Land and Freedom
Rural Society, Popular Protest, and Party Politics in Antebellum New York
Moreover, they shaped the ideas, policies, and careers of such national political leaders as Martin Van Buren, Silas Wright, Horace Greeley, and William Seward. Deftly interweaving an engaging narrative history with broad-ranging social and political analysis, Land and Freedom brings to life the voices of antebellum northern farmers as they debated the critical social and political issues of their day. It grounds those debates in a detailed analysis of social and political change on New York's estates, and demonstrates the impact of farmers' ideas and initiatives on the broader social and political order. In doing so, it offers new insights into the social and political thought of northeastern farmers, the extent and limits of popular political power under the Jacksonian political order, and the social origins of free-labour ideology and the Republican party.
During the early nineteenth century, a quarter of a million tenants farmed the great estates of New York. Beginning in 1839, at least twenty five thousand of those tenants joined the "anti-rent" movement and began a decade-long fight to destroy the great estates and distribute the land among those who farmed it. One of the most powerful popular movements of the antebellum era and the largest American farmers' movement before the Civil War, the Anti-Rent Wars changed the face of society and politics in New York and the nation, influencing the ideas and careers of such national leaders as Martin Van Buren, William Seward, and Horace Greeley.
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