Though its collaborators would have you believe otherwise, the Hudson-Fulton Celebration was not entirely a celebration of Henry Hudson or Robert Fulton.  The heroes of 1909 were not so much historical figures as they were personifications of the values and ideals that New Yorkers held dear. New York was not merely commemorating Hudson or Fulton; it was instead remembering and publicizing its cherished association with the Dutch.

That’s not to belittle Hudson or Fulton. Those two historical figures, however distorted by time and imagination, certainly deserved commemoration. According to the lore of the Celebration, Hudson’s 1609 journey across the Atlantic was New York’s entrance onto the world stage, the action that set in motion the City’s swift rise to international eminence.^[1] Much later, Robert Fulton harnessed his talents in order to bring forth a truly global community connected to the worldly city he helped create.^[2] Hudson’s voyage served as the foundation of this compelling legend, and Fulton’s efforts as its brilliant continuation. Still, the Celebration that bore these men’s names was less about them and their achievements and more about how their legacies shaped the far grander narrative of the City itself. 

By 1909, New York had spent three hundred years at the forefront of American commerce, culture and politics, and had earned her exalted status through centuries of unbending resolve.^[3] With this inspiring tale of American struggle and success in mind, one could easily imagine why New Yorkers in 1909 would choose to honor Robert Fulton. The value of his 1807 experiment with nautical steam power was made obvious everyday by the bustling activity in New York Harbor.^[4] In the timbre of the Celebration’s uncontainable enthusiasm, contemporary historians credited the persistent genius of Fulton with a “marvelous conquest of the sea” ^[5] that crossed oceans and united the nations of the world in the fraternal embrace of steampower. Not only did New York claim unity with the world, it asserted that one of its sons had labored to bring such intimacy into existence.^[6] Surely the exuberant citizens of New York saw a little bit of themselves in such a daring entrepreneur. However, the commemoration of Fulton’s invention and its ensuing significance encompassed just one half of the 1909 Celebration. An explanation of New York’s turn-of-the-century fascination with the Englishman Henry Hudson is far more difficult to decipher.

Hudson’s connection to New York City was as evident to the New Yorkers of the early twentieth century as it is to their modern counterparts. Although he was an Englishman by birth, in 1609 Hudson had embarked on a commercial expedition for the Dutch West Indies in order to find the mythical Northern Passage to Asia.^[7] After a harrowing journey, his small ship, the Half Moon, arrived in the New York Harbor that same year.^[8] Upon his return to Europe, Hudson told tales of the valuable and virginally beautiful land across the sea, and managed to convince the Dutch government to finance a settlement at the mouth of his all-important, eponymous river.^[9] This rustic commercial colony, called New Amsterdam in honor of the Netherlands’ earliest and most influential city, took root on the fertile shores of Manhattan Island some years after Hudson’s expedition.^[10] Thus the legendary captain earned himself the title of both discoverer and visionary, establishing New York’s ties to the enterprising nation of Holland. 

This was the gripping myth that directors of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration sought to disseminate, and it was not an utterly foreign one for New Yorkers in 1909. Much like other revisionist theories of the time, scholars in the years preceding the Celebration sought to reexamine American history through the lens of Holland-centric speculation.^[11] Among the great many of these intellectuals, one is notable for his emblematic response to the traditional historical interpretations of the day.  John Lothrop Motley, who authored the well-known chronicle History of the United Netherlands in 1867, rejected the notion of America’s reputed English influence in favor of what he regarded as her far more significant relationship with the Dutch.^[12] Other scholars followed Motley’s example, stressing that it was not England, but the nation of Holland that had instilled America with the “fundamental principles”^[13] of liberty and equality. To their minds, Hudson’s exploits were the transplantation of Dutch excellence to America. One historian of the era writes that for “entering [New York] harbor in 1609, all Americans must always be grateful to Henry Hudson".^[14] The result of this deluge of revisionist theory was the entrenchment of pro-Dutch sentiments in the historical consciousness of society. Individuals attending the Celebration were made to believe that without Hudson or the Dutch there could be no America, and, more importantly, no New York.

However, there was one essential problem with this otherwise compelling legend. Hudson was neither the first man to sight Manhattan Island, nor the first to catch a glimpse of his famed river.  In the years leading up to the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, literature of the time readily ceded that the Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano was indeed the first individual to stumble upon both Manhattan Island and the river that would one day be christened with the name of that famous Englishman.^[20] It appeared as though the tale of Henry Hudson and, most vitally, the festivity’s underlying Dutch character, rested upon a single and critically mistaken reading of history. 

