Antirent War

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).

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Antirent War

(1839–46) Civil protest by leaseholding farmers in upper New York state. Protesting outdated laws based on semifeudal leaseholding practices of the early Dutch estate owners, the leaseholders of Albany county in 1839 refused to pay back rent. The governor called out the militia to quell the violence. Sporadic acts of resistance against rent and tax collection spread across the state, and in 1845 the governor declared martial law. In 1846 a new state constitution abolished the leasehold system.