Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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in Boston, and the New Englanders rose instantly and threw him into prison, while his governmental fabric throughout the provinces perished almost in a day. |
The accession of the Dutch prince to the throne of England added another to the forces that were tending to make the various ethnic elements of New York fuse together. All New Yorkers could be loyal to the Dutch prince who wore an English crown, and who was their special champion against a hostile creed and race. For the next eighty years Holland was England’s ally, so that the Hollanders in America saw nothing at work in European politics which should make them unfriendly to their English fellow-citizens; and the one great enemy of both races was France. Their interests and enmities were the same, and were also identical with those of the Huguenots, who formed the third great element in the population. It was this identity of interests and enmities, no less than the similarity in religious belief, which made it possible for the two races already in the land to merge so easily into the third and later-coming race. The comparative rapidity of this fusion in New York is noteworthy. It stands in sharp contrast to the slowness of the intermingling where the English or their successors have conquered and moved into communities of Catholic French and Spaniards. |