Tin Horns and Calico

In the early 19th century, in the Hudson Valley of New York State, hundreds of square miles of land were still the feudal domains of large landowners known as patroons. Such families as the Van Rensselaers, Livingstons, and Schuylers owned the farms and towns in which hundreds of thousands of ordinary people lived and worked. Even the capitol city of New York State, Albany, was encompassed in the private fiefdom of a patroon. On July 4, 1839, in the mountain town of Berne, New York, a mass meeting of tenant farmers issued a declaration of independence, promising: "We will take up the ball of the Revolution where our fathers stopped it and roll it to the final consummation of freedom and independence of the masses." The Anti-Rent War consumed the Catskill Mountain region through the 1840's, leading in the end to the downfall of the patroon system and the democratization of land ownership in New York State.

By : Henry Esmond Christman (1906 - 1980)

00 - Acknowledgements and Introduction 01 - A Landed Aristocracy 02 - Call to Rebellion 03 - Seward Takes the Helderbergs 04 - They Could Not Stand Idle 05 - Justice For Sale 06 - Storms and Tempests 07 - Big Thunder 08 - Political Infiltration 09 - A Price on His Head 10 - Law and Order 11 - King Silas 12 - The Bastard War 13 - In the Good Cause 14 - ''For the Land is Mine'' 15 - Lead Penetrates Steele 16 - ''Brimful of Wrath and Cabbage'' 17 - Packed Court 18 - Delhi Justice 19 - ''November Ides'' 20 - The Goose is Plucked 21 - ''The Prisoners! They Come!'' 22 - The End of Manor Aristocracy 23 - Deep in the Land 24 - Songs and Ballads