 Chapter 10 Law and Order While Dr. Bouton and the other two anti-rentors spent their first uneasy night in jail, landlords and politicians sat up mapping out their strategy. The next morning Hudson was awakened by the hysterical drums of law and order. A heavier guard was thrown around the jail. Artillery, loaded with grape and canister, commanded every approach. By the time the morning papers arrived on the street with the story of the death of Bill Reifenberg, the machinery of propaganda was already in motion to create strain and confusion. The Columbia Republican intimated that the death was murder and accused the anti-rentors. He had been heard to shout up-rent and was known to have expressed sentiments against the Indians. Another paper said the young man had refused to shout down with the rent. But when the coroner almost immediately returned a verdict of accidental death, the story was dropped from the newspapers, and rumours began to sweep through the town, leaving a wake of frantic alarm. Thousands of Calico Indians were reported already on the march to burn Hudson and release Big Thunder. A courier sent for help from the governor had been captured, it was said, and was being held by up-river warriors. The truth was that Sheriff Henry Miller had told a delegation of anti-rentors that according to the terms of Dr. Bouton's surrender he would be freed at eleven o'clock that morning. A thousand farmers had flocked to town to carry their leader home in triumph, and District Attorney Theodore Miller seized upon the consequent excitement as a pretext for calling off the hearing. The fortunes of the landlords were beginning to look up. Governor Boke would be retired in two weeks, and they were confident that Silas Wright could be depended upon, owing to the influence of Martin Van Buren, who had hobnobbed with the aristocrats so long that he had lost all touch with the common people who gave him his start. That former Jeffersonian Democrat had stated publicly that he considered the anti-rentors guilty of the darkest crimes. Joseph D. Monnell and the influential Barnburners who had engineered Wright's election were landlord spokesmen too. These men sensed that for the sake of Democratic Party prestige Dr. Bouton had to be kept in jail until Silas Wright took office. In the meantime his detention could be used to provoke tenant disorders, thus Boke's conciliatory policy would be completely discredited, military intervention would be justified, and decisive suppression of anti-rentism would follow. The first move, employing the technique of oblique assault, was a solemn, frank and friendly appeal to the anti-rentors from fifty-nine disinterested citizens and city fathers of Hudson, including Monnell. Friends and fellow citizens, are you fully sensible of the danger and responsibility of your position? Are you quite prepared for the punishment of death or imprisonment? Do you know that resistance to the constituted authorities of the land is high treason? If the legislature is competent to afford you any relief, approach it in the ordinary way and in a peaceful manner. If the covenants of your leases are odious and oppressive, accept no more leases on like terms, and appeal to the honour and magnanimity of your landlords in regard to those that already exist. Your landlords, we have every reason to believe, are disposed to sell on equitable terms. We are bound in frankness to say to you that after having taken leases from your lessers, after having paid them rent for a series of years and acknowledged them as your just and lawful landlords, you are not at liberty to dispute their title. In fine we appeal to you to lay down your arms, to submit cheerfully and completely to the benign authority of the law, and to allow us again to claim you as our esteemed fellow citizens. Frantic appeals for military protection for Hudson were sent to Albany, but wary farmer Boak first dispatched the Attorney General to find out how much of this clamour was based on fact and how much on hysteria. Thurlow Weed's Evening Journal, done with its pre-election courtship of the Calico Indians, promptly came down on the Governor with all the treachery of a practised political knife-wielder. It was ridiculous to send the Attorney General to Hudson. Why should not the old white horse also be sent on a mission? Perhaps his neighing, reverberating through the hills of the Helderburg or Catskell might frighten the Indians from their propriety and quell the disturbances once and forever. One mission would be equally effectual with the other, and both on a par with that of the Governor himself to West Sand Lake last summer. The Governor must do his duty or meet the consequences. The outrages are too marked, too notorious, too alarming to be winked at longer. The allied landlords and politicians did not expect to convince Boak at this point, but they wanted to win over the working people of Hudson. Many of the dockhands and shipbuilders on the waterfront were sons of tough whaling men who had moved up the Hudson from Nantucket before the War of 1812, seeking bases of operation less vulnerable to attack from the British Navy. These Yankees had a natural suspicion of landlords and politicians, and were not so easily aroused as the middle-class conservatives. When the Attorney General arrived in Hudson the town was riding the crest of hysteria. It was reported that the anti-rent warriors had threatened that if men and money could accomplish the rescue of Bowton neither should be wanted. Captain Edward P. Cowles pledged his company of light-guards to the protection of Hudson. Law and order meetings were called to enlist five hundred men to hold themselves in readiness at all times with muskets loaded to assemble at Davis's City Hall at the first peel of the Presbyterian church bell. The Attorney General was moderately impressed. He promised four field-pieces and a hundred stands of ammunition to equip a volunteer army of one hundred, but there would be no state troops. Accepting their defeat the Hudson City Council met in special session and sent for the Albany Burgesses Corps, denounced by the tenants as a mercenary aristocratic company patronized and petted by old Van Rensselaer. At the same time the press launched a crusade of character assassination against Dr. Bowton. He had once seduced a young girl, said one paper. Another declared that he was trying to buy his freedom with betrayal of his comrades, that officials from other anti-rent counties had come to Hudson to consult with him and found him now with little color to his cheek and not a feather on his head revealing all the secrets of the council fire. Big thunder turns out a very coward, having fainting fits and cold sweats at the slightest noise. But District Attorney Theodore Miller's actions gave the lie to these slanders. He had to go outside his own county and raid Dr. Bowton's home in the Alps without a warrant, in an effort to find the damaging evidence that he could not ring from Bowton himself. Immediately after the postponement of Bowton's hearing, Columbia County tenants went to the other leasehold counties to plan joint action. The leaders agreed that the time for force had not yet come. They wanted to test the legal channels first. Anti-rent lawyers were sent to Hudson with pledges up to two hundred thousand dollars for bail. It was refused. The authorities had dropped all pretense of willingness to release the doctor on bail. The farmers of Columbia County then threw their economic power against the town. Their secretary reported, "'We are conserting measures that will bring the city gentry to their senses if they are determined to make common cause with feudalism. The Hudson folks sent to our neighborhood for supplies, but we are resolved to burn them sooner than let them go to Hudson. Whole packages of papers that have taken a stand against us have been returned with the word stop. We are determined as the war has started no longer to support our enemies, and we have determined on one thing more, and that is to carry the war into the enemy's camp by cutting off supplies." In the meantime apologists for the landlords proceeded as if the farmers had already committed fresh violence. The Sunday before Christmas the Reverend Henry F. Harrington of the First Unitarian Church in Albany delivered an ardent plea for the landlords, taking his text from James chapter one verse twenty-one, for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. He was alarmed over the indifference and apathy of the people in the face of tenant outrages, and deplored the fact that there were no boiling eddies of emotion, no thronged and earnest assemblages of the people in the majesty of their strength and the still prouder majesty of veneration for truth, right, and law, to consult over the peril of the whole social fabric, to express in the thunder tones of universal conviction a tone more terrible than the roar of artillery the indomitable energy of those convictions, and to display the giant power of prompt and inflexible determination. He brought up the old argument that the leases were voluntarily assumed and therefore just. Nothing stands forth in this whole matter in clearer aspect than that every instance of resistance to the law has been perfectly gratuitous and uncalled for. The whole process of events is prejudicial to the exculpation of the conduct of the malcontents from the censure of every thinking man, censure, do I say, nay, rather detestation and abhorrence. On Christmas Day the Albany Burgess's corps arrived, and tramped the streets of Hudson in full dress. Mayor Cyrus Curtis read a long proclamation commending Joseph D. Monal for his part in the arrest of Big Thunder, and attributing to the anti-rentors a new threat of fire to the city. Remember, citizens, he warned, that no policy of insurance will cover losses by fire when caused by invasion or insurrection or civil commotion. Let us do our duty, prompt action may save much treasure in many lives. It was incongruous talk for Christmas, but something had