and reminiscences. Its combination of civic pride and comic skepticism became a durable stance in urban letters and local history.
For contemporary readers, the book’s energy lies in its nimble intelligence and its invitation to read critically while being entertained. Irving’s faux footnotes and scholarly detours feel strikingly modern in an age awash in commentary and citation. The text models how to navigate authority with curiosity and humor, reminding us that the apparatus of knowledge can both clarify and obfuscate. Its sentences reward attentive reading without excluding the casual browser, offering pleasures of sound, surprise, and sly observation. The narrative is generous, letting readers in on the joke while preserving the mystery that makes myths compelling.
The themes are durable: the making of collective memory, the tension between nostalgia and progress, the comedy of governance, and the elasticity of truth. Irving’s New Amsterdam becomes a mirror in which any city can see itself—proud of origins, anxious about change, eager to dignify petty struggles with epic language. The book asks how communities select their ancestors, which stories endure, and who benefits when legend hardens into history. It also suggests that laughter can be a form of caretaking, a way to hold cherished tales without letting them calcify into unexamined dogma.
A History of New York endures because it animates the past while teaching readers how to read the past. Its invention, its urbane music, and its affectionate scrutiny make it both a civic treasure and a literary landmark. Irving demonstrates that the origins of a place are made not only of voyages and edicts but of voices—fallible, funny, ambitious voices shaping memory in real time. That lesson remains timely wherever archives meet imagination. Returning to these pages, we find not just the story of a city but a guide to engaging tradition with wit, vigilance, and enduring delight.
Synopsis
Washington Irving’s A History of New York, presented as the manuscript of the antiquarian Diedrich Knickerbocker, offers a mock-scholarly chronicle of New Amsterdam from the world’s creation to the close of Dutch rule. The frame narrative introduces Knickerbocker’s disappearance and the discovery of his work, then proceeds with a declared plan to compile a comprehensive history from assorted authorities. The two-volume account blends origin stories, exploration, colonial governance, and municipal development. While formally comic in method, the work follows a clear historical arc, identifying leadership changes, external pressures, and domestic policies that shaped the colony destined to become New York.
The narrative begins with expansive preambles on cosmogony and early global discovery traditions, quickly narrowing to the North American coast. It recounts Henry Hudson’s 1609 voyage under the Dutch flag, his exploration of the river later bearing his name, and the strategic value of the harbor and island of Mannahatta. Irving surveys the terrain, wildlife, and Indigenous peoples, then turns to the Dutch West India Company’s authorization of trade and settlement. He describes the fort and trading post at the island’s southern tip, the emergence of patroonships upriver, and the consolidation of the beaver trade as the colony’s economic foundation.
Early governance under Director Wouter van Twiller is depicted through administrative measures, commercial priorities, and territorial vigilance. The account outlines regulations of trade and customs, disputes with English claimants along the Connecticut River near Fort Good Hope, and uneasy coexistence with neighboring Native nations. It notes tentative settlement expansion, early roadways and farmsteads (bouweries), and the practical challenges of provisioning a remote outpost. Municipal routines develop around Fort Amsterdam, with attention to markets, warehouses, and harbor traffic. Throughout, the chronicle situates New Amsterdam within a web of Dutch, English, and Swedish ambitions along the mid-Atlantic coast.
With Willem Kieft’s appointment, fiscal pressures and efforts to centralize authority intensify. The text describes Kieft’s taxation proposals related to Indigenous communities, the formation of advisory bodies (the Twelve Men and later the Eight Men), and growing dissent among settlers over policy and security. A cycle of violence known as Kieft’s War follows, with raids, reprisals, and fortification efforts around the colony. The narrative records the conflict’s economic dislocation, demographic strain, and the loss of public confidence in the director’s leadership. Petitions for reform and appeals to the Company underscore a colony in need of more stable, conciliatory administration.
Between major conflicts, the account catalogs colonial ordinances shaping daily life: building codes, fire safety, market regulation, and controls on taverns and trade. It traces the expansion of farms northward on Manhattan, the construction of defensive works along the island’s edge, and the increase of ferry services and roadways. Religious practice receives measured attention, including the official church’s standing and the presence of diverse congregants. The narrative follows the growth of outlying settlements, the influence of patroon jurisdictions like Rensselaerswyck, and the persistent tug-of-war between centralized company control and local interests seeking predictability and representation.
Peter Stuyvesant’s arrival marks a period of firmer administration and institutional reorganization. The work describes his restructuring of the council, consolidation of finances and customs, and renewed efforts to regularize legal proceedings. The harbor and fort are improved, street plans refined, and commercial licensing enforced. Stuyvesant seeks steadier relations with Native neighbors while insisting on public order and moral regulation. The city’s social rhythms—markets, festivals, and militia musters—receive documentary notice. Under his leadership, New Amsterdam grows more formal in governance, with clearer offices, urban infrastructure, and codified rights for merchants and householders.
External pressures define the mid-century chapters. The narrative recounts border negotiations with New England (the 1650 Hartford agreement) and disputes with the Swedes on the Delaware. Stuyvesant leads an expedition in 1655 that subdues New Sweden, consolidating Dutch claims. That same year, urban defenses are tested by unrest known as the Peach War, prompting renewed vigilance. The text highlights militia organization, fort maintenance, and convoy practices to protect maritime trade. English settlements on Long Island and the Sound expand, sharpening boundary questions. Nevertheless, commerce rebounds, and the port’s role in regional exchange—timber, grain, furs, and imported goods—strengthens.
