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

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.

McCurdy highlights the manifold ways in which law and politics shaped both the pattern of the Anti-Rent violence and the drive for land reforms in the 1800s. He provides a major reinterpretation of the ideas and institutions that diminished the promise of American democracy in the supposed Rgolden ageS of American law and politics. (Legal Reference/Law Profession)
Charles W. McCurdy is professor of history and law at the University of Virginia.
[This] study opens up vistas showing the manifold ways in which politicians/lawyers shaped the possibilities for democratic reform. ("Choice")
McCurdy offers us a compelling cautionary tale about the need to understand the limits and constraints of democratic institutions in our past and our present. ("Virginia Quarterly Review")
Charles McCurdy not only provides a much more thorough and detailed account of the Anti-Rent movements than anyone has ever given before, but throws a brilliant light on property law, constitutional law and party politics in mid-nineteenth century America. (Robert W. Gordon, Yale University)