to be done to combat the holiday spirit of tolerance, or else Dr. Bouton would have to be released on bail before the new governor could take over. The doctor had been in jail eight days, heavily ironed, without any sign of an overt move by the tenant organizations. Many years afterward in his memoirs Bouton said he received a letter from William H. Seward, offering to defend him without a fee, but the former governor met with an accident on his way to Hudson. There is no record in Seward's autobiography confirming this offer, but it is known that on December 26, 1844 the former governor was under a surgeon's care at Stockport, just four miles from Hudson, after having been thrown from his favorite seat on top of the stage beside the driver. Meanwhile, in a final attempt to stir up open rebellion before Wright took office, Sheriff Henry Miller carried the fight to the tenants once more. Despite the rumors that the Indians were armed and ready to march on the city, and the fact that he had volunteers and mercenaries at his disposal, Miller sent a single deputy to make arrests in the tenant's stronghold of Copaque, and another to close a sale at Ancrame, also a hotbed of anti-rentism. Both men were turned back by Calico warriors without a struggle, and again a delegation went to Albany to inform Governor Bouton that the sheriff had been forcibly resisted in his efforts to make arrests by a very formidable party of Indians. Pushed to the wall at last, because he was unwilling to take the responsibility for a course which he could not see through to a finish, the governor passed the issue on to his successor, who happened to be spending the holiday season in Albany with friends of the Van Rensseliers preparatory to taking office. Silas Wright no longer had to make up his mind about anti-rentism. Once friends and enemies had done it for him. The agitation fomented by political leaders, the press, and the church, all the landlord's cat's paws, was at a peak. The political press was beating a tattoo for law and order, and Whig and democratic journals were heatedly exchanging recriminations for past encouragement given to the tenants. Thurlow Weed's Evening Journal, now called Governor Bout's suspension of rent collection a high crime, and accused him of having slept for a half year while his officers were being maltreated, robbed, and their lives endangered. Edwin Crosswell's Argus retorted scathingly, the attack comes with peculiar grace from the Evening Journal, the organ of the party which nominated and elected a portion of the anti-rent ticket. Really the journal is in a hurry to cut its associations during the last political campaign. Unabashed the journal countered with a reminder that it was dangerous for the dwellers in glass houses to be very free with throwing stones. Has the editor forgotten, it inquired, the missions of its party leaders to all anti-rent towns and the weeks spent in earnest and untiring endeavours to effect a union. The church, too, was paying its debt for liberal gifts from the landed gentry, some of whom included in their leases a stipulation that the tenants must contribute annually to the church. The people were exhorted to rise and put down the tenant threat of revolution. Copies of Reverend Mr. Harrington's sermon of December 22nd were widely distributed in the hope of good. Appeals signed by many citizens filled the newspapers, urging the people to rise against the tenants to prevent total anarchy. The papers gave prominence to a candid and disinterested statement by the Reverend Cortland Van Rensselier, the former missionary. A heavy responsibility rested upon the tenants in the sight of God, wrote this son of the good Patroon. In refusing to pay rent they were shrinking from duty. The only course for his brothers, Stephen IV and William, was to continue their fair offer of compromise and their frank Christian and friendly spirit toward the tenants. The legislature had no choice but to throw the full weight of its authority on the side of the law. He had examined the issue with open mind and found the tenants' challenge of title absurd. The wisdom of the quarter-sale provisions of the leases had been proved by the unfortunate results of his father's leniency in its enforcement. If the good Patroon had not relaxed his enforcement, many troublesome spirits who were stirring up their contented neighbors would never have been on the manor. There was no evil in a man's becoming rich from the labour of others. Providence has made distinctions in society, he stated positively. The rich landlord and the less rich tenant have their respective rights and relative duties. It makes no difference to the tenant as far as the obligations are concerned, whether his landlord is rich or poor. On the wave of such agitation Silas Wright founded easy to reconcile party interest and personal conscience. By the time Boke called him in, his plans had been blueprinted by Democratic Party leaders. Michael Hoffman had advised him that new enactments might be necessary against the employment of Indian or other disguises to cover criminals in their crimes. Some changes may be required to secure a speedy and impartial trial. If there should be danger that sheriffs may be renters, the power to disperse mobs, suppress riots and arrest and detain offenders must be given to some other safe, known and independent magistrate. There is but one serious danger in this business, and that is that the landlords may join with the tenants to cast on the state in the shape of debt their rents against the tenant. The new governor meant to give no quarter to the anti-renters. They had placed a rebellious army in the field and so had forfeited their right to appeal for relief. Now he was presented with the double opportunity of allaying the fears of the hunkers that the party was going radical and at the same time destroying the growing political threat of anti-rentism. Accordingly he ordered the Albany Republican artillery to report at Hudson. On December 29th the newly arrived artillery men attended services at the Episcopal Church in Hudson where they heard an admirable sermon on anti-rentism. Power comes from God, the minister proclaimed. It was delegated by Providence to our governor and other ministers of the law. Resistance to the powers that be is rebellion against the Almighty. After church with this analysis still echoing in their ears the Albany Republican artillery and the people of Hudson had a chance to see the deputies of the deity in triumphant action. Deputy Sheriff Thomas Sedgwick clattered down the street with James Reynolds an accomplice of Bowton in Irons escorted by twenty members of the Albany Burgesses corps. The raiding had stormed Reynolds's house the night before and after smashing in the front door had found the anti-rent leader hiding in the garret. The Columbia Republican reported, arms found in the possession of the prisoner were ready for use, but he was so suddenly and unexpectedly pounced upon that it seems he had no time to use them. Sheriff Miller's first military communique to Albany read, Reynolds is now safely lodged in jail to the great joy of our citizens that such a desperate leader is secured. When Silas Wright took office on January 1st a deputation from Hudson was waiting, with a report of new tenant plans for a determined attack on the city. Charles Lapham, another Calico warrior arrested by the sheriff, had admitted that Walter Hutchins of Minkville had taken over Bowton's leadership, and if Bowton is not out of jail soon Hudson will smoke, Lapham had said. He also revealed that Calico disguises had been secreted along the roads leading to Hudson. Wright at once ordered Captain Crack's cavalry to proceed from New York City by fast boat. Hudson officials were confident that this action would have the happiest results, but the New York Evening Post was gloomy, quoting Joseph D. Manel and Killian Miller, two cool old Dutch lawyers who had gone to the farmers in an effort to arrange a peace. They had learned that while some Indians were willing to give up, most refused to submit and still clamored for title, Manel reported men moving afresh in a rebellious manner. The tenants countered with a warning through the working man's advocate. If your hot spurs should shed one drop of anti-rent blood, our allies the Indians threatened to have scalps to pay for it. To reports that troops were coming from New York, the tenants replied with the threat of extending their boycott, our merchants will be required to trade in Philadelphia, we will not trade even for a six pence worth of Calico with any city that sends troops to collect rents, and there is no need of troops for any other purpose. Captain Crack's one hundred handsomely mounted men arrived in Hudson the very day they were summoned, bringing the total of state troops in the city to three hundred and twenty-five. Sheriff Miller sent word to the Governor that this display of might had brought encouraging signs of tenant capitulation. Several of the most noisy anti-rentors had observed rent day. He soon learned that he was over-optimistic. The Postmaster at Elizaville sent word that Walter Hutchins had inquired at the Post Office about a letter he was expecting from Rensselaer County regarding a raid on the Hudson Jail. This time there was some truth to the report. On the ground that Dr. Bouton was being denied his constitutional rights, Hutchins was planning to lead a band of four thousand masked warriors from a number of manor towns. A deputation from seven or eight counties was secretly sent to Dr. Bouton's council to find out if the doctor would consent to the raid. On mature reflection Bouton rejected the plan, fearing that it would cause bloodshed and would involve the state in a civil war. At the same time anti-rentors in many towns held meetings on New Year's Day, hoping to forestall legislative action by voting to disband the Indians and officially sever all connections with the Calico. In some instances they even pledged to suppress further riotous