The work details civic maturation after 1650, notably the 1653 municipal charter establishing burgomasters and schepens, thereby formalizing local courts and administration. It addresses burgher rights, guild-like privileges, and tensions between municipal aspirations and company authority. Religious and civic cases—such as petitions by dissenting groups and town remonstrances—appear as tests of policy and tolerance. Frontier conflicts, including hostilities in the Esopus region, illustrate the difficulties of dispersed settlements. Meanwhile, English commercial regulations heighten competitive pressure. Despite these strains, the colony’s population grows, neighborhoods spread northward, and New Amsterdam’s institutions take on a durable, recognizably urban character.
The closing chapters describe the mounting English challenge under the Duke of York, the 1664 expedition led by Richard Nicolls, and the peaceful capitulation of New Amsterdam. Terms of surrender secure property and certain civic assurances, and the settlement is renamed New York. The narrative concludes by reviewing the Dutch era’s imprint—place names, legal customs, mercantile habits, and a cosmopolitan port culture—before ceding the stage to English administration. Across both volumes, the book’s overarching purpose is to chronicle the colony’s origins, growth, and political transition, gathering scattered reports into a continuous tale ending with the Dutch dynasty’s fall.
Historical Context
Washington Irving sets his mock-chronicle principally in seventeenth-century New Netherland, focusing on New Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan between Henry Hudson’s 1609 exploration and the English conquest of 1664. The geography includes the Hudson estuary, the North River and East River channels, and a frontier of forts and farms stretching toward Fort Orange (Albany). The settlement’s scale was modest—hundreds, then a few thousand inhabitants—clustered around Fort Amsterdam and a waterfront of beaver-skin commerce. Though the book opens with a burlesque “beginning of the world,” its historical center is this Dutch colonial port, where municipal life, company rule, and intercultural contact shaped a distinctive urban community.
The place is defined by a polyglot population—Dutch burghers, Walloons, Germans, Scandinavians, Sephardic Jews, enslaved and free Africans, and neighboring Algonquian-speaking Lenape—governed by the Dutch West India Company. Streets such as Heere Straat (Broadway) and the Bowling Green trace a compact town enclosed by a palisade. The climate and river tides governed trade cycles, while beaver pelts and wampum circulated as currency. Irving heightens the daily textures—pipes, windmills, stoops, and market days—precisely because this local detail anchors his satire. The city’s small scale and intimate politics become a stage on which colonial authority and communal custom collide, illuminating both the colony’s realities and modern New York’s distant origins.
In 1609, Henry Hudson, sailing the Halve Maen for the Dutch East India Company (VOC), probed the river that now bears his name, reaching near present-day Albany. Although he sought a Northeast Passage, his voyage gave the United Provinces a basis for claiming the valley, known as the North River to the Dutch. Subsequent cartography and seasonal trading voyages followed. Irving builds his narrative’s foundation on this moment of “discovery,” turning Hudson into a semi-mythic harbinger of Dutch manners. The book’s playful elevation of Hudson’s landing and interactions mirrors the genuine historical pivot by which New Netherland entered European imperial competition.
Dutch traders established Fort Nassau (1614) on Castle Island near today’s Albany; recurrent floods led to Fort Orange (1624). In 1624–1626, company settlers shifted focus to Manhattan, erecting Fort Amsterdam and consolidating a permanent townsite. Director Peter Minuit reputedly purchased Manhattan from local Lenape in 1626 for goods valued at 60 guilders, a transaction emblematic of intercultural misunderstanding and colonial legality. Irving exploits such foundational episodes, parodying the solemnity of deeds and boundaries while preserving their chronological backbone. By exaggerating ceremonials around fort-building and purchases, he reflects the recorded sequence by which New Amsterdam emerged as the colony’s administrative and commercial hub.
The States General chartered the Dutch West India Company (WIC) in 1621, granting monopoly rights over Atlantic trade, privateering, and colonization. To accelerate settlement, the 1629 Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions created patroonships—large estates for investors who transported at least 50 colonists within four years—and outlined judicial and economic privileges. This framework entwined corporate profit with quasi-feudal landholding. In Irving’s account, the WIC’s bureaucratic gravity and paperwork become objects of satire, yet his episodes of comptrollers, excises, and cargoes map closely onto the documented company apparatus. The humor thus illuminates the structural reality: a colony built as a commercial enterprise before a civic polity.
Rensselaerswyck, the most prominent patroonship, was organized by Amsterdam jeweler Kiliaen van Rensselaer along the upper Hudson around Fort Orange. It exercised manorial jurisdiction, collected rents, and fostered agriculture while profiting from the fur trade. Tensions periodically arose between company officers at Fort Orange and patroon agents over trade rights and legal authority. Irving caricatures such rivalries by personalizing them in obstinate magnates and puffed-up officials, yet he tracks the historical pattern of overlapping jurisdictions. The estate’s endurance into the English period underscores how semiprivate power shaped settlement, a dynamic his narrative recognizes in its recurring comic conflicts between local interests and distant directors.
New Netherland’s plural society included Lutherans, Calvinists, English dissenters, and Sephardic Jews who arrived in 1654 after the fall of Dutch Brazil. Stuyvesant’s attempts to restrict Jews and Quakers met resistance from the WIC directors, who prioritized commerce and stability. Enslaved Africans labored for the company and private owners; a system of “half-freedom” in the 1640s allowed some to hold land north of the town, near later-day Washington Square, while the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan evidences a sizable community. Irving’s broad portraits of convivial burghers and civic rituals fold these plural realities into a shared urban scene, even as his tone masks the colony’s inequalities.
