It Happened Here -- The Physicians Who Practiced "Sedition"

And the Rising of the Calico Indians

  

At the Intersection of NYS 85 and NYS 143/443, Westerlo

Back in the end of May, this year. NYSHMs--It Happened Here told the story of the "Battle" of Clarksville,  an early confrontation between large New York landlords and rural lease-holding farmers in what became a decades long struggle known as the "Anti-Rent Wars".

Rte. 22, Claverack

From the earliest colonial times the Dutch attempted to populate their colony by granting huge tracts of land to Patroons who would enlist groups of settlers to take leases, work the land and put down roots securing the Dutch claim to the colony. When the Duke of York, brother of King Charles II, of Great Britain swept into power, driving the Dutch government out, he and his agents--a succession of early English colonial governors, found it convenient to continue the system the Dutch had utilized, granting large leasehold to political supporters and favorites, giving them the right to issue "three lifetime" or perpetual leases to farmer tenants and granting them power to govern their Manors and adjudicate disputes. The Van Rensselaers not only survived the change of power but continued to prosper, acquiring in addition to their Albany County holdings, the "Lower Manor" comprising most of what became Rensselaer County and land down to Livingston manor in what became Columbia County.

The Vedder Farm, a life lease in Gallatineville

After the American Revolution, Stephen Van Rensselaer III developed a scheme for populating the least fertile areas of his manor by offering leases to revolutionary war veterans rent free for seven years, to give them a chance to develop their farms. Other manors and smaller leaseholds also benefited from the post-war demand for farmlands as leases were taken out on undeveloped, less desirable plots of land in the hilly hinterlands from the Taconic Hills, the Berkshires,  to the Helderbergs, the foothills of the Catskills, the Blenheim "backbone" and Delaware County.

Stephen Van Renssellaer III was able to manage the discontent among his tenants by not pressing them for their rent and allowing rents to go unpaid during years of poor harvests, or times of personal hardship, but a crisis occurred when Van Rensselaer died and his heirs chose to press the tenants for their back rent. Out of this crisis grew an increasing awareness on the part of tenants of the inherent unfairness of this system which required them to pay and pay the value of their farms many times over, gave them nothing for the improvements they had made to their farms, and effectively prevented them from selling their property.  What once had seemed entirely proper in the English Colonies-- a landed aristocracy organizing and controlling a class of tenant farmers, now seemed gallingly undemocratic in a new republican society of Jacksonian democracy.

Crounse's marker in Altamont makes no mention of his anti-rent activities

Key to the growth of this perception was the influence of country doctors.  Traveling from farm to farm, country doctors ministered to the sick and injured,  and were routinely on hand when such personal crises on family farms brought about economic crises as well.  Spreading news and opinions from other farms they were instrumental in the creation of farmer's Anti-Rent organizations. Frederick Crounse was one such doctor, whose patients and their families would often be treated to a spontaneous lecture on democratic principles and reminded of their civic obligation to unite against the oppression of the Patroon.

In the East (Lower) Manor, another doctor,  Smith Broughton organized meetings in local towns, and spoke at corn huskings, barn raisings--wherever farmers gathered, to organize them into a boycott on paying rent. As the boycott became increasingly effective, the landlords countered by attempting to use local sheriffs to repossess  farms and confiscate farm animals and personal property to satisfy unpaid rents.

Co. Rte 157A, East Berne

In May 1844 anti-rent leaders from several counties, including Broughton met at a private home in East Berne to decide what to do. They agreed to a plan to set up independent units of disguised and armed farmers to disrupt repossessment sales and prevent the confiscation of animals and property. Set up as independent cells, no individual would know more than a few other individuals.  In a nod to the Sons of Liberty who had disguised themselves as Indians and dumped the tea into Boston harbor at the beginning of the American Revolution, the Anti-Renters called them "Indians", and identified each other with "Indian" names.  Inexpensive calico cloth was sown into loose gowns by farmer's wives, pledged to secrecy and fanciful masks of sheepskin, decorated with horns, war paint and animal hair mustaches and beards were made by the farmers. The "Indians" armed themselves with a variety of muskets, pistols, clubs and sharpened farm tools. As in the first confrontation, in Clarksville, back in 1839, the tin dinner horns would be used to communicate, and spread the alarm day or night at a moment's notice. Within a few weeks a tenant

NYS Rte 212, Lake Hill

militia of perhaps 10,000 farmers was armed, "uniformed," trained and ready. On the East Manor, one of its leaders and a spokesman who went by the name of "Big Thunder" was Dr. Smith Broughton.