proceedings. Public approval began to swing back to the tenants, and many who had been openly opposed to the masked bands now came out with promises to support every peaceful and lawful means of redress. The Troy Whig commented on the good spirit that prevailed for the beginning of the year 1845. In New York City, Thomas Ainge Deveree issued a call to the National Reformers to meet on January 2nd in protest against the dispatch of the cavalry troops from New York. Troops have gone from this city equipped with the instruments of death, he announced in the summons, for the purpose of commencing civil war to establish feudalism over freedom. Even the sidewalks outside Croton Hall were crowded for the meeting, but when the Reform Speakers arrived they found the platform already in the possession of an adjutant from the arsenal. He was reading a string of resolutions that breathed fire and sword. Whereas this meeting has been convened for the purpose of sustaining the anti-rentors, and whereas every good citizen of this Republic will recognize the supremacy of the laws over physical force in the security of justice and our rights, therefore be it resolved that we disapprove of the insurrectionary course of the anti-rentors, that as good citizens we will aid in the suppressing of those lawless outbreaks of the tenants, throw him out clamored the crowd. John Wint pushed Thomas Devere toward the platform, go forth and replenish the earth, Devere shouted, and for an hour afterward the wiry Irishmen held the audience with his oratory. We want no revolution, it is to prevent such if possible that we are met here. The French Revolution was produced by landlords endeavouring to force on the people such a system as is now attempted by Van Rensselier. It was through such proceedings as the Indians have now adopted that the glorious freedom of this country was accomplished. It was the Indians who came down to Boston Harbour and destroyed the tea, while the preachers of law and order were discussing the matter. George Evans came forward with a resolution condemning the sending of troops and reminding the landless men of the cities that their taxes would pay for the civil war being waged by the landed aristocracy, while they themselves are suffering from land monopoly by crowded, dependent and unnatural congregation in the cities. Bennet's Herald called the meeting a part of a broad movement to destroy private property. If the constituted authorities are unable to carry the laws into execution, and these anti-rent principles obtain the ascendancy, the next move will be to divide the public lands to abolish all rent, to destroy all leases, and to throw society back to its original elements where wild in wood the noble savage ran. George Evans observed in his paper that the condemnation heaped upon the reformers by the metropolitan press succeeded only in filling Croton Hall to overflowing. He was elated that the tenants refused to be subdued by the military, and declared that, at the rate things are going on among the anti-rentors, I feel that we agrarians shall lose the title of radical, the only one I ever coveted. Aware of the danger of being buffeted by the shifting winds of public opinion, Silas Wright sent the adjutant general of the state militia to Hudson on January 3 to make a strictly confidential study before his message to the legislature was fixed beyond alteration. Word had reached him that the people of Hudson were becoming alarmed over the huge military bill they would have to pay, though the Columbia Republican assured them that the governor's prompt action was saving them months of service for perhaps ten times that number of troops. Wright wanted the officer to find out if the military force was greater than needed and whether the cost of keeping that force was too high. He was to warn Sheriff Henry Miller not to expect the governor to recommend the payment of extravagant or unreasonable bills, and to urge upon District Attorney Theodore Miller the necessity for caution lest any acts of the military might give the impression of rashness, vengefulness, or retaliatory feeling. During the adjutant general's stay in Hudson, Deputy Sheriff Thomas Sedgwick returned from a four-day expedition into tenant territory to report a raid on the home of Walter Hutchins at Minkville. When the troops aroused Mrs. Hutchins in the night, she told them she was alone with nine children and the farm to take care of. Walter had been in Sco-Harry for six weeks, she said, and she wished she could see him again. Not until too late did Sedgwick discover that she had hustled Walter out of the house just as the troops arrived. By the time he took up the chase the tenant leader had disappeared into the woods. This fruitless expedition served further to discredit the clamour in Hudson. Immediately after his return to Albany, Rufus King, commander of the Albany Burgesses Corps, son of the famous United States senator and nephew of landlord John A. King, announced that troops were no longer needed, as the display of power and determination had been attended with the most salutary results. Governor Wright thereupon ordered home all units except the artillery men, and Hudson set the date for a gala farewell ball on January 8th. On January 7th Silas Wright delivered his message to the legislature. Recognizing that the feelings and sympathies of the people were deeply enlisted in the anti-rent controversy and strongly inclined in favour of the tenants, he professed that he would have liked to invite the legislature's careful attention to a consideration of relief measures, but he felt precluded from such discussion by the extravagant and indefensible position given the controversy by the unlawful and violent proceedings of those who assumed to take charge of the rights and interests of the tenants. He said he could not believe that the great body of the farmers were either parties too or conscious and willing accessories of these violations. In a masterpiece of specious reasoning, Wright defined the state constitution as the security of the feeble and dependent against the wealthy and powerful, and maintained that in taking up weapons to break down and destroy that protection and security the tenants only invited the invasion by landlords of their rights and privileges and liberties. May I not finally appeal to those who have become reluctant members of these mistaken associations to sustain such illegal and criminal proceedings, now to step boldly out and resume their duties to society and their country? The message might have made more stir in the leasehold counties if they had not already known what to expect of Silas Wright. It was only a confirmation of his previous commitments tempered slightly by the withdrawal of the troops. In Hudson, meanwhile, plans were going forward for the farewell ball to the army, and the town was gay. Ever since the strain of panic had relaxed, the wags and the loafers had been playing innumerable pranks on the troops. According to a reporter sent up from New York, one night a man was forced to drink a quart of hot water from a tea kettle and then run four times from the ferry landing to the public square with two strings of bells around his neck. The noise created all kinds of stories. Some said a detachment of anti-rentors had come from Copaque to burn the city, the church bell began to ring, and people were in much tribulation, especially the old ladies. Shortly after midnight on the night before the ball, a lone sentry marched back and forth before the white-pillared Hudson house. The city was dark, stars hung lights in the cold sky, and only the crunch of snow underfoot broke the stillness. Finally a horseman loomed in the dark, pulled up short, and fired a shot that whipped past the sentry's head and lodged in a pillar. The rider galloped away, and the city was aroused by excited cries that the siege had begun. No one ever knew whether it was the work of another prankster or a genuine attack on the sentry, but dawn broke without any further disturbance or signs of Indians. The city fathers went on with the ball, but when the soldiers came that night they stacked their guns in the ball-room ready for action. It was a splendid affair, the Hudson girls had never seen so many handsome men, and according to the newspapers they danced until the wee hours. Sometime after midnight, however, Captain Crack's mount and horses for twenty of his men were brought up to the hall. A picked company that included Deputy Sheriff Thomas Sedgwick rode off quietly into the darkness, the sound of hoofbeats deadened by the new fallen snow. The party reigned silently before the home of Walter Hutchins in Minkville. The soldiers took their posts with rifles ready while Sedgwick knocked at the door. After a long delay the door was opened and the deputy tramped in. In Hutchins's bedroom he found a man's coat, vest, and socks on the floor. The bed was empty but warm. Allow no man to pass at the peril of his life he called to the men outside. The riders closed in. Walter Hutchins was found in the garret and dragged from his hiding-place on a ceiling-like shelf. A fast rider was rushed to Hudson to prepare the city for a triumphant entry at dawn. They've got Hutchins. The shouts fell on people's ears as Hudson awakened. They've got Hutchins. Sheriff Henry Miller met the troops near the city and climbed into the box beside the anti-rent chief. With the band playing and horses held in parade rain the company moved into the city. The people who lined the streets knew Walter Hutchins and had never thought of him as a dangerous man. When they saw him paraded through the town by a heavily armed military they were suddenly embarrassed. Hutchins, schooled in the taunts of the anti-rent platform, made the most of the ludicrous situation. He laughed and pointed derisively at the rifles, sabers, and natty uniforms of the cavalrymen, completely winning the sympathy of the spectators. Criticism of the holiday spirit attending his capture mounted. Even the landlord inspired reports of