Willem Kieft’s directorship (1638–1647) destabilized relations with neighboring Algonquian groups. His 1640s taxation scheme on villages around Manhattan and retaliatory raids culminated in Kieft’s War (1643–1645), including the Pavonia and Corlear’s Hook massacres in February 1643. Casualties were heavy across both sides; farms were burned, and trade collapsed. The war ended in 1645 with a fragile peace. Irving nicknames Kieft “William the Testy,” lampooning his rash policies and litigiousness, a caricature rooted in contemporary complaints preserved in records of the Twelve Men and Eight Men councils. The book’s comic temper thus encodes a serious critique of misrule and its human cost.
Peter Stuyvesant, Director-General from 1647 to 1664, pursued administrative reform, bolstered fortifications, and sought moral discipline, while clashing with burgher representatives. New Amsterdam received a municipal charter in 1653, creating burgomasters and schepens and separating town from company authority in limited ways. Earlier advisory bodies—the Twelve Men (1641), Eight Men (1643), and Nine Men (1647)—signaled growing civic assertion. Irving’s triad of governors—“Walter the Doubter” (Wouter van Twiller, 1633–1638), “William the Testy” (Kieft), and “Peter the Headstrong” (Stuyvesant)—stylizes real administrative contrasts. His comic councils and proclamations mirror the archival cadence of petitions, ordinances, and the contested birth of municipal governance.
Competition with English colonies intensified along Long Island and the Connecticut frontier. The Treaty of Hartford (1650) attempted to fix boundaries: the Dutch would retain western Long Island; the English held the east and much of Connecticut. English towns like Hempstead (1644), Gravesend (1645), and Flushing (1645) nonetheless grew under Dutch jurisdiction, complicating allegiance and legal practice. Irving converts these border frictions into absurd disputes over maps and milestones, yet the factual substrate—settlers with mixed loyalties, overlapping patents, and sheriffs enforcing rival writs—remains intact. His humor reveals the precarious sovereignty of a mercantile colony bordered by more populous English neighbors.
New Sweden, founded in 1638 on the lower Delaware by Peter Minuit and later governed by Johan Printz and Johan Rising, challenged Dutch claims. In 1655, Stuyvesant led a flotilla that captured Fort Christina (present-day Wilmington), ending Swedish rule. That same year, the “Peach Tree War”—Algonquian raids across Pavonia and Staten Island—exposed New Amsterdam’s vulnerability during the expedition’s absence. Irving stitches these episodes into a tapestry of overextended authority, satirizing the bravado of colonial campaigns and the scramble on Manhattan’s ramparts. His narrative compresses the chronology, but it directly reflects the intertwined conquest and backlash that defined 1655.
The end of the Dutch dynasty in New Netherland came amid Anglo-Dutch imperial rivalry. Although the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–1654) had already strained commerce, the decisive blow was a peacetime seizure. In March 1664, Charles II granted the region to his brother, James, Duke of York. Colonel Richard Nicolls sailed with a small squadron; by late August, his ships anchored off New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant, urged by burghers mindful of families, property, and the inadequacy of defenses, faced articles of surrender that promised continuation of property rights, religious freedom, and local customs. On 8 September 1664, he capitulated; Fort Amsterdam became Fort James, and New Amsterdam New York. The Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667) soon formalized the change, though the Dutch briefly reclaimed the city in 1673 before returning it in 1674. Irving devotes his longest satiric crescendo to this transition, using mock-heroic rhetoric to recount councils, placards, and the mustering of the burgher guard. By inflating the oratory and diminishing the martial reality, he critiques both the company’s mismanagement and the performative bravado of municipal politics. Yet his details—the English demand under Nicolls, the negotiated Articles of Capitulation, and Stuyvesant’s attempt to rally—closely follow records such as the “Remonstrance of New Netherland” and the surrender minutes. The episode anchors his theme: a port city shaped by commerce and negotiation rather than grand battles, entering a new imperial regime with its civil fabric largely intact.
Defensive works framed urban life. A wooden palisade erected beginning in 1653, strengthened around 1658, ran along the northern edge of town where Wall Street now lies, with bastions guarding landward approaches. Watchhouses, the rattle watch, and militia musters punctuated daily rhythms. Irving revels in militia pageantry—plumed hats, rusty muskets, and corpulent captains—to lampoon the distance between ceremonial defense and strategic vulnerability. The wall’s very presence, simultaneously symbolic and insufficient, lets him stage comic scenes of alarms and councils. Historically, the palisade also demarcated social space, with farms and the “Land of the Blacks” beyond, enriching the book’s interplay of boundary, hierarchy, and fear.
The colonial economy centered on the beaver trade, moving pelts from Iroquoian and Algonquian intermediaries through Fort Orange to Manhattan’s docks. Wampum, manufactured largely on Long Island, functioned as currency and tribute; price fluctuations and overhunting by the 1640s disordered exchanges. Excise taxes on beer, tobacco, and furs funded governance. Smuggling and interloping English traders eroded the WIC monopoly. Irving turns invoices, tariffs, and ship lists into comic catalogues, but the humor rests on the real fragility of colonial finance. By narrating shortages, panics, and petty graft, he exposes how a port’s ledgers—and their manipulation—could steer policy, peace, and everyday subsistence.
Irving wrote and published the work in New York in 1809, in the early American Republic’s partisan age. The Embargo Act (1807) had throttled Atlantic commerce, and Tammany Hall’s Democratic-Republicans vied with Federalists for urban power; figures such as DeWitt Clinton and Aaron Burr loomed over city politics. Irving’s earlier Salmagundi essays had mocked local pretensions, and in the Knickerbocker History he refracts contemporary quarrels through Dutch-era councils and elections. The comic burgher meetings and squabbles about trade and defense echo embargo debates and militia reforms. Thus, although set in the 1600s, the book mirrors 1800s New York: a bustling port anxious about policy, patronage, and identity.
