The Anti-Rent Era in New York Law and Politics, 1839-1865

by McCurdy, Charles W.

• ISBN13: 9780807825907
• ISBN10: 0807825905
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

A compelling blend of legal and political history, this book chronicles the largest tenant rebellion in U.S. history. From its beginning in the rural villages of eastern New York in 1839 until its collapse in 1865, the Anti-Rent movement impelled the state's governors, legislators, judges, and journalists, as well as delegates to New York's bellwether constitutional convention of 1846, to wrestle with two difficult problems of social policy. One was how to put down violent tenant resistance to the enforcement of landlord property and contract rights. The second was how to abolish the archaic form of land tenure at the root of the rent strike.Charles McCurdy considers the public debate on these questions from a fresh perspective. Instead of treating law and politics as dependent variables--as mirrors of social interests or accelerators of social change--he highlights the manifold ways in which law and politics shaped both the pattern of Anti-Rent violence and the drive for land reform. In the process, he provides a major reinterpretation of the ideas and institutions that diminished the promise of American democracy in the supposed "golden age" of American law and politics.

Author Biography

Charles W. McCurdy is professor of history and law at the University of Virginia

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
Governor Seward and the Manor of Rensselaerwyck	1	(31)
A Whig in the State House	4	(6)
The Patroon's Domain	10	(8)
The Helderberg War	18	(4)
Land Law and the Law of the Land	22	(10)
Whig Reconnaissance	32	(24)
Public Purposes in Party Dialogue	34	(5)
The Wheaton Bill	39	(3)
Land Reform and Whig Constitutionalism	42	(9)
The Making of the Manor Commission	51	(5)
The Politics of Evasion	56	(22)
Portents of Failure	58	(4)
The Debacle in Albany	62	(6)
Anti-Rent Revived	68	(6)
The Compromise of 1841	74	(4)
The Trouble with Democrats	78	(26)
Whig ``Fallacies''---Democratic Solutions	80	(4)
Bargain Theory in the Jacksonian Persuasion	84	(3)
Debtors and Tenants before the Legislature	87	(8)
Anti-Rent Transformed	95	(9)
Depression-Era Constitutionalism	104	(24)
Tightening the Right-Remedy Distinction	107	(3)
Due Process and the Eminent Domain Power	110	(6)
Judicial Review in a Democracy	116	(5)
The Logic of Constitutional Reform	121	(7)
Signs of War	128	(28)
Petitions and Partisanship	131	(4)
Land Reform and Democratic Constitutionalism	135	(6)
Texas and the Reorientation of Parties	141	(7)
The Luxuriation of Anti-Rent	148	(8)
Resistance and Reform	156	(26)
The Election of 1844	159	(4)
Bloodshed	163	(4)
Mixed Reactions	167	(7)
Stalemate	174	(8)
Political Crossroads	182	(23)
The Washington-Albany Connection	184	(5)
Dilemmas for the Democracy	189	(5)
Land Reform and Constitutional Reform	194	(6)
Partisan Mediators of Anti-Rent Decisions	200	(5)
A Cacophony of Voices	205	(29)
The ``New Constitution''	207	(5)
Schism	212	(4)
The Rout of the ``Indians''	216	(7)
Whig Recriminations	223	(5)
The No-Compromise Persuasion	228	(6)
Democratic Futility	234	(26)
Land Reform at the Shrine of Party	237	(9)
Political Fratricide	246	(3)
The Anti-Rent Measures	249	(6)
A Sinking Ship	255	(5)
Whig Resolution	260	(27)
Anti-Rent and the Balance of Power	263	(7)
A Troublesome Constituency	270	(6)
Antislavery and Anti-Rent	276	(5)
Dead Ends	281	(6)
Enmeshed in Law	287	(29)
Lawyers in Charge	289	(6)
The Failed Compromise of 1850	295	(6)
Division and Decline	301	(5)
The Lease in Fee Besieged	306	(2)
Perpetual Rent	308	(8)
The End of an Era	316	(21)
The Anti-Rent Act of 1860	317	(8)
Defeat	325	(4)
Aftermath	329	(2)
Conclusion	331	(6)
Notes	337	(50)
Index	387