Hudson's great joy in knowing that one of the principal instigators of lawless and violent proceedings was behind bars, failed to stem the tide. Dispatches were hurriedly invented that Walter Hutchins had a field-piece planted before his door and was prepared to make a formidable resistance. Nettled by the displeasure and the ridicule, Sheriff Miller turned upon Captain Crack for directing him to act the conqueror. His explanations only made his position worse. While the troops were packing up, a reporter for the Albany Argus went to the Hudson Jail to see Dr. Bouton. He found the scourge of the landlords, a young man of gentile appearance and prepossessing address, the reverse of everything indicated by thunder, big or little. When he entered, Bouton was reading, but it once arose. He was introduced to me as Big Thunder, the interviewer reported. He immediately corrected my attendant, saying evidently annoyed that that was not his name, but Dr. Bouton. Asked how he felt, the doctor said he was not well in either heart or body. I have left a young wife and an infant child at home, he said, the thought of that is enough. There were tears in his eyes and the reporter turned away embarrassed. The troops had scarcely returned to Albany before Ira Harris, the anti-rent legislator, was on his feet in the assembly, celebrating their heroism by reading aloud the Albany Evening Journal's account of the capture of James Reynolds on the preceding December 29th. Harris dwelt bitterly on such details as the report that Reynolds's son had been floored with a blow from a gun, and that the troops had searched for Reynolds in the dark garret by plunging their bayonets into the rafters. The journal's account had it that when lights were brought, the prisoner was found pinned to the wall, a bayonet through one hand. Realizing that the full responsibility now rested on his shoulders, Silas Wright called for an explanation of this use of troops. Rufus King made a studied reply, accusing Harris of wanting the assembly to believe that an erroneous and exaggerated newspaper account was the official report, when in truth Reynolds had not been harmed at all. It was true, he admitted, that entry was forced, but no movement was made nor shot fired nor act done except in pursuance to the distinct and positive orders of the deputy sheriff. King's interpretation was accepted by the governor. Officially the matter was closed, and although Wright knew that Ira Harris had raised an issue that might return to plague him, he did not intend to be diverted from his determination to finish the anti-rentors. CHAPTER XI. King Silas. King Blue-eyed Silas Wright had cautioned the anti-rentors that they would get no relief from him until they abandoned politics. It must have been a temptation to many of the farmers to withdraw from their local associations, for the Democrats gave them every reason to understand that by doing so they could win substantial concessions individually and collectively. Instead, recognizing the danger of abandoning political union for any such temporary advantage, they called their first state political convention. Fifteen days after Wright became governor, one hundred and fifty delegates from eleven counties assembled in the Lutheran church at Byrne Albany County. These self-reliant and determined men traveled across the mountains over snow-piled roads, some coming from as far as Otsego and Sullivan counties, to repudiate the aristocratic tradition and write an anti-rent platform conforming to the spirit of American progress and shaped by the genius of democracy. From New York City came Thomas Ainge Devere, George Henry Evans, and Alvin Earl Bovet, to put in a word for freedom of the public domain. Horses crowded every stable and shed in the hill-town. There was scarcely room in the church for all the delegates, much less the spectators. The overflow sought the glowing warmth of neighborhood kitchens, or stood about the churchyard in little knots, earnestly debating the issues to be decided. The convention was opened by Dr. Frederick Crownes of Gilderland Township, an anti-renter of longstanding, whose horse and gig were known throughout the Helderbergs. There was none of the fanfare of the ordinary political convention and none of the bargaining for political plums behind the mask of patriotic oratory. When Dr. Crownes reminded the delegates that the revolution had been fought to free men from just such tyranny as still bound the Hudson Valley tenants, his words were greeted with warm cheers, but he quickly went on to the business of the day. Hugh Scott of Westerlo, who was secretary of the first anti-rent meeting in 1839, was elected president of the convention, and David L. Sternberg, the postmaster of Livingstonville, was made vice president. Special committees, speedily appointed, were already in session by the time John Mayhem of Blenheim Hill made the keynote address. In the absence of Dr. Bouton, the most eloquent of the local spokesmen for free soil, that issue was passed over, and the more conservative anti-rentors dominated the convention. The delegates drafted an appeal to the public not to condemn them unheard. The farmers would welcome correction, they said, if any of their demands were incompatible with the constitutional principles of a free people. But they wondered why the richest men in the community contributed no taxes toward the support of the very government which enforced all claims in their favour, and closed all avenues of redress to the tenants as if they were mere vassals of a liege lord. As for charges of violence, they disclaimed any responsibility for the masked warriors, and accused Governor Wright of punishing all tenants for the sins of a few. To Wright and all politicians they served notice that they would no longer resort to force and disguise, but would continue using the ballot to enforce their demands. These demands were, specifically, three legislative enactments. Revocation of the special rights by which the landlord sat as judge, prosecutor, and jury in any cases involving rent, the right to challenge the landlord's title, and taxation of the landlord's rents and other reservations. Before they turned their horses toward home, copies of the resolutions and speeches, and a list of the Democrats who were delegates or members of the anti-rent state committee, were rushed defiantly to Silas Wright to give him something to ponder over. When other copies reached the newspapers, the public was so favourably impressed by the reasonable attitude of the Byrne Convention that the landlord apologists hastened to try to counteract the effect. Someone who called himself Justice wrote a series of letters to the local papers in which he described the resolutions as remarkable for little else than their bad English, and the tenants' appeal for a fair hearing as cool impudence. The resolutions he charged were filled with ear-tickling words to excite prejudice. Thickly woven in and out are such phrases as subservient vassal, liege lord, oppressed tenant, noble landlord, humble tiller of the soil, words that appeal to the very passions and feelings which in the French Revolution made the word aristocracy a death warrant. Within a week after the convention the anti-rentors realized that Governor Wright had set his mind irrevocably against any appeal, however reasonable. On January 21st, 1845, Dr. Bouton's lawyers secured from Supreme Court Commissioner Russell Doar of Hillsdale, Columbia County, an order directing Sheriff Henry Miller to bring the doctor to Hillsdale for a hearing, and to show why he should not be admitted to bail. The order created consternation among the landlords and the politicians. Agitated officials sent urgent word to Silas Wright. District Attorney Theodore Miller and other responsible citizens of Hudson hastened to warn Doar that there was a tenant planned to rescue Bouton as soon as he reached Hillsdale, which would probably result in a disastrous loss of life. Doar refused to rescind the order, but met the spurious riot warnings by making the writ returnable in the Hudson Courthouse instead of at Hillsdale. When the couriers reached Albany with the news, Governor Wright peremptorily removed Doar from office, appointed a more tractable successor, and summoned the Senate into night session for an immediate confirmation. As John Van Buren had just become Attorney General, his appointment confirmed by a one-vote margin, the Governor dispatched him to Hudson with the ouster order, along with word that the Albany Republican artillery was to remain in Hudson until further notice, in case the farmers should try to storm the town. The Governor also instructed the Albany Burgess's corps to be ready to return to Hudson at a moment's notice. Public revulsion against Wright's action was immediate. Even the Democratic Argus, which at first acclaimed Doar's ouster, was obliged to backwater. The editor, Edwin Croswell, admitted that a responsible source in Columbia County had advised him to retract his insinuation that Doar was party to a plot to liberate Big Thunder. The statement from his responsible source, which he printed in full, reported that the removal of Doar had caused widespread, deep, and almost unanimous feelings of indignation. Spurred by the Governor's subversion of the most elementary of constitutional rights, the anti-rentors began to demand an elective judiciary. Silas Wright had given conclusive evidence of the extent of political corruption in the courts. Former Commissioner Doar affirmed that for discharging his constitutional duty he was accused of lending himself in his office to the anti-rentors. If such assertions are any evidence of the disposition that rankles in the hearts of those who style themselves the friends of law and order, he declared indignantly, I can say that I would more willingly entrust my rights in the hands of even the Calico anti-rentors than with such barbarian gentlemen who wheeled the tongue and pen with as little honour and veracity as an Indian wood, a tomahawk, and