| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Anti-Rent Era in New York Law and Politics, 1839–1865. By Charles W. McCurdy. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. xx, 408 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8078-2590-5.)

Charles W. McCurdy, in this inquiry into the interaction of politics and the law in antebellum New York, recovers the reasons why the intense, often ingenuous search for a legal solution to the predicament of manorial tenure encountered frustration at every turn. On most manors and patents in colonial New York, contracts conveyed perpetual ownership to the grantee. They also comprised characteristics of a lease. The grantor reserved the entitlements of a landlord through receipt of rent payments and service, charges upon the sale of the land, and the right of repossession for negligence of any covenant clause. This incongruous combination instituted a peculiar set of social relations. Tensions originating in lessee dissatisfaction flared up every so often in various neighborhoods between 1750 and 1830. Massive social upheaval upon the death in 1839 of seventy-five-year-old Stephen Van Rensselaer, "patroon" of 3,063 tenant families on the 726,000 acres of Rensselaerwyck, elevated the manor question on the state's agenda. Initially directed against the collection of rent arrears, the growing momentum of the movement drew attention to the anachronous coexistence of republican principles and archaic feudal encumbrances. The abolition of leases in fee received widespread support from across the political spectrum, yet no reform proposal made it over the double hurdle of constitutional muster and legislative approval. . . .

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