 Chapter 7 Big Thunder This newfound unanimity of the upstate farmers was the result of months of careful preparation. Dr. Bouton's East Manor Association now had four thousand pledged members, the West Manor even more, and the Scoherry County membership was in the thousands, but much remained to be done. In the third week of May, 1844, five years almost to the day after Helderberg farmers had sent their delegation to Stephen IV, a small group of anti-rent leaders from the three counties met at the home of John J. Gallop in Eastburn Albany County. Those who attended must have included Dr. Bouton and Burton A. Thomas from the East Manor, and from Scoherry County, David L. Sternberg of Livingstonville, a tenant of Jacob Livingston, and Dr. John Cornell and John Mayham of Blenheim Hill, tenants of John A. King. Lawrence Van Duzen and Hugh Scott were probably waiting with Gallop when the men from the neighboring counties arrived. Though Thomas Devere was not present, his influence was felt, and the proceedings were promptly reported to him by Gallop. The meeting had been called to discuss two urgent problems. The first was the strengthening of anti-rent ranks by extending the rebellion to all leasehold property in the state. To this purpose John Mayham was directed to finish organizing Blenheim Hill and then go down to Delaware County, where several landlords now owned portions of the old Hardenburg patent. Dr. Bouton was to continue to address as many meetings as he could, and Dr. Cornell was to speed the work wherever his professional calls took him. In general the plan was to organize an association in each county, financed locally by an assessment of a cent and a half an acre, but functioning jointly with the others in emergencies. The second problem was to prevent the collection of rent and the repossession of farms by the landlords. Armed resistance to law was treason, but even at the risk of arrest the anti-rent Declaration of Independence would have to be implemented with force to meet the threat of force lest it lose all meaning. In an unpublished account Dr. Bouton wrote, Our all was at stake. The law was on their side and we were at their mercy. We resolved to adopt the same kind of protection resorted to by the people of Boston when the tea was thrown into the water of the bay. We raised in the counties a large force of men to prevent the landlords from executing their threats. This force was to be on hand to protect the tenants from legal hounds. They were to appear only on certain occasions. They were not to disturb the community in any other form. Socially or legally no one knew who they were except the individuals. This force was to be used only until we could get judicial or legislative redress. The disguise agreed upon for the band of protesters was the Calico Indian costume, symbol of the Boston Tea Party and reminder of the original ownership of the soil, which had already proved its efficacy in the route of Bill Snyder. The tin dinner horn was adopted as the official Indian call to arms. At the first sharp blast members were to drop work and hasten to a prearranged meeting place. Under no circumstances was a tenant to sound a horn for any other purpose. The organization of the Indian bands was to follow the cell structure which Thomas Devere had helped devise for the Chartists in Newcastle. The identity of the ten or fifteen members of a unit was to be known only to the unit chief, who in turn was to be known only as red jacket, yellow jacket, blackhawk, the prophet or a similar designation. The Indians were not to be interfered with but left alone to transact their own business according to their own laws. Like the Chartists they were bound by oath secretly administered. I do of my own free will and accord come forward to join this body of men, promising in the presence of Almighty God that I will do all in my power to support the Constitution, that I will go at all times when deemed necessary, and will reveal no secrets of the society made known to me necessary to be kept. Some added the clause and stand by each other as long as life lasts. Immediately after the meeting, tenants in the three counties hurried to the stores to buy calico. In many a farmhouse closed-mouthed wives and mothers ran up the seams of outlandish dresses for the menfolk. It is not known who made Dr. Bouton's or where he kept it between meetings, but Mary Bouton was not among the women who shared the secret at that time. Soon a well-trained and disciplined army of about ten thousand men was ready for whatever might come. No two costumes were alike in color, style or decoration, and their arms were makeshift and varied, muskets, pistols, spears, hatchets and axes, cheese knives, bits of scythes and clubs. Some of the chiefs of the tribes were distinguishable by long dresses like women's nightgowns. Otherwise the disguise was so complete that anecdotes were told about parents talking for hours with their own sons and struggling sisters being overwhelmed with the unwelcome caresses of their own brothers without the slightest suspicion of their identity. The first newcomers to the anti-rent movement were the farmers on Blenheim Hill in Scoherry County. John Mayhem had done good work among his neighbors, and John A. King, the absentee landlord, had unwittingly helped by serving notice on the tenants to resume their obligations toward him. Although the Blenheim title went back to 1788, King had acquired the property as late as 1830 when many of the tenants were in arrears. To save them the long trip to Albany he had settled with them individually, accepting money rent, but many more had fallen behind since the hard times of 1837. Now in a last minute attempt to prevent the spread of anti-rentism among his tenants he had made an appeal to their better natures. The first great principle of the moral law is to do as you would be done by. If I had dealt harshly with you, if I had exacted the last farthing, if I had shown by my conduct in actions that there was nothing in common between us, there might perhaps have been some reason for your listening to the advice of evil counsellors, to the influence and example of wrongdoers on other patents. From time to time for many years I have been among you and never without those feelings of pride and confidence which was the result of relations which existed between us. My great aim and desire were to render you contented and happy and I thought I had done so. He pointed out that he had listened to their stories of hardship and had settled with each tenant upon terms which they admitted were liberal and had even offered to sell at a fair price. Whatever grievances other leasehold tenants had he was certain his own had none. Although in all fairness King, an open-minded man and a friend of William H. Seward was a better landlord than most, down-rent talk had been persistent on the backbone, as Blenheim was called, ever since the Helderberg uprisings in 1839. Many of the farmers had come originally from Rensselaerwick, stepping from one tyranny to another, and most of them had strong ties with their Helderberg neighbors. The church had done its best to keep the backbone loyal to King, but anti-rentism was being preached by such pillars of the church as Uncle Thomas Peasley, one of the best prayer leaders on the hill. He had been born a Van Rensselaer tenant, and was an anti-renter, church or no church. It is sinful to resist, admonished the preacher one Sunday as he sat down with Uncle Thomas over apples and fried cakes. It is the devil's work. At that Peasley lost his temper, rose from his chair, and pounded the table with his big hand. I am convinced, sir, that this matter of perpetual rent is wrong, wrong, wrong, he shouted. But measured by the standards of Devere and Bouton, Peasley and most of his neighbors were conservative. When Blenheim Farmers gathered to form an anti-rent association, Dr. Cornell, one of the most enlightened men on the backbone, argued the radical line taken by Dr. Bouton. For years he had been talking anti-rentism and carrying in his pocket a copy of Governor Seward's indictment of feudalism to read as he made his professional rounds. Now he precipitated a stormy discussion by proposing that the tenants claim outright ownership of their farms on the ground that they had won it by the Revolution, which should have dissolved all patents issued by the British Crown. Despite his eloquent appeal, the tenants voted for a more moderate stand. They asked only for laws that would enable them to purchase the land at a fair consideration after the landlord had proved title. Well, shouted Dr. Cornell, taking the floor again, I want to make one motion that will carry. I move that we get together and have a pole raising. I want to see a flag floating here bearing the words down with the rent. There was a shout of approval. The tallest and straightest pole that could be found was raised a few rods east of the Brimstone Church, so named because of the sulfurous color it was painted. Blenheim Hill was now in the anti-rent movement. The farmers had agreed not to pay rent until the landlord proved his title, and the Indians began to drill in Thomas Peasley's back meadow. The next to join was Delaware County, which was largely in the hands of the descendants of Robert Livingston. The original Hardenburg patent covered most of the county and parts of Green Ulster and Sullivan. The grant was made in 1708 by Governor Cornbury, a cousin of Queen Anne, who managed to lime his own purse and feather the nests of his principal office holders. Cornbury himself, represented by a dummy, was one of the eight grantees of the vast estate. Between 1741 and 1742 he and three others sold their interests to Robert Livingston and Julian Verplank. In two later deals Livingston enlarged his holdings to half a million acres. Remaining portions of the Hardenburg patent went to other landlords, including Elias de Broces. It has been estimated that Livingston paid an average of four cents an acre, though when the land was leased to settlers he fixed the value of the virgin land at three dollars an acre to establish a basis for reserved rents. Few of the farms were settled before 1790. After that pioneers came in a steady stream, hauling their goods into the wilderness by oxcart. As in Rensselirwick the first settlers picked the more fertile valleys and later arrivals were crowded up into the hills and mountains until about one hundred and twenty-eight thousand acres were under lease. For that soil the rent exactions were hard, the severest being a day's service with team, two fat fowls, and twenty bushels of wheat for every one hundred acres. The habit of rigorous living made