Peter Stuyvesant - Religious Freedom

Religious Freedom

Stuyvesant struggled bitterly for the rights won by Jews in Holland not to be accorded those in the new world. Stuyvesant referred to the Jews as a "repugnant race" and "usurers". He wrote to the Dutch West India Company, "Jewish settlers should not be granted the same liberties enjoyed by Jews in Holland, lest members of other persecuted minority groups, such as Roman Catholics, be attracted to the colony." Then following multiple protest from Jews in the new world and Holland and after his death they were even granted the right to pray, besides just trade.

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