In January more than 350 years ago, two men of Vlissingen—now Flushing, N.Y., near Manhattan—sat in jail for defending the rights of Quakers to publicly practice their faith. This early act of courage in support of religious freedom is one of America's most important, yet least known, declarations of private and public rights of conscience.
In a colony then called New Netherlands, the governor, Peter Stuyvesant, supported the Dutch Reformed Church with law and money. Other faiths were tolerated, but very grudgingly. As long as those faiths were practiced in private, their adherents often went undisturbed, despite Stuyvesant's animosity. This mirrored Holland's own uneasy sectarian détente.
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