the Scotch-Irish Yankee tenants of Delaware County industrious farmers, their dairy industry was unmatched anywhere in America. Many farmers packed as much as two tons of butter a year to be hauled over the mountains to Kingston and Catskill for shipping. Nothing in the character of these hillmen, many of them only one generation from revolutionary blood, prepared them to submit to economic or political slavery. A typical farmer of the region was Chauncey Burrows, a conscientious, hardworking, old-school Baptist from Old Clump, whose son John, then a child of seven, was one day to become a famous naturalist. The Burrows family occupied leasehold land one generation from the stump. They were sternly disciplined, dedicated to hard work the year round. Chauncey's grandfather, caught in post-revolutionary poverty, moved from Connecticut to Manorland in the western Catskills, where his first home was a log-walled bark-roofed house. His wife's grandfather Kelly had fought with Washington at Valley Forge, only to end up as a vassal of the Good Patroon. Escaping Van Rensselier Surftome in 1808, the Kellys moved to the Catskills, but again found only leasehold land available to occupy. As with most Catskill families, theirs was a varied household. Martin Kelly was a hardworking farmer of fair intelligence, but his brother Zeke carried a gin-bottle in his pocket, and after a short time of alternating between his bottle and his scythe, mowed stones as rapidly as grass, according to his nephew John. By 1844 all the Burrows' and Kellys were anti-rentors. When John Mayhem came down to Thomas Keeter's house in Roxbury in June of that year to organize a Delaware County Anti-Rent Association, he did not find the task too difficult. Tenant farmers from Drybrook, Bray Hollow, West Settlement and Roxbury were waiting to hear what he had to say, and to see the Indians he had brought with him from the backbone. Among those who had tramped in with dusty boots were Dr. Jonathan Alibann, of course, Chauncey Burrows, and Martin Kelly, Daniel W. Squires, an intelligent, competent, and industrious farmer, and Warren Scudder, son of Deacon Jothon Scudder of West Settlement. These men, most of them tenants of the DeBroses, were all neighbors in the shadows of the mountains that rose east and west of Roxbury, and all were eager to challenge their landlords' titles on two scores. By testing the legality of Cornbury's corrupt use of his office, and by offering evidence that the original grantees had no right to any land west of the east branch of the Delaware, the grant had fixed the western boundary of the patent as a certain small river commonly known by the name of Cartwright's Kill. The tenants held that Cartwright's Kill was the east rather than the west branch of the Delaware, and that their farms were therefore outside the tract. So far the landlord's only answer had been that no matter what the intention of the patent it would not now be expedient, equitable, or just to seek to disturb the location after a lapse of one hundred and thirty-eight years. The crowd listened intently as John Mayhem told them how the other tenants were organized. His Indians stood by in full regalia, their faces covered by masks of grotesque ferocity, while he explained how they were prepared to resist evictions and prevent sheriff's sales. In conclusion he called upon the farmers of Roxbury Township to withhold their rent and muster a similar protective army. Dr. Alaban approved. The Indians will keep off the bidders and not let them take the property away, he said. The Indians will give the landlords tar and feathers if they come to collect the rents. Before John Mayhem started for home, both Warren Scudder and Daniel W. Squires joined up with the Indians. Others set out for neighboring townships to recruit new members. William Brisbane of Andes was already an anti-rentor. Now he became probably the ablest speaker in Delaware County. An intelligent, educated Scott, he had brought his wife to Dingle Hill in 1839, just as the anti-rent agitation gripped the Helderbergs and immediately cast his lot with his down-rent neighbors. Another willing convert was Edwin O'Connor, a hot-blooded young man of twenty-five who lived in Bovina Valley. He stemmed from an Irish soldier who came to America and fought Indians at Schenectady. Among his cherished possessions were an ancestral broad axe used to build Perry's fleet on Lake Erie, and the spurs of a rooster reputed to have crowed at the Battle of Champlain. Hence it was only natural that O'Connor should have been one of the first in Bovina to join up. In 1844 was a lively month for organizing. Between planting time and harvesting the farmers were comparatively free, and the roads were fit for travel. Delaware anti-rentors went over the mountain with five hundred Indians to Pine Hill Clove, Ulster County, where some five thousand tenants from half a dozen towns between Woodstock and Shandekin had gathered. The result of the meeting was another anti-rent association. The movement swept the Catskills and spread into green and Sullivan counties. Someone wrote a song about a squaw who gave birth to ten full-grown Indians, symbolic of the rapid growth and strength of the tenant army. Printed hand-bells, identical in text but with local dates and meeting places written in, were hung in taverns and on roadside trees. The following is an example of the accompanying text. Attention! Anti-rentors, awake! Arouse! Let the opponents of Petrunary rally in their strength. A great crisis is approaching. Now is the time to strike. The minions of Petrunary are at work. Arouse! Awake! And strike till the last armed foe expires. Strike for your altars and your fires. Strike for the green graves of your sires, God and your happy homes. Another statement distributed in the Manor counties read, Better, far better, to die fighting for liberty than to live under Petrun or aristocratic control or bondage. The organization of the Indian armies aroused a great deal of antagonism among conservative people everywhere. Francis Parkman, the historian, witnessed a conclave at Stephentown, Rensselaer County, some time in the summer of 1844. Although, in his opinion, the feudal tenures were strangely out of place in America, he disapproved violently of the tenant's methods. I have never seen a vile or concourse in America, he wrote of the Calico Army. He told of encountering an old man who had been with the Indians, and kept constantly talking of their friendship for him, perfuming all near with the stench of his filthy rotten teeth. Another old fool with a battered straw hat and a dirty shirt for his only upper garment kept retailing his grievance, lashing himself into enthusiasm and exclaiming down with the rent. The historian watched the Indians maneuver on the hill. They stuffed gunpowder into a hollow block of cast iron, hammered in a plug, and fired it repeatedly. Then came the speeches. A few of the more decent Parkman reported squatted themselves on the bank of grass before the platform, but were listless and inattentive. Those loudest in their noise were not the number on the bank. The voice of the old man with the straw hat could be heard declaiming and sharply exclaiming down with the rent, while the rest were eating or watching the clumsy and absurd movements of the Indians. Parkman's picture was realistic but superficial. Education and cultural opportunity were the privilege of the few, it was true, but he had missed all the significance of the demonstration of unity and democracy in action. Down the river in New York City, James Gordon Bennett of the Herald was alarmed by the reports of the farmers' armies, regularly drilled at stated times to the number of many hundred. Rival newspapers were at fault, of course, notably those edited by Thurlow Weed and Horace Greeley. This insurrectionary spirit of the mountaineers, commented the Herald, is stimulated by the Tribune, organ of the Fourier rights, the fanatics, the agrarians, and ragtag and bobtail. Bennett accused Greeley of leading the tenants to believe that their claim was better than their landlords, and that man had a constitutional right to oppose oppression by force. While Greeley never brought himself to defend the Indians, he never doubted the justice of the farmer's cause, so he replied with an indignant editorial which said in part, There is another right in the manner besides the right of the Van Rensseliers, a right surely recognized in the chancery of heaven, though not that in New York. There is some right in those whose hard toil has made the lands what they are, as well as those who hold the old Dutch patent. Greeley saw no justice in permitting a handful of landlords to say in effect, you can only be allowed to work here on condition that you will allow us, in the shape of rents, price of land, or depressed wages, one-half or three-fourths of the entire product of your toil. Some Cullen Bryant's evening post fretted over the Indian monopoly on tin-horn blowing, deeming it to be an infringement of individual liberty. If the housewife should be so indiscreet as to use this method of calling laborers from the fields at noon, the anti-rent leaguers come in a crowd and eat up the dinner prepared for her family. The press, observed an anti-renter sagely, never offered any opinion unless it had been tested upon the pro-crusty embed of party policy. As the threat of evictions grew, Dr. Bouton knew the time was not far off when the Indians would have to act. Hand-bells were scattered throughout the East Manor, in Alps, Sand Lake, Berlin, Steventown, Dunham's Hollow, and Nassau, calling the Indians for an independence day drill and parade on the plain below Hogue's Corners. The public was invited, and it was to be a gala event, with an address by Big Thunder. Big Thunder was the chief of all the Indians. When he went through the manors the other chiefs saluted him, and his words were on every tenant's lips. His magic voice, his warm confidence and sound argument had drawn many into the ranks of anti-rentism. His rustic eloquence, his oratorical thrusts at Petrunery, never failed to rouse the down-renters. The scheduled appearance of Big Thunder spread excitement in the hill-towns of Rensselaer County. Mary Bouton's curiosity was aroused by snatches of conversation she heard. Since diversions were few and all her friends were going, she made up her mind to ask her husband to take her with him. She and the baby saw very little of him these days, but she knew that he was deeply concerned with the farmer's struggle and that he often went to such meetings. On the morning of the conclave the doctor pulled on his leather boots and strode to the barn. Mary's