As social and political critique, the book exposes the perils of corporate governance and autocratic caprice by caricaturing WIC bureaucracy, Kieft’s rash militancy, and Stuyvesant’s paternalism. Its gibes at excises, monopolies, and placard-making denounce opaque policymaking that burdens commoners while preserving elite privileges. Irving’s mock-heroic style suggests that civic pomp often masks fragile institutions. By dramatizing negotiated surrender in 1664 as more pragmatic than glorious, he challenges romanticized conquest narratives and prizes civil guarantees—property, religion, custom—over martial spectacle. The satire thus interrogates how power legitimizes itself in a commercial colony and how policy failures spill into violence.
The narrative also critiques social inequities and cultural chauvinism. It acknowledges, if obliquely, the colony’s reliance on enslaved labor and the marginalization of religious minorities, echoing controversies like the Flushing Remonstrance (1657). Irving’s faux-antiquarian voice lampoons ethnocentric myths of “purchase” and “discovery,” implying that legal fictions and self-satisfaction sustained colonial claims. His burghers’ anxiety over walls, markets, and offices mirrors early republican New York’s partisan clientelism, exposing class divides between officeholders and tradesmen. In staging civic comedy from petition to ordinance, the book invites readers to doubt official narratives and to value pluralism, transparency, and restraint as antidotes to misrule.
Author Biography
Washington Irving emerged in the early nineteenth century as an American author, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat whose accessible prose helped legitimize American literature abroad. Best known for The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., which introduced the iconic tales Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, he blended urbane humor with Romantic atmosphere and folklore. He moved fluidly among genres—satire, travel writing, historical narrative, and biography—and became one of the first U.S. writers to earn international acclaim and a living from his pen. His career unfolded across the Atlantic world, yet remained deeply rooted in the culture and landscapes of New York and the broader Hudson Valley.
Irving grew up in New York City and studied law in the early 1800s, gaining admission to the bar though he never pursued a rigorous legal practice. He first attracted notice through witty, pseudonymous essays—most famously as “Jonathan Oldstyle”—in local periodicals. With friends he issued Salmagundi, a satirical miscellany that poked fun at urban fashions and cultural pretensions. He then forged a lasting literary persona with A History of New York, purportedly authored by the eccentric “Diedrich Knickerbocker,” a spoof-history that wove parody and local lore. His early models included eighteenth-century essayists like Joseph Addison and Oliver Goldsmith, whose polished style he adapted to American subjects.
Prolonged stays in Britain after the mid-1810s brought Irving into close contact with the Romantic era’s literary milieu. Encouraged by supportive friendships—most notably with Sir Walter Scott—he fashioned The Sketch Book (1819–1820), whose graceful essays and tales found enthusiastic audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. He followed with Bracebridge Hall (1822) and Tales of a Traveller (1824), extending his blend of pastoral nostalgia, comic observation, and richly framed storytelling. His affectionate portraits of old English customs, including Christmas festivities, helped revive interest in seasonal traditions. Throughout, he balanced urbane irony with a sympathy for folklore, shaping a short prose form that many later American writers would emulate.
Irving’s fascination with European history deepened during years in Spain, where he consulted archives and absorbed local legends. From this period came A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828), Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829), and The Alhambra (1832), a collection of sketches often likened to a Spanish counterpart to The Sketch Book. He also held roles in U.S. diplomatic service in both Britain and Spain, experience that broadened his cosmopolitan outlook. While some later historians questioned the accuracy of his romantic histories, readers admired his narrative poise, scene-setting, and ability to make the past vivid without sacrificing the elegance of his prose.
Returning to the United States in the early 1830s, Irving turned to American subjects with fresh energy. A Tour on the Prairies (1835) drew on his journey into what was then the western frontier, offering a travel narrative attentive to landscape and encounter. He also produced longer works of narrative history tied to exploration and commerce, notably Astoria (1836), a commissioned account of the far-flung fur trade, and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837), adapted from an explorer’s journals. These books—part reportage, part romantic narrative—broadened his canvas from the Hudson Valley to the trans-Mississippi West, while retaining his hallmark clarity and gently humorous tone.
In the 1840s Irving reentered public service as United States minister to Spain, further cementing his reputation as a cultured, nonpartisan representative of American letters. Resettled at his Hudson Valley home thereafter, he gathered later essays in Wolfert’s Roost and Other Papers and undertook his most ambitious scholarly enterprise: the multi-volume Life of George Washington, published across the 1850s. Drawing on extensive documentary sources yet written for general readers, the biography aimed to balance national reverence with measured appraisal. Even as tastes shifted, Irving’s genial voice, moral restraint, and command of scene kept him central to the nation’s literary identity and its understanding of its founding era.
Irving spent his final years refining the Washington project and enjoying the status of elder man of letters. He died in the mid-nineteenth century, having helped establish an enduring repertoire of American short fiction and a model of transatlantic professionalism for writers. Today his tales remain staples for their lyrical mood, deft framing, and integration of folklore into local settings, while his histories and travel books are read for style and cultural insight rather than strict archival innovation. His influence persists in the American short story’s development, in the literary profile of the Hudson River Valley, and in the broader claim that U.S. prose could be at once national and cosmopolitan.
A History of New York: From the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (Complete Edition – Volume 1 & 2)
VOLUME I.
INTRODUCTION.
