Manor of Rensselaerswyck - Anti-rent Movement and Downfall

Anti-rent Movement and Downfall

Stephen III lived to be 75, dying in 1839. He is remembered as "The Good Patroon" and also "The Last Patroon" because he was legally the last patroon of Rensselaerswyck. At the time of his death, Stephen III was worth about $10 million (about $88 billion in 2007 dollars) and is noted as being the tenth richest American in history.

The spectacle of a landed gentleman living in semi-feudal splendor among his three thousand tenants was an anachronism to a generation which had become acclimated to Jacksonian democracy. Stephen III's leniency toward his tenants created a serious problem for his heirs, who were instructed by his will to apply the back rents (approximately $400,000) toward the payment of the patroon's debts. As soon as the rent notices went out, the farmers organized committees and held public meetings in protest. Stephen IV, who had inherited the "West Manor" (Albany County), refused to meet with a committee of anti-renters and turned down their written request for a reduction of rents. His brusque refusal infuriated the farmers. On July 4, 1839, a mass meeting at Berne called for a declaration of independence from landlord rule but raised the amount the tenants were willing to pay.

The answer to this proposal was soon forthcoming. The executors of the estate secured writs of ejectment in suits against tenants in arrears. Crowds of angry tenants manhandled Sheriff Michael Archer and his assistants and turned back a posse of five hundred men. Sheriff Archer called upon Governor William H. Seward for military assistance. Seward's proclamation calling on the people not to resist the enforcement of the law and the presence of several hundred militiamen overawed the tenants. The tenants, however, persisted in their refusal to pay rent. Of course the sheriff could and did evict a few, but he could not dispossess an entire township.

By 1844 the anti-rent movement had grown from a localized struggle against the van Rensselaer family to a full-fledged revolt against leasehold tenure throughout eastern New York. Virtual guerilla warfare broke out. Riders disguised as Indians and wearing calico gowns ranged through the countryside, terrorizing the agents of the landlords. In late 1844, Governor William Bouck sent three companies of militia to Hudson, where anti-renters threatened to storm the jail and release their leader, Big Thunder (Dr. Smith A. Boughton, in private life). The following year Governor Silas Wright was forced to proclaim Delaware County in a state of insurrection after an armed rider had killed an undersheriff at an eviction sale.

The anti-renters organized town, county, and state committees, published their own newspapers, held conventions, and elected their own spokesmen to the legislature. The success of candidates endorsed by anti-renters in 1845 caused politicians in both parties to show a "wonderful anxiety" to "give the Anti-renters all they ask." The legislature abolished the right of the landlord to seize the goods of a defaulting tenant and taxed the income which landlords derived from their rent. Shortly thereafter, the Constitutional Convention of 1846 prohibited any future lease of agricultural land which claimed rent or service for a period longer than twelve years. Yet neither the convention nor the legislature was willing to disturb existing leases.

The antirenters played politics with remarkable success in the years between 1846 and 1851. They elected friendly sheriffs and local officials who virtually paralyzed the efforts of the landlords to collect rents. They cleverly threw their weight to the candidates of either major party who would support their cause. The bitter rivalries between and within the Whig and Democratic parties enabled the anti-renters to exert more influence than their numbers warranted. As a result they had a small but determined bloc of anti-rent champions in the Assembly and the Senate who kept landlords uneasy by threatening to pass laws challenging land titles. The anti-rent endorsement of John Young, the Whig candidate for governor in 1846, proved decisive. Governor Young promptly pardoned several anti-rent prisoners and called for an investigation of title by the Attorney General. The courts eventually ruled the statute of limitations prevented any questioning of the original titles. Declaring that the holders of perpetual leases were in reality freeholders, the Court of Appeals outlawed the "quarter sales," i.e., the requirement in many leases that a tenant who disposed of his farm should pay one-fourth of the money to the landlord.

Assailed by a concerted conspiracy not to pay rent and harassed by taxes and investigations of the Attorney General, the landed proprietors gradually sold out their interests. In August 1845, seventeen large landholders announced that they were willing to sell. Later that year, Steven IV agreed to sell his rights in the Helderberg townships. His brother, William, who had inherited the "East Manor" in Rensselaer County, also sold out his rights in over five hundred farms in 1848. Finally, in the 1850s, two speculators purchased the remaining leases from the van Rensselaers.