Bi-centennial history of Albany. History of the county of Albany, N. Y., from 1609 to 1886. With portraits, biographies and illustrations, Part 67

Author: Howell, George Rogers, 1833-1899; Tenney, Jonathan, 1817-1888
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: New York, W. W. Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1452

USA > New York > Albany County > Albany > Bi-centennial history of Albany. History of the county of Albany, N. Y., from 1609 to 1886. With portraits, biographies and illustrations > Part 67

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It was, probably, assumed by Mr. Hamilton that that statute was never in force in the colony, and that it, therefore, had no existence in the State, or any statute tantamount to it ; or he may, per- haps, have had no knowledge of the English statute, as it was adopted so long ago as the reign of Edward I.

However that may have been, it is certain that this patroon, acting upon such advice from some quarter, sold in fee, with warranty of title, his farming lands in Albany and Rensselaer counties, the deeds containing the feudal reservations above mentioned. The system seemed to work smoothly enough during his life and the lives of the first pur- chasers; but, on his and their death, the successors of the latter, as owners, began to grow restive under the burdens imposed; and, on being urgently pressed after the death of the patroon by his sons Stephen and William to make payments of the rents in arrear as reserved in the deeds, they-the owners of the lands-began to question the legality of the reservations.

The patroon, by his will, devised all his interest in the lands thus sold by him in fee, with the re- servations of rents, to his two oldest sons, Stephen and William P .; the scrivener who drew the will and himself undoubtedly supposing that he verily owned the escheat or reversion of such lands; in other words, and in more familiar language, that he still owned or retained the soil thereof. To the oldest son, Stephen, was given the rents in Albany

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County; and to William P., the second son, the rents in Rensselaer County, as reserved in the conveyances.

Here, on the death of the father, commenced the first troubles of the landholders, or the tenantry, as they were called by the manor proprietors.

While the old patroon was one of the most gentle, kind-hearted and benevolent of men, and often generously reduced the rents, and by many sympathetic acts called forth the gratitude and love of the landholders, the young patroons, -proud, perhaps, of the great acquisitions, and it may be withal in need of money, as the rents, after the father's death, came in sparingly and reluctantly,- were sternly exacting, and they required full and prompt payments, and omission to pay was fol- lowed by prosecution and threatened eviction.

It was not long, under these circumstances, be- fore strong hostility was exhibited to the fee-farm rent system in these two counties, soon extending into adjacent counties affected by the same system.

It is remarkable, on taking advice of counsel, as the landholders did, that no opinion was given or suggestion made that the deeds of the patroon being absolute conveyances of all his interest in the lands, the reservations were, for that reason, invalid as incumbrances, made so by the English statute before mentioned.

The counsel consulted were either ignorant of the existence of that statute or they dismissed the consideration of it on the assumption that it was never the law of the Colony or of the State. Had that statute, at the time of the anti-rent outbreak, been recognized as the law of the State, it is not too much, probably, to assert and believe that, before the distinguished judges who then adorned the bench, with the Senate composing the court of last resort-a popular as well as judicial body-the anti-rent controversy would have been spared more than a quarter of a century of political and legal conflict, and the feudal-burdened counties have become as enlightened, prosperous and free as their sister counties of the State.

The anti-renters, desirous of compromising the disputed matters on some equitable, even liberal basis, early in the spring of 1839 held a conven- tion or meeting, numerously attended, on the Helderbergs, in the town of Berne, and appointed a committee to wait on Stephen Van Rensselaer, the eldest son of the old patroon, for the purpose of ascertaining if an amicable settlement of manor claims for rents in arrear could not be effected, and to learn, in the language of the day, upon what terms the soil could be bought, ignorant that

they owned the soil already by their deeds of con- veyance.

The committee, consisting of such sterling men as Lawrence Vandusen, of Berne, afterwards elected county clerk, who acted as chairman; Edgar Schoonmaker, Hugh Scott, Joseph Connor and John F. Shafer and others of that town, and Deni- son Fish, Lawrence Fenner, Isaac Hoag and others of Rensselaerville, and other representative men of the hill towns and towns below the hill, on the 22d of May, 1839, went to the manor office in Watervliet to see and converse with Mr. Van Rens- selaer on the subject for which they were appoint- ed; but he refused to speak to or recognize them even by a nod. Passing into the inner office oc- cupied by his agent, Douw B. Lansing, he held a somewhat lengthened and confidential conversa- tion with him, and the agent then came out and said that Mr. Van Rensselaer would communicate with them in writing. This excited great indigna- tion, the committee feeling that they had been treated with lordly and haughty contempt.

Mr. Van Rensselaer did some time subsequently address a letter to Mr. Vandusen, the chairman ofthe committee, which was read at meetings of the anti- renters held at East Berne on the Helderbergs, and other places in the summer of 1839. In this com- munication Mr. Van Rensselaer declined to sell on any terms, saying, among other things, that he would be doing injustice to himself, to his family and to society at large should he consent to do so.