KNICKERBOCKER’S HISTORY OF NEW YORK is the book, published in December, 1809, with which Washington living, at the age of twenty-six, first won wide credit and influence. Walter Scott wrote to an American friend, who sent him the second edition ——
“I beg you to accept my best thanks for the uncommon degree of entertainment which I have received from the most excellently jocose History of New York. I am sensible that, as a stranger to American parties and politics, I must lose much of the concealed satire of the piece, but I must own that, looking at the simple and obvious meaning only, I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of Dean Swift as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker[1]. I have been employed these few evenings in reading them aloud to Mrs. S. and two ladies who are our guests, and our sides have been absolutely sore with laughing. I think, too, there are passages which indicate that the author possesses powers of a different kind, and has some touches which remind me much of Sterne.”
Washington Irving was the son of William Irving, a sturdy native of the Orkneys, allied to the Irvines of Drum, among whose kindred was an old historiographer who said to them, “Some of the foolish write themselves Irving.” William Irving of Shapinsha, in the Orkney Islands, was a petty officer on board an armed packet ship in His Majesty’s service, when he met with his fate at Falmouth in Sarah Sanders, whom he married at Falmouth in May, 1761. Their first child was buried in England before July, 1763, when peace had been concluded, and William Irving emigrated to New York with his wife, soon to be joined by his wife’s parents.
At New York William Irving entered into trade, and prospered fairly until the outbreak of the American Revolution. His sympathy, and that of his wife, went with the colonists. On the 19th of October, 1781, Lord Cornwallis, with a force of seven thousand men, surrendered at Yorktown. In October, 1782, Holland acknowledged the independence of the United States in a treaty concluded at The Hague. In January, 1783, an armistice was concluded with Great Britain. In February, 1783, the independence of the United States was acknowledged by Sweden and by Denmark, and in March by Spain. On the 3rd of April in that year an eleventh child was born to William and Sarah Irving, who was named Washington, after the hero under whom the war had been brought to an end. In 1783 the peace was signed, New York was evacuated, and the independence of the United States acknowledged by England.
Of the eleven children eight survived. William Irving, the father, was rigidly pious, a just and honorable man, who made religion burdensome to his children by associating it too much with restrictions and denials. One of their two weekly half-holidays was devoted to the Catechism. The mother’s gentler sensibility and womanly impulses gave her the greater influence; but she reverenced and loved her good husband, and when her youngest puzzled her with his pranks, she would say, “Ah, Washington, if you were only good!”
For his lively spirits and quick fancy could not easily be subdued. He would get out of his bedroom window at night, walk along a coping, and climb over the roof to the top of the next house, only for the high purpose of astonishing a neighbor by dropping a stone down his chimney. As a young schoolboy he came upon Hoole’s translation of Ariosto, and achieved in his father’s back yard knightly adventures. “Robinson Crusoe” and “Sindbad the Sailor” made him yearn to go to sea. But this was impossible unless he could learn to lie hard and eat salt pork, which he detested. He would get out of bed at night and lie on the floor for an hour or two by way of practice. He also took every opportunity that came in his way of eating the detested food. But the more he tried to like it the nastier it grew, and he gave up as impracticable his hope of going to sea. He fastened upon adventures of real travelers; he yearned for travel, and was entranced in his youth by first sight of the beauties of the Hudson River. He scribbled jests for his school friends, and, of course, he wrote a schoolboy play. At sixteen his schooling was at an end, and he was placed in a lawyer’s office, from which he was transferred to another, and then, in January, 1802, to another, where he continued his clerkship with a Mr. Hoffman, who had a young wife, and two young daughters by a former marriage. With this family Washington Irving, a careless student, lively, clever, kind, established the happiest relations, of which afterwards there came the deep grief of his life and a sacred memory.
Washington Irving’s eldest brothers were beginning to thrive in business. A brother Peter shared his frolics with the pen. His artist pleasure in the theater was indulged without his father’s knowledge. He would go to the play, come home for nine o’clock prayers, go up to bed, and climb out of his bedroom window, and run back and see the afterpiece. So come evasions of undue restraint. But with all this impulsive liveliness, young Washington Irving’s life appeared, as he grew up, to be in grave danger. When he was nineteen, and taken by a brother-in-law to Ballston springs, it was determined by those who heard his incessant night cough that he was “not long for this world.” When he had come of age, in April, 1804, his brothers, chiefly his eldest brother, who was prospering, provided money to send him to Europe that he might recover health by restful travel in France, Italy and England. When he was helped up the side of the vessel that was to take him from New York to Bordeaux, the captain looked at him with pity and said, “There’s a chap who will go overboard before we get across.” But Washington Irving returned to New York at the beginning of the year 1806 with health restored.
What followed will be told in the Introduction to the of her volume of this History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker.
H.M.
THE AUTHOR’S APOLOGY.
The following work, in which, at the outset, nothing more was contemplated than a temporary jeu-d’esprit[2], was commenced in company with my brother, the late Peter Irving, Esq. Our idea was to parody a small hand-book which had recently appeared, entitled, “A Picture of New York.” Like that, our work was to begin an historical sketch; to be followed by notices of the customs, manners and institutions of the city; written in a seriocomic vein, and treating local errors, follies and abuses with good-humored satire.
To burlesque the pedantic lore displayed in certain American works, our historical sketch was to commence with the creation of the world; and we laid all kinds of works under contribution for trite citations, relevant or irrelevant, to give it the proper air of learned research. Before this crude mass of mock erudition could be digested into form, my brother departed for Europe, and I was left to prosecute the enterprise alone.