scalping knife. Although not himself an anti-renter, Russell Doar accepted an invitation to address the next Columbia County anti-rent meeting. Whatever personal sacrifice may grow out of the compliance, he wrote the committee, I will not deny myself the pleasure of addressing the meeting. Please accept for yourself and those you represent the assurance of my affectionate regard. The meeting was held at Churchtown, almost in the shadow of Widow Mary's place, the huge white-pellered mansion built by Henry W. Livingston. Unexpectedly Doar made a strong avowal of sympathy for anti-rentism, which put new heart in the farmers. He advised against further rioting on the realistic ground that it had thus far proved a tower of strength for the landlords. It gives the public press occupation to record outrage after outrage, he said, causing the mass of people to recoil with horror and disgust, then as if speaking directly to Silas Wright. But while I exhort the people to perfect obedience to the laws, I would warn those whose duty it may be to execute them in such a manner as to teach the humanity and necessity of their provisions. I would wish those officers would remember that in our government laws, however just, may fail in their object if they be administered in a manner to make them obnoxious to the public. And above all I would have them know and feel that punishment for the violation of laws is to be inflicted for the prevention of crime, and when it is instigated by any other designs it is destructive and hellish in its character, in reference to the past I cannot say less. As to the future, a revolution was at hand door warned, unless the government awoke to the evils being rooted in the soil. I may be told that to entertain such opinions is agrarian and levelling, he said, if it be such I glory in my convictions, and if this declaration be degrading to the ears of the aristocrats such ears would hear the dying groans of suffering without an emotion. Such a body would feed and fatten upon his race, he would almost drink the blood of his countrymen. Not long after this speech Russell Dorr became an anti-rentor. Political crucifixion of an honest liberal, whose loyalty to the elementary principles of justice was higher than any party loyalty, had forced him inescapably into the radical ranks. But Silas Wright continued to pursue his unenlightened course. Despite the absence of Indian demonstrations or any other show of force to warrant it, he asked the legislature for a law making it illegal to appear in disguise and armed, or to refuse to help an enforcement officer in the discharge of his duties. The law was promptly enacted, with little opposition from the anti-rent members of the Assembly, and on January 28, 1845, just thirteen days after the Byrne Convention had directed the anti-rentors to lay aside their tin horns and calico, the governor signed it. The effect on the tenant farmers was exactly what Wright might have expected. They were angered because he had ignored their honest effort to disband the Indians, and more than ever they were determined to resist every attempt to destroy their political unity. Although violence was obviously what the governor wanted from them, they brought the calico out of hiding and once more broke the silence of the hills with blasts of the horns. Nevertheless the farmers could not give up hope that their representatives in the legislature would be able to do something for them. On February 7, 1845, delegates from the eleven anti-rent counties met in Albany to pool petitions signed by twenty-five thousand tenants, asking for the passage of the three measures put forward at the Byrne Convention. Twenty-five thousand voters they thought could not be ignored. The legislature was less impressed than the farmers had hoped. Again, as in 1844, the tenant petitions were referred to a select committee. But this time the committee was unsympathetic. After due consideration they reported that the only possibility for relief lay in negotiation and compromise with the landlords, that there was no reason why farmers should claim the aid of the legislature any more than any other class of men, and the laws they demanded would not only be of doubtful expedience but an outrage upon the rights of the citizens. In spite of the committee's report Ira Harris rose to introduce the tenant legislation, whereupon Horatio Seymour came down from the speaker's desk to berate him. You ought to be ashamed to introduce such a bill, he cried. It is a disgrace to any senator. It took all the courage Harris possessed to face the abuse, but he held the floor, long enough to castigate Governor Wright for not recognizing the tenant's grievances. Woe to my country, the anti-rent assemblyman shided, when her laws must be sustained with the point of a bayonet. We shall indeed have fallen on evil times when our laws cannot appeal by their justice and equality to our citizens for support. His appeal fell on deaf ears. The friends of King Silas, as the tenants now called him, proved too numerous for the anti-renters, and the bill was defeated. CHAPTER XII THE BASTARD WAR Silas writes belief in the rights of property, and his distrust of any cause tied up with the radical movements of the day, strengthened his determination to crush anti-rentism, not only while Smith Bouton was in jail, but before its burgeoning political organization could undermine the power of the Democratic Party. The passage of the law banning the calico was the signal. With the Governor's sanction, landlordism moved with bold simultaneous strokes against virtually every anti-rent stronghold, provoking violent clashes between the farmers and the aggressive enforcement agents. Trouble started in Delaware County on February 11, 1845, a little more than two weeks after the signing of the bill. On that day Deputy Sheriff Osmond N. Steele led an armed posse from Delhi, the county seat, to raid the Roxbury home of Daniel W. Squires. To his neighbors, Squires was an intelligent, competent, and industrious farmer, but to the landlords he was a dangerous leader of the calico army. The deputy, Osmond Steele, was an arrogant, red-headed bully, thirty-six years old, who was ideally qualified to help Charles Hathaway, his cousin, a landlord agent, in the task of crushing the farmers who refused to pay rent. A heavy snow blanketed the hills that day, and deadened the sound of the posse's approach. They were not detected until they stormed Squires' house. The anti-rinter had no chance to escape, and Steele found him hiding between the straw ticks of the bed on which his wife and mother were lying. With Squires behind bars in the Delhi jail, Sheriff Green Moore sat back and waited to see whether the tenants would capitulate without any further action on his part. Ulster County was the next to receive the impact. Remote as the county was from the heart of the anti-rent movement, and difficult of access besides, the tenants in the northern part had strong bonds with the farmers of Delaware County. They, too, were sons of revolutionary veterans, and many of them subject to the ruinous Robert Livingston leases, where poverty was the worst, their anti-rent organization was the strongest. In the Catskills above Kingston, surrounded by mountains and webbed by swift streams which the tenants were not allowed to utilize for mills, the towns of Woodstock, Bearsville, Yankee Town, and Shandaken had been citadels of tenant rebellion for many months, boasting an active Calico army headed by Asa Bishop, known as Blackhawk of the Ulster Indians. The disorders started on March 7, 1845. A land agent for the Livingston tract hired a man named John Lasher and two others to haul away some wood cut by a trespassing tenon near Cooper Lake under Mount Tobias. Before Lasher's men could load their wagon, twenty Indians swooped down on them. The oxen, frightened by the war-whoops and the horns, ran away and plunged down a cliff. Lasher himself resisted manfully, but was overpowered, tarred and feathered, and finally thrown from a rock some ten feet high. In the fall he dragged two of the Indians with him, and was able to recognize them when their masks fell off. The two men he identified were rounded up by a small posse, but on the way to jail they were freed by a larger band of Calico warriors. Governor Wright promptly sent two hundred and fifty muskets and fifteen hundred rounds of ball cartridges to Kingston to equip a volunteer army. On Monday, March 10th, twenty volunteers shouldered their muskets and tramped off through the snow. They moved up the Little Beaver Kill toward Little Shandaken, hoping that under cover of darkness they might capture Asa Bishop. Not far from the valley settlement, dimly outlined against the snow, they saw someone moving toward the woods. When they fired at him he fled, dropping a box. As the pursuers stopped to open it and examine the Calico dress it contained, four shots rang out from a nearby hill, two of them within a few inches of taking effect. The volunteers stormed the hill, but all they found was a sword, several more Calico rigs, and tracks in the snow. They finally gave up the pursuit, returning to their base with much of their military ardour exhausted by that dreadful March night in snow, slush, and wind. The next day twenty-five men resumed the chase, but had to fall back to Woodstock when they encountered sixty Indians near Lockwood's Tavern. Asa Bishop had brought them over the mountains from Delaware County early that morning, after spending the night at Whipspell's Tavern to rest up from his dangerous chase through the snow. For the rest of the week the volunteers remained in the mountains, serving writs and making arrests, against tenant opposition at every step. One of the deputies was pulled from his horse by masked men, dragged through the mud and tarred and feathered. Although they did find one Indian leader at home in bed, he had a loaded rifle and a pair of loaded pistols at his side. The local press ranted about tawdry Indians and vagabond orators on