spirits sank as he strapped on his medicine-bags and rode off down the road, without saying a word about the rally. The day wore on. She watched the wagons and carriages rumbling past on the way to the drill-grounds. Still the doctor did not return. Mary Bouton decided to go alone. She hitched up old Bill to the buggy and with her baby son beside her drove off down the dusty road. Below Hogue's Corners a temporary platform had been erected in a natural amphitheater, backed by the rounded dome of a hill. A crowd was milling in the field around the platform, the farmers talking in little groups, the women gossiping about the Indians and wondering whether any of their own families belonged. Suddenly a rolling tattoo sounded on the drums, a fife shrilled, and the crowd fell silent. Horses mounted by men in fantastic dress sprang from the woods, galloped across the field and circled the crowd dancing. Spears and tin pans clattered noisily. War-whoops rocketed up to the hills and rolled back. Tin horns blared above the bedlam. Gradually the Indians quieted and drew up at attention before the platform. There was silence for a moment. Then a tall Indian rose in his saddle, threw an agile leg over, dropped to the ground, and tossed his reins to an unmounted Indian waiting for them. The crowd could see his brilliantly colored calico dress and gay pantaloons that billowed below his knees. His head was decked with colored feathers and his mask was very colored with war-paint. There was no doubt that this was big thunder. He sprang to the platform, turned and lifted his hands waiting for silence. Then in a clear, eloquent voice that almost sang under the summer hills he began to speak. Brother serfs of Lord Van Rensselier, these Indians have a battle cry that means your safety and your future, down with the rent. Mary Barton caught her breath. Faces in the crowd blurred. Big thunder became a shadow. She grasped her full skirt with one hand, held her baby close with the other, and stumbled back to the buggy, urging old Bill to a gallop she was gone in a swirl of dust. She had recognized her husband's voice. When Dr. Barton turned in at his own gate that night, a candle was burning in the sitting room. Mary was waiting for him. Her devotion to the handsome white-haired doctor, fear for his safety, worry over the welfare of their child in their home, terror of the power of the Van Rensseliers, all clamored for expression. Smith Bouton must have felt that converting a farmer to anti-rentism was a simple task compared to the one that faced him now. He told his wife the history of the settlement of the Manor, an island of old-world tyranny in the new world of free men, and reminded her that men had died for liberty. He explained the stranglehold of the Manor lords on the courts and the legislature, the tenants' need for leadership, and their determination to fight the battle through whatever the cost. The doctor and his sweet-faced young wife did not end their talk until dawn speared the darkness of the room. But when at last they lay down to rest, Big Thunder had won his hardest recruit. Mary Bouton would never falter in loyalty to her husband's cause. Delaware County, too, had its Fourth of July celebration, an organizing meeting at Andes, with two hundred Indians drilling in front of the platform. It proved to be a major political triumph, for General Erastus Root came over from Delhi to attend. In fifty years of public service, General Root had been a forthright foe of privilege and a scourge of meaner politicians. Since 1798 he had served at intervals in the state legislature and in Congress. In 1830 the Working Man's Party had offered him the nomination for governor, which he had declined on the realistic ground that there was no chance of being elected. It was both a commentary on the justice of the farmer's struggle and a tribute to their leaders that the General so willingly lent his prestige to this organizing drive. The unsophisticated and uncompromising farmers of Delaware County brought to the Antirent Association a hard determination to win. Even women were sworn into the Association, not indeed that they might be permitted to wear calico and bare arms in this crusade against the foe, reported the Albany Argus, but that they might be honored dressmakers and ornamentors of masks for their husbands, sons, or lovers, the brave heroes. While all other associations kept to the fiction that there was no connection between the Indian Army and the legitimate Antirent Associations, and refused to allow disguises and guns to be purchased with Antirent funds, the Delaware farmers increased their assessment to two cents an acre and opened up the treasury to meet all underground as well as open expenses. The Association treasurer bought forty dollars worth of calico and sheepskins in one lot and distributed the material among a half-dozen leading Antirentors for dresses and masks, taking enough to his own home to make seven or eight outfits. Before he would allow his wife and daughter to cut and stitch them, however, he first administered the oath not to divulge any secrets. No effort was spared to make this organization effective. The Indians of Delaware County were compensated for time lost on military duty, and the housewives who fed the calico soldiers were often paid by the Association. It was not long before their little army was called into action. On the side of Old Clump, not far from the borough's farm, lived a stiff-necked old farmer named John Gould, who was a Tory and an up-renter. Gould consistently defied the Antirent War Order, declining to stop blowing his dinner-horn to call his workmen into meals. On July 6th five Indians armed for a fight arrived at the Gould farm and demanded redress for his insult to the authority of the Association. John Gould refused, and as his son Jay, then eight years old, years later, the Indians were compelled to retreat to the tune of the old king's arm and shell. The offending blasts of John Gould's horn continued to sound against Old Clump. In a few days the band came back, with instructions to seize the gun and the horn, and if necessary, meet out to Mr. Gould a salutary coat of tar and feathers. It was midday when the signal hoop was given and the calico horde sprang from hiding places. With frightful yells they rushed up and surrounded Mr. Gould, who was standing in front of his house with his little son. Jay Gould recalled in his history of Delaware County, �We are that son, and how bright the picture is still retained upon the memory of the frightful appearance they presented as they surrounded that parent with fifteen guns pointed within a few feet of his head, while the chief stood over him with fierce gesticulations and sword drawn. Oh, the agony of my youthful mind, as I expected every moment to behold him prostrate a lifeless corpse upon the ground. His doting care and parental love had endeared him to his family, but he stood his ground firmly, he never yielded an inch. Conscious of fright he shrank from no sense of fear, and finally when a few neighbors had gathered together, a second time they were driven from the premises without the accomplishment of their object, the Indians marched off the premises and down the road in single file. One quite different report has another ending. They smeared him with tar, and then ripping open a pillow plastered him with feathers. In his fourth of July speech, Big Thunder had warned the East Manor farmers that William Van Rensselaer was ready to attack. The sheriff of Rensselaer County, Gideon Reynolds, had always been sympathetic toward the anti-rentors. A native of rural Petersburg, near Grafton, Reynolds had been elected by farmers' votes, and he was a friend of Dr. Bouton. As long as he dared he had ignored the complaints of the Van Rensselaer agents that two hundred thousand dollars in back rents was due in the East Manor, but he could not stall off the action forever. On July 24, 1844, the landlord's lawyers handed him several rits to be served on anti-rent leaders in the neighborhood of Alps, the most rebellious area of the East Manor. Reynolds took the papers reluctantly, and permitted himself to be turned back by a small band of Indians near Steventown, above Alps. The next morning a posse of thirty rattled out of Troy on the road to Alps in a train of carriages. Tin horns relayed the warning, and as the sheriff's party neared the village they were waylaid by one hundred and twenty disguised men armed with pistols, knives and tomahawks. Horses were unhitched and set loose on the road. The deputies were dragged from the carriages, bound and marched for more than a mile to the center of the village, where they were searched. More and more Indians arrived until about six hundred surrounded the officers. Sheriff Reynolds, forewarned perhaps, had been more than ordinarily sagacious. No papers were found on him. The sheriff George B. Allen was less fortunate, however, and the Calico chief sentenced him to be tarred and feathered. Sheriff Reynolds protested, reminding the disguised men of their professed love of law and order and their duty as citizens, and warned them that such rioting would result in punishment and disgrace. The chief, probably Dr. Bouton, appreciated the dilemma in which Reynolds found himself, but explained patiently that his men had agreed in counsel that the first men carrying papers relating to the tenants should meet with such treatment. While the Indians whooped blue horns and fired guns, Allen's coat and vest were taken off, and his shirt, pantaloons and collar, thoroughly tarred and feathered. Tarred was poured down the back of his neck until it flowed into his boots. Then the party was allowed to depart. Reynolds served no more papers himself, but called in deputy sheriff Jacob Lewis. The natives promptly forestalled any attempt at service by descending on Lewis's home in Skodak at midnight, seizing his papers and burning them publicly at a pow-wow in the centre of the village. And then the following day, when Lewis talked too boastfully of retaliation, the Indians returned in the night, dragged him from his bed, and in the presence of his family threatened him with tar and feathers. Finally, according to the Journal of Commerce of New York, he was compelled to run around the town-pump and up and down the streets for the amusement of his persecutors. Incensed by these indignities, William Van Rensselier's agents in Troy compelled Sheriff Reynolds to appeal to Governor Boke for troops. The political controversy that had raged about Seward's head five years before now broke out around William C. Boke, with the party rolls reversed. The Whig Press, once apologist for