I now altered the plan of the work. Discarding all idea of a parody on the “Picture of New York,” I determined that what had been originally intended as an introductory sketch should comprise the whole work, and form a comic history of the city. I accordingly moulded the mass of citations and disquisitions into introductory chapters, forming the first book; but it soon became evident to me that, like Robinson Crusoe with his boat, I had begun on too large a scale, and that, to launch my history successfully, I must reduce its proportions. I accordingly resolved to confine it to the period of the Dutch domination, which, in its rise, progress and decline, presented that unity of subject required by classic rule. It was a period, also, at that time almost a terra incognita in history. In fact, I was surprised to find how few of my fellow-citizens were aware that New York had ever been called New Amsterdam, or had heard of the names of its early Dutch governors, or cared a straw about their ancient Dutch progenitors.
This, then, broke upon me as the poetic age of our city; poetic from its very obscurity, and open, like the early and obscure days of ancient Rome, to all the embellishments of heroic fiction. I hailed my native city as fortunate above all other American cities in having an antiquity thus extending back into the regions of doubt and fable; neither did I conceive I was committing any grievous historical sin in helping out the few facts I could collect in this remote and forgotten region with figments of my own brain, or in giving characteristic attributes to the few names connected with it which I might dig up from oblivion.
In this, doubtless, I reasoned like a young and inexperienced writer, besotted with his own fancies; and my presumptuous trespasses into this sacred, though neglected, region of history have met with deserved rebuke from men of soberer minds. It is too late, however, to recall the shaft thus rashly launched. To any one whose sense of fitness it may wound, I can only say with Hamlet ——
“Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil Free me so far in your most generous thoughts That I have shot my arrow o’er the house, And hurt my brother.”
I will say this in further apology for my work: that if it has taken an unwarrantable liberty with our early provincial history, it has at least turned attention to that history, and provoked research. It is only since this work appeared that the forgotten archives of the province have been rummaged, and the facts and personages of the olden time rescued from the dust of oblivion, and elevated into whatever importance they may actually possess.
The main object of my work, in fact, had a bearing wide from the sober aim of history, but one which, I trust, will meet with some indulgence from poetic minds. It was to embody the traditions of our city in an amusing form; to illustrate its local humors, customs and peculiarities; to clothe home scenes and places and familiar names with those imaginative and whimsical associations so seldom met with in our new country, but which live like charms and spells about the cities of the old world, binding the heart of the native inhabitant to his home.
In this I have reason to believe I have in some measure succeeded. Before the appearance of my work the popular traditions of our city were unrecorded; the peculiar and racy customs and usages derived from our Dutch progenitors were unnoticed, or regarded with indifference, or adverted to with a sneer. Now they form a convivial currency, and are brought forward on all occasions; they link our whole community together in good-humor and good-fellowship; they are the rallying points of home feeling; the seasoning of our civic festivities; the staple of local tales and local pleasantries; and are so harped upon by our writers of popular fiction that I find myself almost crowded off the legendary ground which I was the first to explore by the host who have followed in my footsteps.
I dwell on this head because, at the first appearance of my work, its aim and drift were misapprehended by some of the descendants of the Dutch worthies, and because I understand that now and then one may still be found to regard it with a captious eye. The far greater part, however, I have reason to flatter myself, receive my good-humored picturings in the same temper with which they were executed; and when I find, after a lapse of nearly forty years, this haphazard production of my youth still cherished among them; when I find its very name become a “household word,” and used to give the home stamp to everything recommended for popular acceptation, such as Knickerbocker societies, Knickerbocker insurance companies, Knickerbocker steamboats, Knickerbocker omnibuses, Knickerbocker bread, and Knickerbocker ice; and when I find New Yorkers of Dutch descent priding themselves upon being “genuine Knickerbockers,” I please myself with the persuasion that I have struck the right chord; that my dealings with the good old Dutch times, and the customs and usages derived from them, are n harmony with the feelings and humors of my townsmen; that I have opened a vein of pleasant associations and quaint characteristics peculiar to my native place, and which its inhabitants will not willingly suffer to pass away; and that, though other histories of New York may appear of higher claims to learned acceptation, and may take their dignified and appropriate rank in the family library, Knickerbocker’s history will still be received with good-humored indulgence, and be thumbed and chuckled over by the family fireside.
Sunnyside, 1848.
W.I.
NOTICES WHICH APPEARED IN THE NEWSPAPERS PREVIOUS TO THE PUBLICATION OF THIS WORK.
From the “Evening Post” of October 26, 1809.
DISTRESSING.
Left his lodgings some time since, and has not since been heard of, a small elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of Knickerbocker. As there are some reasons for believing he is not entirely in his right mind, and as great anxiety is entertained about him, any information concerning him, left either at the Columbian Hotel, Mulberry Street, or at the office of this paper, will be thankfully received.
P.S. — Printers of newspapers will be aiding the cause of humanity in giving an insertion to the above.
From the same, November 6, 1809.
To the Editor of the “Evening Post.”
SIR, — Having read, in your paper of the 26th of October last, a paragraph respecting an old gentleman by the name of Knickerbocker, who was missing from his lodgings; if it would be any relief to his friends, or furnish them with any clue to discover where he is, you may inform them that a person answering the description given was seen by the passengers of the Albany stage, early in the morning, about four or five weeks since, resting himself by the side of the road, a little above King’s Bridge. He had in his hand a small bundle tied in a red bandana handkerchief: he appeared to be traveling northward, and was very much fatigued and exhausted.
A TRAVELER.
From the same, November 16, 1809.
To the Editor of the “Evening Post.”
