n
the legislature. Small bands, armed and disguised as Indians, were also
formed to hold themselves in readiness at all times to resist the
officers of the law whenever and wherever they attempted to serve legal
process upon the tenants. The principal roads throughout the infected
district were guarded by the bands so carefully, and the animosity
between the tenants and the civil authorities was so intense, that at
last it became dangerous for any one not an anti-renter to be found in
these neighbourhoods. It was equally dangerous for the landlords to make
any appeal to the law or for the collection of rents or for protection
of their persons. When Governor Wright entered upon his duties in Albany
in 1845, he found that the anti-rent party had a formidable
representation in the legislature, and that the questions involved were
assuming an almost national importance."

The sheriff made gallant attempts to enforce the law, but his deputies
were killed, and a legal investigation in which two hundred persons were
examined, failed to reveal the perpetrators of the crime. The militia
were called out, but they were no more successful than the sheriff. In
the case of one murder committed in Delaware County in 1845, however,
two persons were convicted, but their sentence was commuted to
imprisonment for life. Various others concerned in the disturbances were
convicted of minor offences, but when Governor Young succeeded Governor
Seward after an election in which the anti-renters showed considerable
voting strength, he pardoned them all on the ground that their crimes
were political. The dispute was finally settled by a compromise--that
is, the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons both sold their estates,
giving quit-claim deeds to the tenants for what they chose to pay, and
the granting of agricultural leases for a longer term than twelve years
was forbidden by the State Constitution of 1846.

This anti-rent agitation is described by Professor Johnston of
Princeton, in the _Cyclopaedia of Political Science_, as "a reign of
terror which for ten years practically suspended the operations of law
and the payment of rent throughout the district." Suppose all the land
of the State had been held under similar tenures; that the controversy
had lasted one hundred years; that the rents had been high; and that the
Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons had had the aid of the Federal army
in enforcing distraints and evictions, and in enabling