Seward, now demanded immediate military interference. The Democratic Press forgot its bitter attacks on Seward and defended Boke for refusing to be coerced. The Governor's answer to critics was typical of the former Canal Commissioner. On August 10, 1844, he set out for West Sand Lake to meet directly with the East Manor anti-renturs and find out whether it was possible to mediate. The roads were hot and dusty that summer day, the fields were tinted with the gold of new shocked grain, and the smell of hay drifted from open barns. As the coach jolted past William Van Rensselier's new manor house, which he called Beaverwick after the old trading post, the Governor must have thought back to his own farm in Scoherry County, and perhaps longed for the simplicity and peace of a farmer's life. When he arrived in West Sand Lake, a cannon volley roared a salute, and three thousand farmers and two hundred Indians assembled to greet him. A platform stood in front of the church, and banners hung from the village houses. Some displayed the figure of an Indian, and others the Devere slogan, for the land is mine, sayeth the Lord. From the village flagpole a rippling banner proclaimed, down with the rent. The Indians presented a most comical and grotesque appearance the Albany Atlas reported, adding that the language spoken was the common vernacular, mouthed with a strange intonation with an occasional sprinkling of dutch. Governor Boak went directly to the home of Burton Thomas, the anti-rent corresponding secretary, where he conferred with tenant leaders while the crowd waited in the road. It was mid-afternoon before the church bell gave the signal that the Governor was about to mount the platform. It was not he who addressed the crowd, however. He merely sat quietly on the platform, while Joseph Gregory, president of the East Manor Association, reported on their conference. They had proposed to the Governor, Gregory said, that the question of the validity of the Van Rensselaer title should be arbitrated by the governors of any three New England states, Connecticut accepted. Governor Boak had demurred, on the ground that the governors were common men like himself, none of them lawyers, except Governor Briggs of Massachusetts, and they were therefore not a whit more competent to decide. Gregory said the Governor had no intention of ordering the military to occupy the county, that it was the Attorney General's considered opinion that the Sheriff had not exerted his entire power, and until he had the Governor could do nothing in the matter. As Gregory could not judiciously announce, though, the Sheriff was not to be allowed a free hand to use the full power of the county, the anti-rentors had told the Governor that the masked bands were only an expedient to restrain the landlord from making wholesale evictions invited by the Judiciary Committee report, until the tenants could get a fair hearing. They were confident they would be able to elect their own men to the next legislature. If the Sheriff would leave them alone until that time, they could pledge that there would be no more rioting. But if rits of eviction continued to be served, the farmers would not sacrifice their only weapon before their strength had time to reach to the polls. In order to give them this respite Governor Bouch agreed to direct the Sheriff to serve no more processes without first consulting the Attorney General and the Justices of the Supreme Court. For all of his plain ways Bouch handled this delicate situation with skill. He succeeded in undercutting the force of the landlord-inspired Judiciary Committee report and taking control of the situation like a statesman. When the strategy became clear, the farmers congratulated themselves that all the Governor lacked of being an Indian was the Calico. Sheriff Reynolds, probably glad of official relief from landlord pressure, went immediately to the Governor to find out what was expected of him. According to the Troy Whig, the Governor told him to do nothing until he heard from him, because he had opened negotiations with the anti-rentors, the consummation of which might be defeated by any action on the Sheriff's part. Weeks passed without any further word from Bouch. Meanwhile, discouraged over the future and alarmed by threatening letters, William P. Van Rensselier left Beaver Wick and took up temporary residence beyond the reach of the anti-rentors. Other landlords took the attitude that the Governor's truce applied only to the tenants of William P. Van Rensselier in the East Manor. Across the river in the West Manor, Stephen IV relentlessly continued his efforts to bring his tenants to terms. On August 30th, Christopher Batterman, the handsome middle-aged sheriff of Albany County, drove up West Mountain with three deputies, among them Daniel Leonard, who still smarted from the encounter in which he was forced to burn his writs and buy drinks for everybody. Batterman carried two pistols, and his companions a rifle and a pistol apiece. Despite their watchfulness, the blast of a tin horn in the bushes startled their horses. Before the men could bring their weapons into use, they were surrounded by Indians, dragged from their wagon, relieved of their arms and bound. What would you do if you had us in your power, demanded the Chief, as if to determine what sentence to impose? I'd kill you as quick as I would a black snake, Batterman retorted. But the masked men had other plans. They burned his papers, and as he later told Governor Boke, threw him on the ground and threatened his life. Buckets of warm tar were brought up, and he was tarred and feathered, a victim of the vilest indignities and most barbarous cruelties in the opinion of the Albany advertiser. According to the version which appeared with cartoons in the London Illustrated News, the deputies were compelled to jump into the air three times while hallowing down with the rent. Batterman was placed in his wagon, bound hand and foot, and his horses started on their way home. Accusing the sheriff of defying the governor, the West Manor Indians met at Alps and voted a five hundred dollar reward to any man or body of men who would bring Sheriff Batterman across the river to the big tree in Momey Swamp. But for the rest of the year Batterman kept a safe distance from any leasehold territory. A few days later there was a similar incident in Delaware County. The farmers had responded so vigorously to anti-rent agitation that the New York Evening Post reported, it is believed that by fall every tenant will have joined the association. Indeed life and property are both in danger in case of refusal to respond to the cry of down with the rent, and the articles by which these bands of disorganizers are held together. The correspondent added that so much time had been spent in organizing that in some districts the cultivation of the land was entirely neglected and even the grass remained uncut. However exaggerated the foregoing picture might be, Sheriff Green Moore of Delaware County could not have been unprepared that day in early September when he and Timothy Corbin set out for Roxbury with landlord writs. Perhaps the DeBrosse's agent thought that there might be tenant defections if he succeeded in serving papers in the very birthplace of Delaware County anti-rent disturbance. Perhaps he hoped the tenants would resist with violence which would provide an excuse for new demands for state aid. At any rate as soon as Sheriff Moore reached Roxbury a party of Indians relieved him of his papers, and then because he was thought to be sympathetic at heart he was let go. Timothy Corbin, who was one of the landlord's trusted aides, was handled less gently. He had left more only a few minutes before and started up Bray Hollow to serve writs, in the peace of God and of the people of New York State. Horns began to blow, but by the time the Indians had gathered at the meeting place Corbin had run his horse down Bray Mountain. Martin Kelly advised the Indians to catch him at all events, shoot his horse down, if he can't be taken any other way break an arm or a leg. The men captured Corbin peacefully, however, some time later, not far from the home of Daniel W. Squires. For an hour Tim Corbin had been telling Squires, a staunch down-renter and himself an Indian, that the landlord was bound to win. Then, behold, a band of Indians came sculping rank and file over the fields and led poor Tim to a spot selected for the ceremony, mounting him on something like a soap-box, and served him out with tar and feathers until he was sure he was not himself. Corbin reported that the men did seize and lay hold of, and then and there, pole, haul, drag, blindfold, beat, strike, kick, tar and feather and ill-treat him. The last they saw of him that day he had scraped off some of his coat of tar and was on his way to Albany to tell the Governor how naughty these Indians had been. CHAPTER VIII. POLITICAL INFILTRATION. Despite the editorials and highly coloured accounts of Indian outrages that filled the press, the stout farmer from the vly did not waver in his determination to deny the landlords the use of state troops as rent collectors. Political opponents naturally made capital of the Governor's stubbornness. Not only the Whigs, but also the Barnburner faction of the Democrats were delighted to be handed such ammunition so close to the November elections. In the Manor counties, however, the major political parties were in a difficult position. Both watched the burgeoning anti-rent organization with alarm and began to put out bait for tenant support. Off the Manors the Whigs could heap abuse on Governor Boke for meeting with the anti-rentors, but in the insurrectionary districts they had to be cautious, even friendly. In the daily addition circulated only in the city, the Troy Whig called upon Boke to order out the troops at once to put down the rebellion. But in the weekly Whig, circulated largely among the farmers, all agitation for state interference was omitted. The tenants were already aroused to the importance of the local elections of 1844, and for once hardly needed any coaching, but Thomas Devere would not miss the opportunity to help. He came to the anti-rent counties fresh from the New England Working- States Convention in Boston, where he and Evans and Beauvais had introduced land reform and anti-rentism to a warmly sympathetic audience. Inspired by Wendell Phillips's silver tempest of indignation at the wrongs set before the meeting and a withering invective against the godless authors of those wrongs, Devere was ready to map out the winning strategy for the anti-rentors, while Evans and Beauvais remained in New York City to launch the first national