feudalism. Between raids the posse spent its time organizing meetings to demand further raids on the anti-rentors. John Van Buren, the John who thinks he will go to Siberia if the common people are likely to rule this country, came to Kingston to help draft law and order resolutions. When Justice Charles Ruggles arrived to preside over a special grand jury investigation of the rebellion, he made the statement that the court had no angry or vindictive spirit, yet his statement to the jurors revealed deep prejudice. It is a notorious fact that extensive associations have been formed in other counties, having for their object the forcible resistance of legal process and the obstruction of the due course of law. In more than one instance human life has been taken by persons acting under or influenced by these associations. The course of your duty is plain. It is indispensable necessary that the disturbances should be speedily checked and terminated. They are inflicting a heavy expense on the county. They are bringing poverty, misery and disgrace to those who engage in them. Twenty-eight anti-rentors were indicted by the grand jury, but Justice Ruggles postponed the trials until October, six months away, as an inducement to the tenants to return to peace. The move succeeded, for although Asa Bishop was not captured, most of the Ulster Indian leaders faced long jail terms and never took up the tomahawk again. Similar thrusts were made against the tenants of Skohari County that same month, but without the same success. Blenheim Hill had suffered more than usual the preceding winter owing to shortages of potatoes and hay. And so when landlord John A. King lost patience and appealed to the law to start collecting rent again, the farmers resolved to hold fast against him. Even the moderates like Thomas Peasley had come to feel that the issue was broader than one man, and they had not forgotten that John A. King had helped defeat the bill that would have transferred the leasehold taxes from the tenants to the untaxed landlords. On March 24, when Sheriff John S. Brown and Under-Sheriff Tobias Boke turned their carriage up the valley toward Blenheim Hill, Skohari Creek was a torrent of outbound winter. It was the kind of weather for the upland farmers to tap the maples whose swollen buds reddened the mountainsides, since warm days following sharp frosty nights made a good flow. The journey was slow, for it was uphill all the way, and at times the wheels sank almost hub-deep in mud. Sheriff Brown's pockets bulged with the papers he was to serve on Stephen Mayhem, treasurer of Blenheim Hill Anti-Rent Association, and several other tenant leaders. The carriage was scarcely out of the rocky pass that led up from the Skohari Valley when horns began to sound the alarm. Runners relayed the warning up the mountain to Christopher Decker, the Black Hawk of the Skohari Indians. His sled was loaded with hogsheads ready to collect the day's sap flow, but he called his sister Sally to stable the oxen, while he and Charlie Soper hurried to the clearing in Thomas Peasley's Woods, blowing their horns as they ran. Meanwhile Sheriff Brown and Tobias Boke drove on to the home of Stephen Mayhem. While they were talking to him about the papers, a farmer rode up on horseback at full speed and beckoned Mayhem aside. Though he was not in disguise, the sheriff suspected him of being an Indian, so hastily thrust the papers into Mayhem's hands and rode off. At the same time he caught a glimpse of another rider who was in full disguise. He and Boke attempted to serve papers on Aura Ferguson, who was not at home, and then finding it late, started for Fink's Tavern in North Blenheim under the hill. On the way they met Ferguson and told him their business, he seemed reasonable enough and promised to meet them later at the tavern. In the warmth of the bar room, under the influence of Captain Fink's good gin and brandy, Boke grew loquacious. If an Indian attacked me I'd rip off his mask, he boasted. I'd put all the Blenheim Indians in Skohari jail in no time. Around eight o'clock Ferguson appeared with his money and paid off the claim against him. At least one hundred and fifty Indians, meanwhile, had held a council in the woods and then crept down the mountain and quietly surrounded the tavern. The swift running Skohari Creek roared in the distance and spears of light from the misted tavern windows pierced the night as the Braves waited for their chief to make the first move. When Black Hawk rushed the door with a dozen men variously armed, the warriors outside began to chant, bring them out, we'll have them if we have to take every shingle and board from the house. The instant the Indians stormed the bar room, Ora Ferguson grinned broadly and disappeared. Tobias Boke seized a chair in his powerful hands and felled two of the farmers, but a third rushed him to the floor. Sheriff Brown barricaded himself behind the bar, but one masked man grabbed the axe handle he was swinging while another dragged him over the bar, kicking and clawing. Mrs. Fink, during the contest in the bar room, displayed the perfect heroine, Red Brown's official report, exerting upon the savages her physical energies to the utmost. According to the same report, the Indians dragged Brown outdoors, choking and bruising him in a most brutal manner. The undersheriff fared even worse. Out in the mud, without his boots, he was struck several times with a club, and the warriors stamped him on the ground. After a struggle of perhaps half an hour, the Indians marched the two men about four miles over a muddy bush road. On our march through the woods, the report stated, they continued to annoy and insult us with the most savage threats and ribald and abusive language. They would sometimes amuse themselves by forcing us through the muddiest places they could find in the road, and at others by poking us with their guns. The account in the Albany Argus added that seventy-five of the Indians had bayonets, and Sheriff Brown was pricked some fifteen times, for walking either too fast or too slow, and his foot and leg were much bruised. Not far from Squire Baldwin's the party crossed a bridge, where the masked leaders stationed fifteen or so of their men to prevent any tories from crossing to the sheriff's aid. Just beyond the bridge they left the road, and about a quarter of a mile farther on came to a knoll called Baldwin's Heights. Here they formed a hollow square with Sheriff Brown and Boak in the center, while the flames from a pile of pine stumps lighted the mountain-top, Sheriff Brown's pockets were emptied, and the rent papers tossed into the fire. Then several Indians brought a pail of tar and a bag of feathers into the center. Some of the most brutal insisted that I should be tarred at all hazards, Brown's report said, and swore they would shoot me before I got to Finks if it was not done. This led to considerable argument among the tribe, the prudent, among which their chiefs Red Jacket and Santa Anna contended that it would injure their cause. Discretion won out, and the tar was not used. Brown was warned, however, that if he returned with a posse they would put a ball through his horse, and would not be particular if it took effect on the rider. After a couple of hours on the cold windy heights the Sheriff and Boak were given their overcoats and hats and provided with horses. It was three a.m. when they returned to Finks, and again found themselves surrounded by friends and white men. After that episode the more cautious farmers renewed their efforts to demobilize the Indians. The issue was bitterly debated at a meeting of the Blenheim Hill anti-rinters in mid spring. But Lyman Root, the cobbler, drew the loudest cheer when he shouted for less moderation and more resistance. Thomas Loper, a descendant of rugged New England stock, who lived on the ridge, was equally emphatic. Anti-rinters in all parts of the various manners are growing stronger. There must be a remedy for these evils or else our government is not based upon just principles. Here almost the entire community must suffer from the avarice and cupidity of a few land aristocrats, with a very doubtful tenure on the land they claim. The sooner the true remedy is applied, the better, I say, down with the rent, and the way to win is to resist payment and to resist all attempts at collecting rents. Talk about law and order, the law is on our side and so is most of the order. As soon as the meeting was over Dr. John Cornell strapped his medicine bags on his horse and headed toward the Catskills to carry the news to the other manners that Blenheim Hill was still in the war. Back in Delaware County in the meantime Sheriff Green Moore was still holding Daniel Squires behind bars, thinking the farmers would either try to storm the Delhi Jail or surrender to the landlords. Meanwhile Spring had come to the Western Catskills. The creeks, swollen by melting snows, poured noisily down the sides of Old Clump, Pisca, Plattskill Creek, and Dingle Hill, and tore through the valleys on their way to the Delaware River. By March 10th the Sheriff grew tired of waiting and sent the redheaded bully Osmond Steele and a companion, Charles Parker, on a brief trial foray into enemy territory around Andes. On their way back to Delhi the two men were seized by Indians as hostages for Squires's release. They broke from their captors, however, and escaped to Hunting's Tavern in Andes, where Ephraim Hunting came to their defense gun in hand. They barricaded themselves in an upstairs room while Mrs. Hunting guarded the top of the stairs with a large butcher-knife. "'I'll pierce your heart if you don't retreat,' she shrieked at the advancing Calico warriors. "'Neither you know your clan shall pass as long as there's a drop of blood in my veins.' Before this surprising obstacle the Indians fell back for a consultation, and then withdrew to the yard. When night came, horns sounded from all directions. The glare from burning tar-barrels licked the long white tavern with light. War-whoops and chants