Customer Reviews

The Anti-Rent Era in New York Law and Politics, 1839-1865 (Studies in Legal History)

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McCurdy's book was a valuable read. The only people that could be called winners were the ones willing to compromise. The landlords rented raw land, but demanded the value of the land plus the value of the improvements the tenant furnished. The problem was caused by not having a contract that bound just the two signers; it was bound to the land, and following owners. The requirement for a days work was a hold over from feudal times when a tenant wasn't equal, but was called a servant.* The contract wasn't between two equals. I would have liked to see more on the actual start of the movement in the 1750's Race Mountain in the Taconic Range is named for William Race, a tenant farmer who was murdered in 1755 refusing to pay rent to Robert Livingston. I also note Judge Henry Hogeboom was the son of murdered Columbia County Sheriff Cornelius Hogeboom. The Sheriff was shot in 1791 in Hillsdale trying to collect rent for Van Rensselaer.
* lease in the Livingston papers signed by Livingston and Matthues Abraham Van Deusen in 1686. It required work on the road to the Manor by two servants. The second servant was a slave bound to the farm.

I wrote: Rebels of the North, How Land Policy Caused the Civil War