reform political campaign. Devere impressed on the farmers the need to be done with political emotionalism. Now was the time for realism, he said. Discriminating use of the ballot would free their farms of feudal ties in short order. On the advice of George Evans, who had analyzed the causes of the failure of the defunct working man's party, both national reform and anti-rentism were to be used as a wedge for the eventual reshuffling of the major parties. This could best be done by infiltration, an art at which the anti-rentors soon proved themselves masters. The anti-rentors should not drive headlong into an already confused political situation with a new party, but rather win pledges from Whig and Democratic candidates entering independent names only where support was refused. Every candidate refusing to support anti-rent should be blacklisted regardless of party, and the scoundrels now in power had to be ousted. Just as in the 1842 election the Democrats were split. Former President Martin Van Buren, who had been living in semi-retirement at his home Lindenwald, since his overwhelming defeat in 1840, was trying to salvage his political chariot. But a coalition of Southern Democrats and Northern conservatives who favored the admission of Texas into the Union had defeated him and nominated James K. Polk for president. The tenant farmers were not interested in Polk's candidacy, but neither were they enthusiastic for Henry Clay, the Whig candidate. Texas was too far away, and the pressing need was proper representation in Albany. For Governor, the Whigs had nominated Millard Fillmore, the Buffalo lawyer who had represented them in the legislature and in Congress, and now had both gubernatorial and presidential ambitions, hence was maintaining strict silence on all controversial issues. The Democrats had turned down Governor Bulk and nominated a barn-burner, Silas Wright, a large, stoutish man of florid complexion and blue-gray eyes. The choice of Wright was really dictated by Martin Van Buren, who was determined to regain control of the party if only within the state. He encouraged the barn-burners, led by his son John and Michael Hoffman, to nominate Wright, who had been his political lieutenant in Washington. There were several points in Wright's favor. As a Senate debater, he ranked with Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. He had remained aloof from state party squabbles, and he had shown great personal loyalty by refusing both the compromise presidential and the vice-presidential nomination after the Democrats had scuffled Van Buren. The farmers, traditionally Democratic, were inclined to accept Wright's reputation as a progressive Jeffersonian. He was a farmer by birth, and a resident of Canton, St. Lawrence County. He was known as the incorruptible Cato of the American Senate. As the spearhead of the progressive financial program of his party, he was credited with liberalism and statesmanship, despite the fact that he had opposed anti-slavery petitions and voted against permitting anti-slavery propaganda to be sent through the males, and had the anti-rentors been aware of the agitated letters that had shuffled between Wright's home at Canton and party headquarters in Albany, their affection for him would have been dangerously strained. The landlords had better reason to put their faith in Silas Wright, and events were to show that his reputation was only the fruit of party regularity during a period of progressivism. Edwin Croswell, editor of the conservative Argus, who supported Wright only out of his own party loyalty, wrote to warn him that the tenants were busying themselves with this election, that weed and company were out to make political capital of anti-rentism, and that the anti-rentors might call upon him to take a stand on the issue for the public eye. In Rensselaer County, for example, Sheriff Reynolds was acting in perfect understanding with the Indians, the object being to collect votes rather than rent. Mr. Fillmore will be perfectly in the hands of weed, Croswell predicted, and will try anything and write anything which Thurlow should dictate. Though he hoped Croswell's alarm was baseless, Silas Wright asked the advice of Azariah C. Flagg and other party strategists. He confessed that he was totally ignorant of the ugly subject, but could not bring himself to believe that the farmers were disposed to raise the broad question of the right of the landlord to claim and collect rent, or that they expected candidates to commit themselves on such a principle. He would never impair the obligation of contract by abolishing the remedy of enforcement. Surely he wrote, these people cannot place themselves upon a ground so hard, and which appears to me to be so wholly indefensible constitutionally, legally, and morally. Michael Hoffman gave him his answer, not to traffic with anti-rentism. The renters will work mischief, Hoffman wrote, but don't let our people whore with them. The Governor Boak did enough in that line. Make no compromise with any-ism. Democracy or nothing. Hold to this, and we are safe. As it happened, Silas Wright did not need to make any statement of his position. Democrats in strong anti-rent areas were talking anti-rentism for him, and he was reaping the benefit. They were circulating hand-bills, sparing no exertion to make Indians of themselves. Democratic party papers made much of a statement by Circuit Judge Amasa J. Parker, favoring the repeal of special distress privileges held by landlords, and declaring that the welfare of the cultivator of the soil and the public interest would be promoted by abolishing leasehold estates. Parker was one of the Democrats' best exhibits at this time, for he had lived in Delhi, Delaware County for eighteen years before he moved to Albany as an appointee for Governor Boak, and had been elected to the Assembly and to Congress by farmer votes. The fact that in Washington he had worked closely with Silas Wright on Van Buren's financial program was not against him at this point, either. Some of the candidates for office were far from subtle in their wooing of tenant votes. David Seymour of Rensselaer County, Democratic candidate for Congress, told the farmers that he cordially sympathized with them, and would not if he had the power hurt a hair of their heads. The efforts of Sheriff Reynolds prevailed against such negative support, and instead the anti-rentors endorsed Whig, Richard Herrick, who boldly told them to avoid the payment of rent peaceably and by legal means if you can, if not you know what to do. In Albany County both parties were wary, as a little band of patriots assembled at David Saegers in New Scotland, in what was in effect the first anti-rent political convention. There said the farmer's report of the meeting, we kindled a fire under the hills of the Old Helderburg, to which men whose hearts beat with the rapturous glow of freedom have turned their eyes. For the family the farmers nominated Ira Harris, the Albany lawyer who in January had given Dr. Bouton a legal opinion supporting their petitions. Harris promised to maintain with scrupulous fidelity the rights of property, and secure to industry and effort its promised reward, and also to work for laws which in their tendency would distribute wealth as equally as possible among all classes of the community. That people, he declared, is most happy and prosperous, where there is none very rich and none very poor. The Whigs, certain that the anti-rentors would name Harris, had already decided upon him as their candidate for the assembly, thus hoping to secure farmer support for their whole ticket. An anti-rentor leaving Harris's office with his statement to the tenants was waylaid, and given tavern hospitality by a democratic worker sent to get a copy of it at all costs. The Democrats hoped for ambitious pledges with which they could discredit the Whig party. But Harris had been cautious in his promises. I greatly appreciate the confidence of those you represent, he had written, should I be elected, my best exertions shall be given, not only to secure prompt and favourable action upon the petitions of the tenants, but also to obtain for them all relief consistent with fair and constitutional legislation. On Tuesday, November 5th, it became clear that by forsaking their lifetime voting habits to vote for principle rather than party, the anti-rentors had upset political complacency with reckless ease. That evening victory fires burned in the anti-rent towns and horns blared on the hills. James K. Polk and Silas Wright were elected, but the celebration was rather for Ira Harris and the other new members of the Assembly from Albany, Rensselaer, Scowharrie, and Delaware counties, who had promised to support the tenants. Whig Union with the anti-rentors had profited Thurlow weed less than he had expected. Not only was his candidate for governor defeated, but the Whig bid for reciprocal anti-rent support for Henry Wheton for Congress had also failed. The farmers could not forgive Wheton for using information he had gained as their intermediary in 1839 after he became District Attorney of Albany County. But observed Evans's working man's advocate candidly, the tenants could not have defeated Wheton solely on this issue, had not another engine been adroitly worked to kill him. He owns a number of houses in the outskirts of Albany, some of which are tenanted by bad women and kept as body houses. A loud outcry was raised against him on this score, and the rigidly righteous of the Whig party scratched him off their ticket. The body houses and the anti-rentors killed Wheton, and he was elected to stay at home. In the post-election dawn the landed aristocracy and the industrial capitalists recognized the menace in the tenant's political unity. It had accomplished more for radical action than any political union of the working classes to date, and was linked to reviving labour movements which threatened industrial profits. The causes which brought this about tell favourably for the masses, Evans commented in the working man's advocate. The national reformers had fared badly in New York, but the alarm of the conservatives was flattering. James Gordon Bennett's Herald, charged that the land reformers, including Park Godwin, who ran for Congress, were actually nominated by the anti-rentors to advocate non-payment of rent. Trading politicians had fastened on the movement, Bennett warned, and would go right on until the right of property be overthrown. Moses Beach, editor of the conservative Sun, lumped anti-rentors and reformers together, as neither more nor less than English chartists transported to this country. Only eight weeks were left before