Land and Freedom

Part of a wave of new scholarship on antebellum land reform movements, Reeve Huston's Land and Freedom recounts the story of New York's AntiRenters. He chronicles the connections of grassroots movement with the shifting soil of the second party system, documenting the way in which AntiRenters forged surprising alliances with both Whigs and Democrats and emerged changed in the process. The AntiRenters were islands of tenantry in a sea of freeholders. They had long coexisted with their Dutch patroon landlords in relationships of negotiation and deference, but beginning in the 1820s and 1830s this regime deteriorated. A new generation of landlords, their property no longer protected by entail, sought to collect back rents at full value. Declining crop prices made the rents a greater burden for tenants, who attempted to protect themselves. They challenged the landlords' titles, intimidated local law enforcement officials, and finally attempted to elect politicians who would protect their interests

Agency (philosophy · Archaeology · Deference · Economic rent · Economics · Grassroots · Land reform · Land tenure · Market economy · Negotiation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Royalist · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · American Environmental and Regional History · American History and Culture · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society