of down with the rent kept the anxious inmates awake. Though all night long Indians galloped around the tavern, Steele managed to get a message through the lines the next morning, begging Sheriff Moore to bring all the force he could muster against a hundred warriors bent on tar and feathers. The Sheriff got the note and raised the alarm. Within half an hour every able-bodied male in Delhi who could procure arms was on the march. An Albany Argus correspondent hurriedly sent a dispatch to his paper. "'I have no time to describe the outrage. The county is in a state of actual rebellion.' Grabbing his gun he joined the motley group of lawyers, physicians, merchants, mechanics, and other citizens that moved slowly through the deep spring mud. At the approach of the rescue-party the men in Calico fled, and that night with torches blazing Steele was carried by his deliverers down Delhi's main street. Two days later Steele and James Howe, his brother-in-law, the Delhi Postmaster, and Erastus Edgerton led a posse of eighty mounted men to Roxbury, where they engaged nearly one hundred Indians in hand-to-hand fighting. When the battle was over they had ten prisoners in Calico, including John Burroughs' uncle Zekelly and a sixteen-year-old boy named Anson Burrell. Steele bound them hand and foot and dumped them into a wagon without straw or blankets. The long bitterly cold ride to Delhi was taken in stages, as Steele stopped at taverns to drink and warm himself and boast about the cattle in the wagon. When the posse returned to Delhi word had already reached the sheriff that the Indians intended to turn the village into a turnip patch unless all prisoners were immediately released. It was not a mere rumour. The defeated Indians had rushed a messenger to Blenheim Hill, Scahari County, calling for reinforcements to join them the following night. The message aroused considerable debate in Blenheim Hill, where most of the farmers were against the use of force for anything but defence. Many wanted to abandon disguises altogether and there was a general reluctance to engage in any action so dangerous as an attack on the Delhi jail. As a result the Delaware County chieftains did not get the help they needed and so were obliged to give up all thought of rescuing the prisoners. The people of Delhi, however, were not aware of the change of plan. The peace of the beautiful village was shattered. The public square, well set with trees and ornamented by a fountain that was the pride of the village, became a parade ground where the men drilled day and night. Armed men patrolled the streets, muskets and bayonets bristled on every side. Two cannon were hauled to the square, both heavily loaded with spikes for want of canister and grapeshot. Sheriff Moore ordered hay packed under the sills of the jail to be fired in the event of attack. A Delhi woman wrote to a friend, �The whole village is on duty to-night, poorly armed. It is very certain that we are threatened with attack, whether it will be made to-night or some future time, God only knows. We have no assistance from the southern side of the West Delaware River, most of the militia from that quarter being anti-rent. A large collection of Indians was seen in Bovina last night and early this morning. In another neighborhood in the western part of town there was great commotion and persons were seen leaving their homes, taking small bundles with them. Everything that can be used as a weapon of defences in demand, even to hot water and pitchforks, the water is kept by the ladies to defend themselves as their husbands have all been ordered out. You may laugh when I tell you that my weapon is a long toasting fork, and Mrs. H. has a pitchfork which now stands in the corner of the room. Our church, academy, and courthouse are turned into barracks to accommodate citizen soldiers. Our pastor, who was warned out, is now sitting, I am told by my husband, in the basement of the church, shouldering a pitchfork with many others. When the attack failed to materialize, Osman Steele began a series of systematic raids on anti-rent strongholds all over Delaware County. By late March twenty men were in jail. A New York Herald correspondent filed a story on April 2 about a report of large numbers of anti-rentors congregated on the Little Delaware Road. Guns are firing at this moment on the hill, he wrote. The whole people are under arms, bells ringing, women crying, God only knows when it will end. If they do come, we are good for twenty-five scalps. The report was without foundation, and according to the anti-rentors maliciously spread by the upper-enters, that spring of 1845 was very exciting to one eight-year-old boy, Little John Burroughs. He heard horns blowing and saw Calico Indians gathering in a big empty barn across the fields. When he went to peek through the cracks at them, they stuck straws into his face. Many years later he wrote, I'd see the sheriff and his posse ride past, twenty or thirty or even fifty men galloping pal mel, and I was scared. They'd go rushing along on their horses, flourishing swords and muskets. It was a terrible sight for a youngster. My fears were the greater because the posse represented the law, and my sympathies, of course, were with my own people. I wasn't so afraid of the down-rent Indians. Not all the complaints were on the side of the town's people. When charges poured into Albany from both sides, Silas Wright began to realize that he had stirred up a hornet's nest. On the floor of the assembly, Ira Harris read angry letters from the invaded villages. One man wrote that Steele's object seemed to be to torture and show authority, that peaceful farmers were dragged from their homes and thrown into jail at the mercy of reckless fellows who boasted that they got two dollars a day and roast beef, for hunting down Indians, all to make a sounding board abroad so they could tell the press that so many Indians had been captured at the immediate peril of the gallant posse. The legislature could not, if he continued, know the facts, or they would not sanction the acts of these men, whose aims seemed to be to fill their pockets at the ruin of the county. Another letter which Harris read aloud was from a Delaware county housewife. It would be impossible to portray the unparalleled indignities to which the female part of this community have been exposed. Our husbands are driven from their homes, hunted down in the mountains like beasts of prey. Our defenseless houses are broken open in the dead of night and ransacked at will. Even the paraphernalia of female apparel has been rudely rummaged over for the amusement of the unprincipled young men who have made shameful boasts of their prying curiosity. The aged and the infirm, the man of three score and ten, has been rudely handled while his house was being searched merely because he challenged the authority of the sheriff. It is intolerable indeed to see our floors and carpets trampled over by the dirty feet of the sheriff and his posse, and to have a lawless banditty breaking into our houses in the dead of night in search of Indian dresses. Women have been dragged from their beds and otherwise grossly insulted. Now, sir, what private gentleman of honour or what court of justice could censure females under these circumstances for proving the prowess of their female arms accustomed chiefly to the spinning wheel in the vindication of their honour. But we are threatened with immediate death if we make the least remonstrance to these shameful abuses. We are driven to desperation. We know that legislation is not a woman's province, but we humbly beg that the arm of the civil power may be extended to our behalf. We beg a restoration of civil laws. We humbly implore the legislative body that a law may be passed to take effect immediately that will shield us from these inhuman abuses that would disgrace even a barbarous people. Like the great lawyer of Israel, may you make laws for the people and not for yourselves. Many of the letters came directly to Governor Wright's desk, calling Steele's posse a drunken rabble, and accusing the governor of thinking all the talent and decency was on the landlord's side. One letter charged that he held troops in readiness to stay the anti-rentor's stomachs with Steele at night and led in the morning. Did he think that the smell of gunpowder would stifle the groans, and so intimidate them that they would not dare to approach such a great man with their prayers and petitions? The flagrant outrages committed by the posse in the bastard war were without a shadow of excuse. The cause of law and order was in more danger from the posse than it had ever been from the Indians. These bitter criticisms must have brought a warning from Albany, for in mid-April Charles Hathaway called a general meeting of the townspeople to endorse the retention of the hired army. He expected no opposition, but Dr. Richard M. Goodrich spoke out, ridiculing the efforts of landlord agents to coerce the grand jury by military array and parade by a mercenary soldiery, by guns and bayonets, by loaded cannon and marshal music. Then General Arrastus Root, the old friend of the working man's party, rose in the meeting and described the proceedings of the self-styled law and order men as revolting. He said there was no truth to the reports that the town was about to be sacked. The hysteria was all inspired by landlords and politicians to destroy the legitimate anti-rent objectives. Charles Hathaway tried to discredit the outspoken old gentleman, but the people rallied to him. Nevertheless the political press made him a target. We are told that old General Root, who has played so long and so large a game in politics, encourages the tenants to refuse to pay debts of any sort, commented the Journal of Commerce of New York. General Root has encouraged no such movement, corrected Dr. Goodrich in a letter to the editor. The whole life and course of the old General gives the refutation to such a foul charge. Either the editor has been duped by the political clique in