the anti-rentors would take their seats in the legislature. The only upstate landlord who did not look upon those eight weeks of 1844 as the last chance to wreck the tenant movement was Garrett Smith, the liberal. He stayed the collection of rent for the first six months of the coming year, hoping that the whole matter of ten years would be settled through legal channels. The other landlords, in a final attempt to destroy public sympathy for the tenant's cause, made a concerted drive to provoke violence. These sheriffs, armed with warrants, moved into almost every leasehold county. When the inevitable strife resulted, the conservative papers cried hysterically that civilization was doomed. Political bigwigs welcomed the show down, and stood by to help in a systematic crushing of anti-rentism, just as soon as aroused public opinion would stand for it. CHAPTER IX A PRICE ON HIS HEAD During this period the living-stans were never far behind the van-rents-sileers in insisting upon their semi-feudal privileges. The main branch of the family was more or less headed by John R. who lived at his estate, Clermont, and the domineering relict of Henry W. Livingston, whose mansion the hill was now known as Widow-Marry's Place. Both estates were on Livingston Manor, which dated back to a colonial grant in 1686, and covered most of Columbia County, stretching twelve miles along the Hudson, and flanging out eastward eighteen miles over the irregular hills, to a thirty-mile width at the Berkshires. Since the time of Robert Livingston, the first lord of the Manor, the family had grown numerous, rich, and powerful in the best tradition of Hudson Valley aristocracy. One of the colonial governors accused Livingston of pinching his estate out of the poor soldier's bellies. Like that of the van-rents-sileers, the family fortune had been founded on piracy in the Spanish Main, and thanks to the leasehold system had lost nothing through the years. Tenants of various branches of the family in Schohery and Delaware counties had met little opposition in organizing anti-rent associations, but there were physical difficulties in Columbia County. For miles along the river, above and below the town of Hudson, almost every eminence was surmounted by the stately mansion of one or another of Robert Livingston's grandchildren, and the utmost vigilance had been exercised since John Jay's suppression of the earliest tenant uprising. The Livingston's had reason to be alarmed by the spread of the anti-rent movement from Rentsolier Wick to their own holdings. For months the farmers of Livingston Manor had been traveling back and forth to Alps to consult Dr. Bowton. A week after the 1844 election the doctor rode down to the eastern hill-town of Tachonic to address a meeting of Livingston tenants, and received their promise to organize, to blot from our statute books the last relics of feudalism. Remote though this town was from the riverside mansions there was a spy at the meeting. As soon as it was over he carried the news to the anxious manor lords, and lights burned late that night among the rich tapestries in the old masters. The next day word was brought to them that Big Thunder was to speak at a public Indian drill to be staged in an open field near Tachonic. Henry Miller, the sheriff of Columbia County, was ordered to learn the identity of the rebel leaders, especially the chief called Big Thunder. Seeing that any public officer who failed the Livingstons might as well retire to private life, Miller dared not refuse, but he was nervous about the upriver tar and feather parties he had heard about. In the end he escaped his dilemma by sending his son in his place. Young Stephen Miller mingled easily with the spectators assembled under the Tachonic hills, moving from group to group without exciting attention. He stood wide-eyed as the masked army tramped over the broad meadow to the strains of old Dan Tucker played upon a single fife and accompanied by a small drum. He overheard a farmer say that Big Thunder had brought his best upriver warriors to lead the drill. Finally the garish army stopped before the raised platform and Big Thunder stepped forward. There was no mistaking him. He threw back his head and lifted his hands. Bright bands of colors hung from his long full sleeves. Down with the rent, he shouted. Blasts from the horns were drowned by the echoing cheer of the farmers. You have paid rent to Livingston long enough, he continued, in his clear, eloquent voice. The aristocrats have taken from us and our fathers in rent many times what the land is worth. They will take no more. We have ten thousand Indians ready at the first blast of the horn to drive their paid agents from our farms. The Indians are at your command and they are ready to spill blood if they have to. They are sworn to protect you in your homes. As he finished, the Indians responded with blood-curdling whoops, brandishing their strange weapons. At a signal from Big Thunder, the instruments took up the strains of old Dan Tucker, and he led the tribesmen in their war-song with its robust chorus of, Get out of the way, big Bill Snyder will tar your coat and feather your hide, sir. The tale of Bill Snyder was too menacing for young Stephen Miller's comfort. He turned and slipped through the crowd. Before the last chorus died away, he was on his way to tell his father he had failed in his errand. The first violent incident occurred a week or two later, not in Livingston Manor, but on General Jacob Livingston's property, along the upper valley of Catskill Creek in Scoherry County. As a late November sun slanted down the brown western slopes of Scott Patent Hill, General Livingston himself was returning from a fruitless effort to collect rent in person, in spite of, or perhaps because of, warnings he had been receiving for two years, that he would be attacked by tenant warriors if he came into the neighborhood. Nothing had happened so far, and he was anxious to get out of the mountains before sunset. Wrapping a blanket round his legs, he urged his driver to whip up the horses. As the carriage raced into Livingstonville, the General saw a disguised horseman who lifted a tin horn to his lips. The sound was taken up by other horns in the distance. The coachman urged on his horses, but three miles down the road two more mounted Indians attempted to block the highway. Whip them up shouted the General, drawing two pistols. The carriage lurched past. The warriors wheeled their horses to follow, and one swung a heavy club at the driver, but missed and hit the carriage top. The jolt jarred the General's aim and his shots went wild. At several more masked riders joined the chase, horns made the valley quiver. Down the road, another three miles, General Livingston bolted from the carriage under cover of the gathering dusk, and his place was taken by a son of Judge Frederick M. Mattis. To Middleburg, for arms and ammunition for defense, Livingston cried, and ran for the judge's house. Inside he helped bar the doors and shutters against attack. His own guns were reloaded and two others put in order. When young Mattis returned through the back fields, bringing six guns, Indian reinforcements were arriving and horns were sounding loud. His defense is now ready. Livingston sent the young man out the front way to offer to negotiate with the farmers, but they refused. Coming out the General, they shouted, will not leave until we have the tyrant. By the time darkness fell, fifty Indians were milling in the yard, blowing their horns and shouting down with the rent. The judge's son slipped out the back door to summon reinforcements, dodging through the fields to the carriage he had left half a mile away. At midnight Sheriff John S. Brown of Scoherry County arrived with the posse to rescue the General. In the brief encounter one Indian fell struck by a rock and was taken to Middleburg. There are many rumours reported the guardian of the soil, as to the treatment he received after he was taken, which, we hope for the credit of all concerned, may prove unfounded. When an indictment was sought on suppositional evidence, District Attorney John Sternberg, brother of an anti-rentor, resigned rather than use his office for political coercion. Within a few days Governor-Elect Silas Wright received the whole story directly from General Livingston. Still unable to make up his mind about the tenant uprisings, he wrote to Azariah C. Flagg, the Democratic boss, on December 4th. He maintained that if this were the only instance of disorder the courts would be the proper place for settlement. But with the outrages becoming so frequent and extensive he might be forced to take a stand on the issue as soon as he took office on the first of January. He had no sympathy for the landlords, he insisted, but on the other hand he was utterly disgusted with the mob law of the anti-rentors. He would be personally pleased if he could tell them that men who dared not show their faces as a sanction of their acts should hope for little from an honest administration. He asked Flagg to take up the matter with their friends, including Martin Van Buren, and if they felt he had to discuss the issue in his message to the legislature, then what shall I say? He wrote again on December 9th, still asking Flagg whether he ought to ignore anti-rentism or meet it honestly, fearlessly and firmly. The Livingstons on the manor in Columbia County were even more outraged by the audacity and lawlessness of their kinsmen's tenants, and they hastened to teach their own a lesson. Sheriff Henry Miller was provided with warrants to sell the live stock and household goods of tenants who refused to pay their rent. On December 11th, as he drove out toward Copac to hold a sale on the premises of Abraham Vosburg and Stephen Decker, he was greeted by a din of horns from the hills that seemed to be repeating, tar your coat and feather your hide, sir. When he reached Copac under Tom Hill, he was met by five hundred Calico warriors drawn up in formation, and behind them a thousand spectators. Hurriedly he tried to slip into the back room of Sweet's Tavern, where he knew Deputy Sheriff Walter Shaver was waiting, but eight disguised farmers crowded through the door after him. The leader was Big Thunder, who commanded, natives give heed, draw swords, draw pistols. Hemmed in by a ring of gun-muzzles, Miller studied the masked face of the Indian chief. Shaver stood by, waiting. Big Thunder spoke again. Is the sheriff of Columbia County in the room? I am the man, Miller answered. The tall warrior faced him. I am here as chief of the Indians, he said. We have assembled to prevent this sale. We want to do it peaceably if we can, but if we