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.