By that summer sheriffs or their deputies in both the East and West Manors and Delaware County were turned back or had the foreclosure writs they were attempting to serve taken from them and burned and some were treated to a coat of warm pine tar and feathers.

The successes of the "Indians" engendered a concerted effort by "law and order" and  pro-landlord opposition forces to identify the ring leaders and stop them.  In December, Dr. Broughton was scheduled to speak at Smoky Hollow in Columbia County. Before the speech he talked with a prominent politician and realized later he may have intimated that he and "Big Thunder" were one and the same.  When he walked to the platform to speak he was greeted with a raucous ovation, with mounted "Indians" in the back of the crowd galloping back and forth, discharging their muskets into the air. Suddenly a young man standing in front of him collapsed, mortally wounded. A coroner's inquest would declare it was an unfortunate accident, the result of the reckless behavior of the Indians. Broughton agreed at the time, but in later years came to believe it was a failed assassination attempt. After the speech he was arrested, and not told until later he was being held for theft of foreclosure writs, taken from a Sheriff at Copake and burned by "Big Thunder".  Broughton and a fellow anti-renter were imprisoned  and chained in the Hudson City Jail under brutal conditions, as an unsympathetic judge first ignored then denied all efforts of the Anti-Renters to get Broughton released on bail. In March the trial was held, but the jury could not agree on an acquittal. One juror, who worked as a miller for the Livingstons declared he would never agree. With a hung jury Broughton was returned to jail.

All the while the anti-rent associations were working legal channels to secure Boughton's release, the anti-rent farmers of Columbia County were working to make the incarceration of Broughton as expensive as possible for the people of Hudson.  Refusing to sell their produce in the city of Hudson, the farmers also refused to buy or allow the distribution of Hudson newspapers unsympathetic to the anti-rent cause. Indians demonstrated on the outskirts of Hudson and throughout Columbia County causing panic and calls for troops to be stationed in Hudson.  Governor Silas Wright sent troops from Albany but the costs of housing and feeding them were borne by the city. 

Co. Rte 43, Alps

Broughton's modest home has seen some hard use

Finally, a desperate plot was hatched to free the doctor.  The bars of his cell were sawed through and horses for an escape attempt were stationed at seven mile intervals out of the state.  But at the last moment Broughton refused to go. Believing escape would be an admission of guilt, Broughton later wrote"I had acted within my  natural and constitutional rights, trying to save my fellow citizens.... I was determined to leave legally or not at all."

Through the spring and into the summer Doctor Broughton remained in jail. On the 4th of July huge anti-rent rallies were held in Albany, Rensselaer, Schoharie, Columbia and Delaware Counties. There and in other Independence Day celebrations across the state speakers railed against the treatment of Smith Broughton, and heaped the blame for it and the continuing disturbances associated with it, on the shoulders of Governor Wright. With elections just four months away Wright realized he needed to do something to diffuse the anger directed at him.  Recalling the present judicial commissioner, he appointed a new commissioner with new instructions--Fix Bail!

Broughton was free for now but his troubles were far from over. Ahead of him he faced another trial, a conviction and imprisonment. More severe tests awaited the calico Indians. The death of an undersheriff in Delaware County would result in some two hundred and fifty Indians imprisoned and charged as accessories to capital murder. And the leasehold system itself would endure a lingering death as the original manor-holding families piecemeal sold out to their tenants or tried to cut their losses by selling out to land speculators who would, in turn, try their hand at extracting rents. But all of this is for another post. The significance of what happened over the summer of 1845 was nothing less than a sea change of public opinion.

The Marker Of The Week -- Will return Next Week.

(Apologies to my regular readers who were looking for a Post on Monday. I guess I enjoyed vacation a little too much, and had trouble buckling down to get out a post the first day I returned! --Tom)