SIR, — You have been good enough to publish in your paper a paragraph about Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker, who was missing so strangely some time since. Nothing satisfactory has been heard of the old gentleman since; but a very curious kind of a written book has been found in his room, in his own handwriting. Now, I wish you to notice him, if he is still alive, that if he does not return and pay off his bill for boarding and lodging, I shall have to dispose of his book to satisfy me for the same.
I am, Sir, your humble servant,
SETH HANDASIDE,
Landlord of the Independent Columbian Hotel,
Mulberry Street.
From the same, November 28, 1809.
LITERARY NOTICE.
INSKEEP and BRADFORD have in the press, and will shortly publish,
A History of New York,
In two volumes, duodecimo. Price three dollars.
Containing an account of its discovery and settlement, with its internal policies, manners, customs, wars, &c. &c., under the Dutch government, furnishing many curious and interesting particulars never before published, and which are gathered from various manuscript and other authenticated sources, the whole being interspersed with philosophical speculations and moral precepts.
This work was found in the chamber of Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker, the old gentleman whose sudden and mysterious disappearance has been noticed. It is published in order to discharge certain debts he has left behind.
From the “American Citizen” December 6, 1809.
Is this day published,
By INSKEEP and BRADFORD, No. 128, Broadway,
A History of New York,
&c. &c.
(Containing same as above.)
ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR
It was some time, if I recollect right, in the early part of the fall of 1808, that a stranger applied for lodgings at the Independent Columbian Hotel[3] in Mulberry Street, of which I am landlord. He was a small, brisk-looking old gentleman, dressed in a rusty black coat, a pair of olive velvet breeches, and a small cocked hat. He had a few gray hairs plaited and clubbed behind, and his beard seemed to be of some eight-and-forty hours’ growth. The only piece of finery which he bore about him was a bright pair of square silver shoe-buckles; and all his baggage was contained in a pair of saddlebags, which he carried under his arm. His whole appearance was something out of the common run; and my wife, who is a very shrewd little body, at once set him down for some eminent country schoolmaster.
As the Independent Columbian Hotel is a very small house, I was a little puzzled at first where to put him; but my wife, who seemed taken with his looks, would needs put him in her best chamber, which is genteelly set off with the profiles of the whole family, done in black, by those two great painters, Jarvis and Wood: and commands a very pleasant view of the new grounds on the Collect, together with the rear of the Poor House and Bridewell, and the full front of the Hospital; so that it is the cheerfulest room in the whole house.
During the whole time that he stayed with us, we found him a very worthy, good sort of an old gentleman, though a little queer in his ways. He would keep in his room for days together, and if any of the children cried, or made a noise about his door, he would bounce out in a great passion, with his hands full of papers, and say something about “deranging his ideas;” which made my wife believe sometimes that he was not altogether compos. Indeed, there was more than one reason to make her think so, for his room was always covered with scraps of paper and old mouldy books, lying about at sixes and sevens, which he would never let anybody touch; for he said he had laid them all away in their proper places, so that he might know where to find them; though, for that matter, he was half his time worrying about the house in search of some book or writing which he had carefully put out of the way. I shall never forget what a pother he once made, because my wife cleaned out his room when his back was turned, and put everything to rights; for he swore he would never be able to get his papers in order again in a twelvemonth. Upon this my wife ventured to ask him, what he did with so many books and papers? and he told her, that he was “seeking for immortality”; which made her think, more than ever, that the poor old gentleman’s head was a little cracked.
He was a very inquisitive body, and when not in his room was continually poking about town, hearing all the news, and prying into everything that was going on; this was particularly the case about election time, when he did nothing but bustle about him from poll to poll, attending all ward meetings and committee-rooms; though I could never find that he took part with either side of the question. On the contrary, he would come home and rail at both parties with great wrath — and plainly proved one day to the satisfaction of my wife, and three old ladies who were drinking tea with her, that the two parties were like two rogues, each tugging at the skirt of the nation; and that in the end they would tear the very coat off its back, and expose its nakedness. Indeed, he was an oracle among the neighbors, who would collect around him to hear him talk of an afternoon, as he smoked his pipe on the bench before the door; and I really believe he would have brought over the whole neighborhood to his own side of the question, if they could ever have found out what it was.
He was very much given to argue, or, as he called it, philosophize, about the most trifling matter, and to do him justice, I never knew anybody that was a match for him, except it was a grave-looking old gentleman who called now and then to see him, and often posed him in an argument. But this is nothing surprising, as I have since found out this stranger is the city librarian; and, of course, must be a man of great learning; and I have my doubts if he had not some hand in the following history.
As our lodger had been a long time with us, and we had never received any pay, my wife began to be somewhat uneasy, and curious to find out who and what he was. She accordingly made bold to put the question to his friend the librarian, who replied, in his dry way, that he was one of the Literati; which she supposed to mean some new party in politics. I scorn to push a lodger for his pay[1q], so I let day after day pass on without dunning the old gentleman for a farthing; but my wife, who always takes these matters on herself, and is, as I said, a shrewd kind of a woman, at last got out of patience, and hinted, that she thought it high time “some people should have a sight of some people’s money.” To which the old gentleman replied in a mighty touchy manner, that she need not make herself uneasy, for that he had a treasure there (pointing to his saddlebags) worth her whole house put together. This was the only answer we could ever get from him; and as my wife, by some of those odd ways in which women find out everything, learnt that he was of very great connections, being related to the Knickerbockers[4] of Scaghtikoke, and cousin german to the Congressman of that name, she did not like to treat him uncivilly. What is more, she even offered, merely by way of making things easy, to let him live scot-free, if he would teach the children their letters; and to try her best and get her neighbors to send their children also; but the old gentleman took it in such dudgeon, and seemed so affronted at being taken for a schoolmaster, that she never dared to speak on the subject again.
