Antirent War

 

in U.S. history, tenant uprising in New York state. When Stephen Van Rensselaer, owner of Rensselaerswyck, died in 1839, his heirs attempted to collect unpaid rents. Tenants on the estate resisted, and an angry mob forcibly turned back a sheriff's posse that tried to evict them. Resistance to landlord authority quickly spread to landed estates throughout the Hudson valley; tenants disguised as Native Americans harassed landlord agents and sheriffs. When a deputy sheriff of Delaware co., N.Y., was killed (1845), Gov. Silas Wright declared a state of insurrection and called out the state militia. Armed resistance ended and the antirenters turned to politics. They helped elect a Whig, John Young, as governor of New York; the legislature passed ameliorative measures; and the 1846 state constitution outlawed future long-term leases. The Antirent War hastened the breaking up of the large landed estates as worried landlords began selling their holdings.

Bibliography

See E. P. Cheyney, The Anti-Rent Agitation in the State of New York, 1839–46 (1887); H. Christman, Tin Horns and Calico (1945, repr. 1961); D. M. Ellis, Landlords and Farmers in the Hudson-Mohawk Region, 1790–1850 (1946, repr. 1967).

The Anti-Rent War (also known as the Helderberg War) was a tenants' revolt in upstate New York during the early 19th century, beginning with the death of Stephen Van Rensselaer III in 1839.

Stephen, who has been described as "[having] ... proved a lenient and benevolent landowner" was the patroon of the region at the time, and was a direct descendant of Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, the first patroon. The patroons owned all the land on which the tenants in the Hudson Valley lived, and used feudal leases to maintain control of the region.

Before the Revolutionary War, the patroons acted as feudal lords, with the right to make laws. The Anti-Rent War led to the creation of the Antirenter Party which had a strong influence on New York State politics from 1846 to 1851.

The first mass meeting of tenant farmers leading to the Anti-Rent War was held in Berne, New York on July 4th, 1839. In January, 1845 one hundred and fifty delegates from eleven counties assembled in St. Paul´s Lutheran Church, Berne to call for political action to redress their grievances. Christman, Henry. Tin Horns and Calico, a Decisive Episode in the Emergence of Democracy. ISBN 0-685-61130-2. 

Further reading

• "New York's Anti-rent War 1845-1846," Contemporary Review, June 2002 by Eric Ford
• Henry Christman, Tin Horns and Calico, a Decisive Episode in the Emergence of Democracy (1978) ISBN 0-685-61130-2
• Dorothy Kubik, A Free Soil - A Free People: The Anti-Rent War in Delaware County, New York (1997) ISBN 0-935796-86-X
• Charles W. McCurdy, The Anti-Rent Era in New York Law and Politics, 1839-1865 (2001) ISBN 0-8078-2590-5
• Candace Christiansen, Calico and Tin Horns (1992) ISBN 0-8037-1179-4

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