cannot. The door closed on the rest of the conference. There is no record of what happened after that in the room. But later events suggest that Sheriff Miller did not want to lose the tenants' votes any more than the Livingston's favour. Afterward Big Thunder escorted Miller and Shaver to their wagon, again addressed himself to the sheriff in a tone that all the warriors and spectators could hear. You will go no faster than the procession, he directed. The Indians will move with the music to the place of the sale. Little Thunder will precede your horses, and a hollow square will be formed around you. The band struck up a march, and Big Thunder strode out at the head of the procession. Mortimer C. Belden, who was Little Thunder, took his place in front of the wagon, and hundreds of masked Indians and farmers fell in behind. At the Vossberg Farm, a mile and a half down the road, the strange parade halted. Sheriff Miller stood up in his wagon. There was silence while he spoke. I must sell the property, as advertised. Big Thunder stepped forward. If you attempt to sell to-day, you do it at your own peril, he said firmly. We have met to prevent the sale. We'll do it at all hazards. The Indians and the farmers stood silent while the sheriff appeared to debate the threat. I will not attempt to sell, he said, finally. When the cheers subsided, Big Thunder ordered the procession turned about for the return to the village. But Sheriff Miller could not appear to capitulate too easily. I must go on to the Decker Farm, he said. Big Thunder ordered the army to face about again, and they set off with the band playing. They found Steve Decker in his yard. After a few words from the masked chief, he came forward, his weathered face wreathed in smiles. Are you prepared to pay, Miller demanded? No, you'll have to go ahead and sell. If you do, Big Thunder warned the sheriff again, you do it at your own peril. Big and Little Thunder drew their pistols. Again Miller made a show of hesitation, then shrugged helplessly and climbed back into the wagon. You can't go yet, said Big Thunder, cocking his pistol. It is the custom of the chief to take from the sheriff all papers dealing with rents. I will not give up my papers, Miller protested, unless I am satisfied that those around me are determined to commit violence. I can satisfy you on that very quickly, the chief assured him. Turning he shouted to his men, natives give heed, the sheriff is unwilling to give up his papers, unless satisfied that we are ready to take them by force. All in favour, raise your left hand. Every Indian hand went up, and a war-whoop echoed in the valley. Big Thunder turned to the farmers who were not in disguise. Pale faces, what say you? Are you in favour of taking the sheriff's papers peaceably if we can, and if necessary, by force? The farmers shouted their assent. Henry Miller then handed over the papers, and the procession started home. Steve Decker climbed into the wagon and rode off with the sheriff, who remarked jocularly, Now didn't you get out of that nice? Steve guffawed and slapped the sheriff on the back. If you were up for sheriff now, he roared, how would you run? I know how to manage things pretty well, Miller chuckled. Back at Sweet's tavern Big Thunder drew the papers from the folds of his calico gown, and the warriors stood in a circle around a pile of straw in the road. A pail of brandy was passed around, and the report was that Sheriff Miller drank with the Indians, assuring their chief, I am as good an anti-rentor as you are. Big Thunder poked the pile of straw with his sword and addressed the crowd. Pale faces, is there any danger of burning the tavern if we fire this? Fire it, they shouted. He held a torch to the straw, and as the flames crackled he held up the papers. These are the obnoxious papers, my friends and brothers, which have caused so much trouble. Tossing them into the fire, he strode about in high good humor, poking the ashes with his sword, his rich voice topping all the others in a lusty chorus of Big Bell Snyder. Later John Livingston was burned in effigy, and before the crowd finally dispersed Big Thunder assured them, the Sheriff of Columbia County is as good an anti-rentor as any of you. Turning to Miller, he pledged, I will not see a hair of your head hurt, I will stand by you to the last. The Indians voted to buy the Sheriff his dinner. Toasts were exchanged in the tavern, and long after dinner the brandy flowed in an upstairs room where the Sheriff's conviviality with the anti-rentors could not be observed. On the way home through Smokey Hollow that night he stopped at Miller's tavern. His tongue loosened by brandy, he recounted the events of the day in detail. When the barkeeper asked whether he had not been afraid, he replied, I had no more fear when the Indians were around me than I have sitting by this stove with you. Then turning to a farmer who had stepped up to the bar, he added, I will not fight these men, they put me in office and they are my friends. If Dr. Bouton had been able to manage every encounter as skillfully as Sheriff Miller's sails, the history of anti-rentism might have been different. But accidents were bound to happen when the farmer's anger was provoked too often and too far. In the hill-town of Grafton, Rensselaer County, some van Rensselaer helped create an incident which fomented public opposition to the anti-rentors. Tenant feeling was already high in that part of the county, not only because of Dr. Bouton's work as an organizer, but also on account of the difficulty of making a living. The rough, heavily timbered, stone-cropped hill-fields were hardly the promised land once advertised by the good Patroon. The thin topsoil was so unproductive that the farmers had to patch their meager incomes by making wooden kegs all winter for five-and-a-half cents each, and still they found it hard to meet the rent. Consequently most of the farmers of Grafton were anti-rentors, and Calico was the best-selling commodity at the local store. The fracas arose over the right of the landlord to dispose of the timber on Leeshol Bland. Over the protest of the lessee and all of his neighbors, to whom a woodlot was bread and butter, Elijah Smith, a violent up-renter, had contracted with William van Rensselaer to cut wood on a lot near Grafton. On December 19, 1844, Elijah and his uncle Plum Martin drove to the woods in defiance of the anti-rent threats. For several hours the ring of their axes was sharp on the crisp air. When at last Elijah climbed atop the load and swung his horses into the road, he was greeted with the war cries of thirty Calico warriors. Unload the wood, the braves ordered. Cursing, Elijah jumped from the wagon, stripped off his heavy winter coat, and with his axe uplifted rushed at the masked men. Before he reached them a shot rang out and he stumbled and fell to the ground. The men carried him to Oliver West's, where they took off his jacket and vest. When they found no blood on his shirt, someone said, must have been a sham shot, he's only frightened. But the widow West saw his face pale suddenly and cried, He's dying. The wounded man could barely whisper, I'm a dead man. The bullet had struck near his heart. W. Smith's death was the incident William Van Rensselier needed. Governor Bouch still stubbornly resisted all demands to send state troops to crush the farmers. But he did lift his restraint on the sheriff by issuing a proclamation calling on Sheriff Gideon Reynolds to command the assistance of all able-bodied men in the county. What could the sheriff effect with a posse of a thousand men summoned at random from among our citizens against an organization of Indians, demanded the Whig Press, conveniently forgetting that a few weeks earlier Whig spokesmen seeking anti-rent votes had told the farmers to resist by force if they had to? The Indians would disappear on the approach of the lumbering posse and reappear as soon as they had retired. Moreover, in some of these counties a large portion of the male citizens are connected with the association. For weeks officials scoured the hills, arresting, questioning. Field pieces, muskets, and ammunition were rushed to Troy to equip an army to guard the jail against a rumor of a siege. The tenants disavowed any wish to interfere with authorities investigating Elijah's death, insisting that he had not been shot by an anti-renter. True, the Indians had gone to the wood lot to stop the up-renters from hauling wood, regarding them as agents of Van Rensselaer, but the shooting had not been premeditated nor was it condoned. It is supposed, explained an anti-renter in the New York Tribune, that a man by the name of N. G. fired the fatal shot. G. had before had difficulty with Smith, and it is possible that he took this occasion to settle an old grudge. G. is known to be a desperate, vicious fellow, reckless and revengeful. He might have thought that in company with so many dressed in disguise like his own, and whom it would be hard to distinguish from each other, he could do the deed and escape detection. The letter did not identify N. G., but noted that when the sheriff arrested a man named Norman Goyer, the Indians made no attempt to resist him or to rescue the man. During the height of the agitation, William Van Rensselaer and his lady drove into the interior of the East Manor, where they were set upon by Calico warriors, but much to the lady's relief, said the New York Post, she was not carried away by the disguised men. The Indians withdrew the newspaper reported, and thus ended what seemed at first a romantic and to the lady a disagreeable adventure. A long investigation failed to make a case against the anti-rentors. However, the death of the woodcutter gave landlordism one more useful instrument. The day before the shooting of Elijah Smith, Dr. Bouton had gone to Smoky Hollow, Columbia County, to address the Livingston Manor tenants and those of John Van Rensselaer, who had a small buffer state between the Livingston and William P. Van Rensselaer properties. A hand-bell summoning the farmers to the meeting had been distributed on the heels of the Copaic demonstration. It announced that Dr. Smith A. Bouton, agent of the anti-rent people, was going to speak, and rumours were already adrift that a later meeting would be called in Hudson to rally the dock workers to the down-rent banner. Long before the Red Sun came up over the Berkshires on Wednesday, December 18, Dr. Bouton and Mortimer Belden set out from Alps for the long trip to Smoky Hollow. The doctor admitted to his companion that he was going against his better judgment. Ever since the election there had been abortive attempts to arrest tribal chieftains and