About two months ago, he went out of a morning, with a bundle in his hand — and has never been heard of since. All kinds of inquiries were made after him, but in vain. I wrote to his relations at Scaghtikoke, but they sent for answer, that he had not been there since the year before last, when he had a great dispute with the Congressman about politics, and left the place in a huff, and they had neither heard nor seen anything of him from that time to this. I must own I felt very much worried about the poor old gentleman; for I thought something bad must have happened to him, that he should be missing so long, and never return to pay his bill. I therefore advertised him in the newspapers, and though my melancholy advertisement was published by several humane printers, yet I have never been able to learn anything satisfactory about him.
My wife now said it was high time to take care of ourselves, and see if he had left anything behind in his room, that would pay us for his board and lodging. We found nothing, however, but some old books and musty writings, and his pair of saddlebags; which, being opened in the presence of the librarian, contained only a few articles of worn-out clothes and a large bundle of blotted paper. On looking over this, the librarian told us, he had no doubt it was the treasure which the old gentleman had spoke about; as it proved to be a most excellent and faithful History of New York, which he advised us by all means to publish; assuring us that it would be so eagerly bought up by a discerning public, that he had no doubt it would be enough to pay our arrears ten times over. Upon this we got a very learned schoolmaster, who teaches our children, to prepare it for the press, which he accordingly has done; and has, moreover, added to it a number of notes of his own; and an engraving of the city, as it was at the time Mr. Knickerbocker writes about.
This, therefore, is a true statement of my reasons for having this work printed, without waiting for the consent of the author; and I here declare, that if he ever returns (though I much fear some unhappy accident has befallen him), I stand ready to account with him like a true and honest man. Which is all at present ——
From the public’s humble servant,
SETH HANDASIDE.
INDEPENDENT COLUMBIAN HOTEL, NEW YORK.
The foregoing account of the author was prefixed to the first edition of this work. Shortly after its publication, a letter was received from him, by Mr. Handaside, dated at a small Dutch village on the banks of the Hudson, whither he had traveled for the purpose of inspecting certain ancient records. As this was one of those few and happy villages, into which newspapers never find their way, it is not a matter of surprise, that Mr. Knickerbocker should never have seen the numerous advertisements that were made concerning him; and that he should learn of the publication of his history by mere accident.
He expressed much concern at its premature appearance, as thereby he was prevented from making several important corrections and alterations: as well as from profiting by many curious hints which he had collected during his travels along the shores of the Tappan Sea, and his sojourn at Haverstraw and Esopus.
Finding that there was no longer any immediate necessity for his return to New York, he extended his journey up to the residence of his relations at Scaghtikoke. On his way thither he stopped for some days at Albany, for which city he is known to have entertained a great partiality. He found it, however, considerably altered, and was much concerned at the inroads and improvements which the Yankees were making, and the consequent decline of the good old Dutch manners. Indeed, he was informed that these intruders were making sad innovations in all parts of the State; where they had given great trouble and vexation to the regular Dutch settlers, by the introduction of turnpike-gates and country schoolhouses. It is said, also, that Mr. Knickerbocker shook his head sorrowfully at noticing the gradual decay of the great Vander Heyden palace; but was highly indignant at finding that the ancient Dutch church, which stood in the middle of the street, had been pulled down since his last visit.
The fame of Mr. Knickerbocker’s History having reached even to Albany, he received much flattering attention from its worthy burghers; some of whom, however, pointed out two or three very great errors he had fallen into, particularly that of suspending a lump of sugar over the Albany tea-tables, which they assured him had been discontinued for some years past. Several families, moreover, were somewhat piqued that their ancestors had not been mentioned in his work, and showed great jealousy of their neighbors who had thus been distinguished; while the latter, it must be confessed, plumed themselves vastly thereupon; considering these recordings in the lights of letters patent of nobility, establishing their claims to ancestry, which, in this republican country, is a matter of no little solicitude and vainglory.
It is also said, that he enjoyed high favor and countenance from the governor, who once asked him to dinner, and was seen two or three times to shake hands with him when they met in the street; which certainly was going great lengths, considering that they differed in politics. Indeed, certain of the governor’s confidential friends, to whom he could venture to speak his mind freely on such matters, have assured us that he privately entertained a considerable goodwill for our author — nay, he even once went so far as to declare, and that openly too, and at his own table, just after dinner, that “Knickerbocker was a very well-meaning sort of an old gentleman, and no fool.” From all which may have been led to suppose, that, had our author been of different politics, and written for the newspapers instead of wasting his talents on histories, he might have risen to some post of honor and profit: peradventure to be a notary public, or even a justice in the ten-pound court.
Besides the honors and civilities already mentioned, he was much caressed by the literati of Albany; particularly by Mr. John Cook, who entertained him very hospitably at his circulating library and reading-room, where they used to drink Spa water, and talk about the ancients. He found Mr. Cook a man after his own heart — of great literary research, and a curious collector of books At parting, the latter, in testimony of friendship, made him a present of the two oldest works in his collection; which were, the earliest edition of the Heidelberg Catechism, and Adrian Vander Donck’s famous account of the New Netherlands; by the last of which Mr. Knickerbocker profited greatly in this his second edition.
Having passed some time very agreeably at Albany, our author proceeded to Scaghtikoke; where, it is but justice to say, he was received with open arms, and treated with wonderful loving-kindness. He was much looked up to by the family, being the first historian of the name; and was considered almost as great a man as his cousin the Congressman — with whom, by-the-by, he became perfectly reconciled, and contracted a strong friendship.