Delhi, whose days are numbered, whose power is broken, from whom the scepter to control and plunder the people has departed never to return, or he himself belongs to a similar faction in his own city, or else he is the dupe of the system of humbuggery by which others as well as himself have been called. In May the Delhi Jail was cleared. Daniel Squires was released when the grand jury failed to indict him. The others were at the mercy of the Justice of the Peace, Nathaniel Hathaway, brother of the landlord's agent, and District Attorney, Jonas Houston. But the jury convicted only four, in consequence of there being some down-rinters on it. These four, taken in the Roxbury raid in March, were charged with participation in a riot in violation of Silas Wright's anti-disguise law. Jake Kelly pleaded guilty and was fined $250. The other three, Anson Burrell, a mere boy, Silas Tompkins, a town constable, and Charles Knapp, stood trial and were sentenced to two years in prison. Immediately after the trial Deputy Sheriff Osmond Steele, with the mounted guard of fifty, escorted the three prisoners over the mountains through the anti-rent country and across the river to sing-sing. This was not by any means the end of anti-rentism in Delaware County. The square in front of the Delhi courthouse continued to look like a camp. Possies were still drilling every day and the Livingston agents were more than ever on the alert. The pastor of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in neighboring court-right served notice that the sacrament would not be administered to anti-rentors and warned them not to come forward to receive tokens of admission to the Lord's table unless they could see their way clear to giving up their iniquitous course. But this kind of moral suasion had no effect on the anti-rentors. A few days after the trials they held a large meeting in Andes at which general Root was the principal speaker. Equality of human rights, he told them, is a fundamental principle of popular government. Whenever the equal rights of man are in any wise infringed or withheld it becomes the duty of every friend to exercise his every political power and to unite with his fellow citizens to obtain redress. After his one escape from the tar barrel in March, Sheriff John S. Brown of Scoherry County abandoned Blenheim Hill to the Indians. In June, however, he turned his attention to the Jacob Livingston tract, bordering Albany County on the southeast and reaching down into the Catskills. Calling a posse of one hundred men, he led them into the secluded and mountainous town of Broom, where they seized some anti-rent property to satisfy a landlord claim. Then they returned to Livingstonville, where they made an example of David L. Sternberg, who had served as vice-president of the Byrne Convention. He was removed as postmaster of Livingstonville and evicted from his big hospitable residence where the anti-rentors had often met. The farmers rallied to offer Sternberg their support as candidate for Sheriff if he would remain in Livingstonville, but he refused, I cannot be induced to accept an office, however lucrative it may be, bearing directly against my best friends, knowing I would be watched with an argous eye by the combined horde. Sternberg wrote to Thomas Devere shortly before moving to Albany. Unless the very letter of the law and a little more was obeyed, an attempt of removal from office would be made. I cannot, under the present state of rights, not right, law and order, be prevailed upon to remain in the county and accept such a nomination. Having accomplished one worthy objective, the posse tarried in the neighborhood, making a show of their armed strength. At this point Horace Greeley's Tribune reported indignantly, the sheriff with his guard of one hundred men has been on the disputed territory serving landlords warrants, rits, ejectments, and fishing for pickerel at the expense of one hundred dollars a day to the county. Unfortunately, the activities of the posse were not always so innocent as fishing. J. M. Spencer of Broom recorded further details of the occupation in a letter to the freeholder dated June 13, 1845. He happened to be riding out of Livingstonville ahead of the posse that day, on horseback and unarmed, but he soon found himself involved. This morning they again sallied forth with the avowed purpose of scouring the hills as they termed it, and went about a mile from Livingstonville some four or five guns were heard in the woods. Whether they were fired at the posse we leave for conjecture, as none of them were injured. The posse, valorous feet, immediately fired at the woods, and then jumped over the wall. But will it be believed that when their courage began to return, which, like Bob Acres, had oozed out at the end of their fingers, they arose from behind the wall, and seeing no other object within their reach, they fired two muskets at me, one of the balls striking the bank a few feet from where I stood. I immediately mounted my horse and made what speed I could from those meditated murderers, but when turning an angle in the road I was again fired upon by some eight or ten of the monsters in human form, who had by this time ascended the opposite hill, the balls passing above and around my head, so near as to be distinctly heard, one of which passed but a few feet from the wife of Ebenezer Cain, who happened to be passing the street a few rods from her door. Cain was the treasurer of the local anti-rent association. The posse now dispersed, and every man or boy within their reach, either in the fields or on the highway, was fired upon or taken prisoner. Two men were fired upon while peaceably hoeing corn. A boy belonging to widow Mace was fired upon and then taken prisoner, and after menacing him with their bayonets he was set at liberty. Another boy was threatened with immediate death if he did not instantly go with them, and then complying with their demands was strictly charged not to reveal their threats. Incensed by such recklessness Spencer went at once to under-sheriff Tobias Boke, who totally disavowed this affair and gave the excuse that he could not control his men. This irresponsible reply drove Spencer to conclude his account of the incident as follows, I ask in the name of violated and outraged liberty, is a lawless rabble to be let loose upon the community under the direction of law and order, and the sheriff to plead in extenuation of their outrages that he cannot control them. We have peaceably borne with one of the most unjust and oppressive systems of land monopoly that ever degraded the creation of God, and we were looking forward to the Ides of November for redress through the ballot box. But there is a point beyond which endurance is a crime. We solemnly swear by the blood of the patriots of seventy-six, if we are thrust to be left to the mercy of a lawless rabble, without control, who, I say without fear of contradiction, are the refuse, the cast-off rubbish of Scohery County, many of whom, if they could obtain it, would drink up their wages in the dram-shops, if the scene is to be again enacted, if our citizens are to be fired upon while travelling the highway, if the lives of our wives are to be endangered, if our children are to be torn from their homes and threatened with immediate death, we will protect them, or die in their defence. It was becoming increasingly obvious to the anti-rent leaders who were still out of jail that so long as the Attorney General and the Judiciary were political appointees, justice would be alien to the courts. The state constitution would have to be changed if they were ever to destroy feudalism. Progressives throughout the state had long been clamouring for a constitutional convention, but the forces of conservativism and the remnants of federalism, remembering how badly they had fared in the convention of 1821, were solidly in opposition. The Democrats especially were against it, knowing that the projected reforms would abolish their gigantic patronage system that extended into every county of the state. It appeared that even with Whigs and anti-rentors united, Silas Wright's Democratic majority would have no trouble in blocking any convention resolution. It was John Young, a shrewd upstate Whig assemblyman who employed the method of divide and conquer to bring about a realignment before the legislature adjourned for the summer. A friend of Ira Harris, Young had voted for anti-rent bills, and on numerous occasions weathered political attack as an advocate of revolutionary theories aimed to unsettle the rights of property and destroy social order. But he was not a radical. He was a master political strategist, acutely sensitive to turns in the political tide. When the Barnburners sponsored a constitutional amendment to fix a pay-as-you-go policy on public construction, John Young rallied the Whigs, the anti-rentors and the hunker Democrats, to defeat the bill. A convention then became the only way for the Barnburners to save their pet financial measure. Young promptly severed his connections with the hunkers and marshaled his anti-rent and Whig forces behind the Barnburners' proposal for a constitutional convention, and the convention was assured. It would have to be confirmed by the voters at the November election, but there was no doubt of the outcome. When the Democrats, between recriminations of one another, accused Young of using this issue to make political capital, he hurled back the exultant invitation. Ask the hardworking and intelligent mechanic what is the purpose of the convention. Ask the farmer the bone and sinew of our country if it is for party purposes he wants a convention. John Young's political star was rising, and more than that the tenant farmers had reason to hope for ultimate victory. Not only had they held their ground during the landlord's spring drive, but they had partly evened the score with King Silas. Their full triumph would come with constitutional bars against the kind of political despotism that Silas Wright had employed against them.