Fortunately, the leaders involved with the Hudson-Fulton Celebration were shrewd men.  Their vision of the Celebration did not involve debating who originally discovered Manhattan. Rather, they stated that their intentions were to celebrate figures and events that “have contributed greatly to the advancement of civilization”^[21] according to how far they were willing to interpret them. Collaborators were prepared to account for even the most flawless of historical objections. To this end the commissioners of the Celebration sponsored the Brief History of Henry Hudson and Robert Fulton, and obliged their readers with a brief discussion of semantics. They reassuringly explained that the“word ‘discover’ does not necessarily mean to see a thing first. Its primary meaning is. . . to make known. Columbus was not the first person to discover America . . . yet we justly call Columbus the discoverer because he made his knowledge useful to mankind. So it was with Hudson”.^[22]

Remarkably, the Commission was willing to admit that Hudson was not the first explorer to cast his eyes upon New York or her waterways.  All the same, leaders of the Celebration argued, he was the first person to make substantial use of his discovery.  Verrazzano’s voyage to New York, though precedent to Hudson’s, left no discernible impression upon the pages of history.^[23]   But as far as New Yorkers in 1909 were concerned, Hudson’s journey did nothing less than secure their illustrious future.^[24] The City itself remained an enduring testament to the efficacy of Hudson’s all-important discovery.  In this devious but nevertheless deft fashion, the Hudson-Fulton Celebration was able to out-maneuver even the certainty of historical fact, ensuring thatHolland and her intrepid explorer would never be in danger of losing their privileged status as the true heroes of the City.

      So important were the Dutch to the Hudson-Fulton Celebration that their presence saturated almost every visual aspect of the event. Nonetheless, the dual commemoration that was to take place in 1909 served a slightly furtive purpose. Yes, the Celebration was meant to honor the legacies of two men that lent it their names. The Commission was also obsessed with communicating New York’s global significance and its connection to the City’s extraordinary Dutch provenance.^[25] But another, equally urgent anxiety played upon the minds of the City’s leaders as well.  1909’s capacity to educate the immigrant masses about the proper American way of life, mitigated by the Celebration’s preoccupation with its Dutch identity, was the unremitting concern of the day.^[26] Arguably the most didactic showpiece of the entire Celebration was the Hudson-Fulton Parade, a cavalcade of fancifully historical floats. [27]

Three principal pieces, each sponsored by the Hollanders of Albany and vicinity, formed the main contingent of Dutch floats in the Hudson-Fulton Parade. ^[28] As their suggestive name implies, the Hollanders was a society that appreciated Dutch influence in America and sought to propagate the inherent values of such an illustrious bond.  In an explication of their involvement in the parade, the Hollanders explicitly stated that it was their hope that the display of local history would make spectators aware of the overwhelming importance of Dutch ideals in New York and in the world.^[28] Modeled after the first Court of Fort Orange, the first Protestant Dutch Church and the colony’s earliest schoolhouse, the three respective floats served particular symbolic purposes.^[28] Each craft embodied an ideal or philosophy that contemporary scholars resolutely attributed to Dutch ingenuity and acumen. The courthouse makes manifest the principle of justice, a necessary virtue to safeguard in any culture. The second float, the church, symbolizes religious expression and freedom, a variety of broadmindedness normally ascribed to the Netherlands.  Lastly, the schoolhouse conveys the importance of education and the cultivation of knowledge.  This trinity of rational, liberal theories encompassed for the Hollanders the principles of civilization, the rocks upon which the Dutch had built their society.  It was these grand ideas, namely “Justice, Religion and Education, which were introduced in this region by a nation which at all times has been conspicuous for its love of law and liberty, its belief in religious toleration and its high degree of general culture” ^[28] that shaped the character of New York City from its earliest days.  These exclusively Dutch contributions to society, like many of the symbols of 1909, were brazenly flaunted for all to see.

Simply put, the Hudson-Fulton Celebration was an historical, cultural and educational event. It commemorated the lives of two men, reinforced the widespread compulsion to glorify Holland and sought to advertise and impart the benefits of a Dutch heritage upon the masses of new Americans. These forces operated beneath the surface of a magnificent, unparalleled event, masked by the spectacle of a communal celebration. While members of the Hudson-Fulton Commission were aware of these matters, they did their utmost to conceal their actions behind the façade of festivity and popular enthusiasm.

But should we be so disapproving of this truly momentous occasion, the unity it fostered or the intense pride it engendered in its participants? These individuals were adamant in the belief that their cultural inheritance, that of the idealized Dutch, afforded not only delight in the present, but also pleasure in the stories of times long gone. It was reasonable in their view to assert that America was American because it was Dutch, as strange as that sounds to our ears today.  The fact of the matter is that New York was and continues to be a city whose heart and mind remain fixed upon the promises of the future, and whose spirit is tied inexorably to the past.