prominent anti-rent spokesmen on one pretext or another, and Bouton realized that he was the principal target. Reports had reached him that Sheriff Miller, his professed friend, had been offered five hundred dollars to put him in jail. They were determined to silence me in some way, Bouton wrote afterward. The landlords thought, if I was disposed of, that tenants would become discouraged and return to their old custom of paying rent. The doctor had no illusion that the friendship of Sheriff Miller could withstand pressure from the Livingstons very long, and he felt the time was inopportune for another public appearance in Columbia County, with or without disguise, yet he felt obliged to yield to his friend's urgent pleas. Roads dropping into Smoky Hollow were crowded that cold December day. About ten o'clock in the morning Dr. Bouton and his aide arrived at Miller's Tavern, which had been thrown open to the anti-rentors. There he spent several hours conferring with tenant leaders from the two Columbia County manors, while the crowd kept gathering outside. There were at least three thousand tenants by mid-afternoon, when two hundred Indians galloped up to the tavern with blood-curdling whoops and a great blowing of horns and rattling of spears. One of the masked men brought a stranger inside and introduced him as Colonel Ambrose Root. Dr. Bouton was so impressed by Root's familiarity with the anti-rent question and his professions of sympathy that he greeted him as a friend. During the conversation Colonel Root challenged the usefulness of the Indians, but Bouton told him that until wholesale evictions could be halted by other means the Indians would have to continue their operations. If the Livingstons would do what Garrett Smith has done, he said, and stay the collection of the rent for six months until the whole matter can be settled through legal channels, I will pledge myself that there will not be a man in Calico in three days, and I am the only man who can allay this excitement. Scarcely had Colonel Root left the room when Dr. Bouton realized he had made a slip in acknowledging his leadership. Sure enough, a moment later Mortimer Belden came in to tell him that the Colonel had been identified as a clavarack neighbor of the Lords of the Lower Manor and had been seen talking to up-rentors as a friend. Bouton thought swiftly and called in several trusted anti-rent leaders, among them a number of men in Calico. When the stage was set someone was sent after Root. A few minutes after Root rejoined them there was a knock at the door. Big thunder wishes to enter, cried an imperious voice. A tall, brilliantly-costumed warrior, at least a head taller than Bouton, appeared in the doorway. With a bewildered look the Colonel turned quickly to find the inscrutable blue eyes of the white-haired young physician upon him. The Indian who called himself Big Thunder spoke. Is there a man in this room by the name of Ambrose Root, he inquired? Root signified his identity. By that time Bouton was sure the man was an up-rent spy. You will oblige us by leaving the room the tall warrior ordered and stood aside holding the door open for Colonel Root to depart. Downstairs with the crowd Ambrose Root waited. Finally a Calico warrior appeared on the piazza of the tavern. Welcoming shouts greeted him as Big Thunder. The Colonel was sure he was not the one who had ordered him from the room upstairs. This one was more nearly the height and build of Dr. Bouton. When he spoke Root was even more positive, the voice of Dr. Bouton was unmistakable. Big Thunder asked the crowd to be patient. Dr. Bouton would speak to them in half an hour. Meanwhile he had a few words of praise for the Indians. Little Thunder and ten Indians, he shouted, can handle any posse the sheriff brings out. More than that, I promise you there are ten thousand braves ready to answer the call of the horn. Quite satisfied in his own mind Root waited for the next change of costume. After another wait a small band of warriors burst from the tavern door with ringing whoops. Behind them came Dr. Bouton walking with dignity. Suddenly, above the roar, a pistol cracked. William Reifenberg, a young farm lad from Hillsdale, who was walking directly in front of Dr. Bouton, slumped to the floor, instantly killed. The body was removed to a house nearby. Sober-minded farmers shook their heads. They had never approved of the goings-on of the Indians who dashed about firing their guns into the air and yelling. They had always said somebody would get hurt. It seemed to occur to almost no one that there might be more than an accident behind this tragedy. Dr. Bouton walked slowly to the platform. First he expressed his sorrow over Reifenberg's death. Then he told the crowd that he had come from his home that day to tell them about the progress of organized resistance in the other manor counties, and he still meant to carry out his purpose but he cut his words short and spoke very soberly. Those of the boy's death reached District Attorney Theodore Miller of Columbia County late in the afternoon. He went at once to Joseph D. Monnell, a Democratic politician who was being urged upon Governor-Elect Silas Wright for an appointment as surrogate of Columbia County. Monnell sent for Sheriff Henry Miller and demanded Dr. Bouton's immediate arrest. Finding himself in an awkward position, the sheriff hesitated. He wondered whether he had a legal charge. The charge can be settled upon later, Monnell stormed. The thing is to get Bouton. To make sure he accompanied the sheriff himself, and so did the District Attorney. On the way they strengthened their ranks with ten husky men, and at Claverac stopped to pick up Ambrose Root. Here Sheriff Miller faltered again, but Monnell bolstered him up with threats. Dusk was falling and the crowd had dispersed when the sheriff in his party arrived at Miller's tavern. Dr. Bouton was about to go downstairs and climb into his waiting wagon for the forty-mile trip back to Alps, but Sheriff Miller stopped him. Dr. Bouton, you are my prisoner, he said, stepping forward to lay his hand on the doctor's shoulder. Recognizing Ambrose Root, Dr. Bouton quickly took in the situation and shook off the sheriff's hand. For what offence are you arresting me? You are the man who took my papers at Copay and destroyed them before my eyes. I am not the man you want, said Bouton flatly, show me your authority to take me. Miller admitted that he had no warrant but was making the arrest by virtue of his office. That is no authority. I have been engaged in no felonious act. I have been simply transacting lawful business with citizens. Henry Miller turned helplessly to Manel. Several anti-rentors gathered behind Dr. Bouton, warning the sheriff that he was exceeding his authority. Manel ordered the sheriff to make the arrest anyway. I shall resist arrest, the doctor warned, but as he dove toward the door the sheriff seized him with a grip he had developed as a blacksmith. Anti-rentors, stand by me, Bouton shouted. Will you see me thus abused? I'll be damned if you take him off that way, yelled Samuel Wheeler, swinging his sledgehammer arms. Horns began blowing and anti-rentors came running back to the tavern. Bouton and Sheriff Miller struggled furiously. More men joined the free for all. The district attorney pleaded with the men not to stand in the way of the law. The sheriff had to do his duty, he said. It will go hard with you if you interfere, he advised them. Bouton will get a fair trial. The doctor broke away from Sheriff Miller, leaving his coat and part of his shirt dangling in the man's strong hands. He dodged across the road, backed up against a building, and cocked his pistol. There was no avenue of escape except a mill-pond partially frozen over, but not sufficient to bear a man's weight, and so he determined to defend himself to the last. Eager to resolve the impasse, Sheriff Henry Miller promised Bouton that if he would give himself up he would be taken before a magistrate immediately and admitted to bail, and that would be the end of it. Miller even offered to provide the bail himself. His gun still holding off the sheriff, Bouton consulted with his friends, who advised him to surrender. Reluctantly, Dr. Bouton, Mortimer Belden, and Samuel Wheeler gave themselves up. They were hustled into a closed carriage, and Colonel Root climbed in behind the sheriff. Horns were still sounding in the hills and warriors reassembling when the driver lashed the horses to a gallop. In a letter to Thomas Devere, Dr. Bouton said he was almost torn limb from limb with the entire destruction of all my wearing apparel and my watch, and forced into a closed carriage and brought to Hudson, where a mob was raised who seemed bent on personal violence and could hardly be restrained from hanging me up to the first lamppost with the hue and cry that I would soon meet my just desserts by a public execution. It was a ruse of my enemies, he wrote many years later. Under this pretense they told me I must be put in jail for my individual safety. Sheriff Miller hurried his three prisoners to the marble fronted courthouse in jail, and placed Bouton under special guard, while other guards fully armed marched around the jail all night. I was confined to a small close cell, heavily ironed and deprived of the society of my friends, treated with every indignity and insult that could be heaped upon an individual, Bouton's letter continued, all for striving to assert the rights of the poor as well as the rich. I can now say with you and say truly that for the sake of equal rights I have worn shackles which I am willing to do if my anti-rent friends will stand by me in adversity. Meanwhile in the hills and valleys of Columbia County, tin horns sounded throughout the night, and the Indians galloped to central meeting places with only the stars to light them. Forty years later, reconstructing the events of that evening, Dr. Bouton wrote that at the time most people believed the shooting to be accidental, but later many came to think that the shot was from a disguised traitor and had been designed for himself. The mystery was never solved. Logic can be marshaled to support Dr. Bouton's suspicion. The smoky hollow meeting had been well advertised, and Hudson authorities knew he was to speak, yet they made no move to arrest him until after the shooting, for which he was certainly not responsible. It might be argued that they lacked proof of his identity as big thunder until Ambrose Root had reported it, but again why wait until after the shooting? Wait a better-aimed shot have made the arrest unnecessary? It was odd, too, that there was never any investigation or any arrest for the homicide.