| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Charles W. McCurdy. The Anti-Rent Era in New York Law and Politics, 1839–1865. (Studies in Legal History.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2001. Pp. xvii, 408. $45.00.

Reeve Huston. Land and Freedom: Rural Society, Popular Protest, and Party Politics in Antebellum New York. New York: Oxford University Press. 2000. Pp. ix, 291. $35.00.

In 1839, just as a prolonged national economic depression began, hundreds of farmers holding land under perpetual lease on the vast upstate New York manor of Rensselaerwyck began what Charles W. McCurdy calls "the most spectacular tenant rebellion in United States history" (p. xiii). Protesting the harsh terms and feudal encumbrances in their leasehold contracts, Anti-Renters withheld their annual dues and met landlords' efforts at compulsion or dispossession with armed resistance that led to three deaths. Settling into an ongoing impasse during the 1840s, the insurrection spread to thousands of tenants on other estates in eleven counties. For years, Anti-Rentism roiled New York's politics and confounded its courts. . . .

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