sider and
examine what may be charged, and his answers." Should the Council
prefer, he would send a delegate to Boston, or they might send
delegates to Manhattan to investigate the whole affair.

The Council decided to send three commissioners, men of note, to
Manhattan. At the same time an army of five hundred men was ordered to
be organized "for the first expedition," should "God call the colonies
to make war against the Dutch."

The New England agents were hospitably received at New Amsterdam. They
urged that the meeting should be held in one of the New England
colonies, where Stuyvesant "should produce evidence to clear himself
from the charges against him." He was to be regarded as guilty until
he proved himself innocent.

The Puritan agents appear to great disadvantage in the conference
which ensued. "They seem to have visited the Dutch," writes Mr.
Brodhead,

"as inquisitors, to collect evidence criminating the Dutch
and to collect no other evidence. And, with peculiar
assurance, they saw no impropriety in requiring the
authorities of New Netherland, in their own capital, to
suspend their established rules of law in favor of those of
New England."

Governor Stuyvesant repressed every expression of impatience, and
urged the most friendly overtures. It may be said that it was
manifestly for his interest to do so, for the Dutch colonies were
quite powerless compared with the united colonies of New England. The
New England agents ungraciously repelled his advances, and at length
abruptly terminated the conference without giving the governor an
opportunity to prove his innocence. At nine o'clock in the evening
they suddenly took leave of New Amsterdam, declining the most friendly
invitations to remain, and "cloaking their sudden departure under
pretence of the day of election to be held this week at Boston." They
left behind them the following menace:

"The Commissioners conclude their negotiation by declaring
that if you shall offer any injury to any of the English in
these parts, whether by yourselves or by the Indians, either
upon the national quarrel, or by reason of any differences
depending between the United English Colonies and
yourselves, that, as the Commissioners will do no wrong, so
they may not suffer their countrymen to be oppressed upon
any such account."

The morning after this unfriendly retirement of the agents, Governor