This determination of the manor claimant on the Albany side of the river led to the wildest ex- citement in the anti-rent towns of Albany County, and open resistance to the collection of rents was boldly urged and practiced. Rent agents were in- sulted, and were not safe among the excited peo- ple. Sheriffs were resisted in discharge of their duties, by men masked and dressed in calico and Indian costume; their horses were shorn of mane and tail; the wheels of their vehicles were removed and hidden; firearms were displayed; tar and feathers threatened, and strong demonstrations of force generally exhibited.

Such was the extent of the resistance that early in December, 1839, the Sheriff, Michael Artcher, called to his aid, in serving process, the posse com- itatus, or power of the county. Among many prom- inent citizens summoned was ex-Gov. Marcy, who, amid much laughter, declared grimly and facetious- ly his readiness to go; and he did actually go with the posse on foot as far as Adamsville, where a gentleman friend found him and conducted him in his carriage as far as Clarksville, and there the

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Governor remained until evening, when he returned with the posse to Albany.

The Sheriff, with his posse, consisting of six hun- dred citizens, started from Albany on the third day of December, 1839, for Reidsville, a hamlet on the Helderbergs, about sixteen or eighteen miles from Albany. On arriving within a few miles of the place, the Sheriff, selecting from the body of the posse a committee of seventy-five of the stoutest hearted, left with them for Reidsville, where it was understood the anti-renters were collected in force. Just before reaching Reidsville the Sheriff and his committee encountered a body of fifteen hundred mounted men posted across the public highway, barring and refusing their further progress, and or- dering them to go back. Whereupon the Sheriff and the committee returned obediently as directed; and on making report to the main body of the posse of the formidable resistance encountered, the whole body gladly took the backward march to Albany, where they arrived in safety the same even- ing at 9 o'clock.

People generally at the time, in discussing this unheard of posse and its ridiculous termination, declared that a bold front on the part of the Sheriff, with twenty resolute men, would have enabled him to pass through the mounted horsemen without injury, and do what he desired to accomplish of a legal character.

On the morning after his return, the Sheriff gave the Governor-William H. Seward-an animated if not exaggerated account of the resistance he had met with.

The Governor deemed it his duty, under the circumstances detailed, to call out the military, and he did so promptly and efficiently, for he ordered out a force sufficient to capture every man, woman and child on the Helderbergs. It was composed of the Albany Burgesses Corps, Captain Bayeux; Albany Union Guards, Captain Brown; Albany Republican Artillery, Captain Strain; First Com- pany Van Rensselaer Guards, Captain Kearney; Second Company Van Rensselaer Guards, Captain Berry; Troy Artillery, Captain Howe; Troy Citi- zens Corps, Captain Pierce; and Troy City Guards, Captain Wickes.

This formidable body of citizen-soldiery, in general command of Major William Bloodgood, headed by Sheriff Artcher, started for Reidsville, on the Helderbergs, December 9, 1839, to encounter and overcome the rent-resisters. With colors fly- ing, drums beating, cannon rumbling, and bayo- nets gleaming in the wintry sun, its march from Albany was imposing.

It reached the Helderbergs without a shadow of resistance, and, encamping at Reidsville, found no enemy there to attack or oppose. It remained in camp and on duty at that point, and other places, for a week, and then returned to Albany, greatly chagrined and sadly bedraggled, amid the peltings of a pitiless rain storm of almost unexampled severity.

Similar but much smaller demonstrations, under proclamations of subsequent governors, set on foot by rent claimants and timid sheriffs, have occurred several times since. The object has always seemed to be, not to serve and enforce process, for that was never really impossible in the hands of a vigorous and courageous officer, with only a respectable posse; but by military exhibitions of display, ac- companied by sheriffs' posses in force, to intimidate and drive the landholders into settlement and pay- ment of iniquitous demands.

The resistance to the collection of rents and at- tempted enforcement of collections went on for some time in the tumultuous manner stated, with- out successful or encouraging results on either side. The landholders hoped the petty and threat- ened acts of resistance made by them might induce Mr. Van Rensselaer to offer some terms of com- promise; but he refused all compromise unless his tenantry, as he called them, would cease all further opposition, acknowledge themselves in the wrong and pay up what they owed.

This obstinate state of the controversy led the landholders, under the advice of some antiquarian adepts in legal lore, to question the Van Rens- selaer title to the manor. It was insisted that the letters patent were invalid on many grounds, not necessary now to be stated, as it would lead to fruitless discussion. It is enough to say of it that it soon brought the feudal rent conflict into the arena of politics.

Politicians, always keen to scent the advent of a new and potent power for votes, were quick in seizing this opportunity and putting the land- holders in shape for political action. They must, it was urged, have a public press to make their cause and their grievances known to the people, and this was done with little delay.

The Freeholder, published in the City of Albany, became the organ of the embryo party. It was conducted for many years with great ability. Both of the old political parties, to a greater or less ex- tent, entered into the controversy, although the National Republican or Whig party, then the op- position party to the Democratic, furnished, appar- ently, the largest number of anti-rent or land-

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holders' advocates. The landholders now sought, through political agitation, the enactment and en- forcement of laws to protect them against the feudal exactions. Their first object, therefore, was to se- cure the Governor and a controlling number of members of the Legislature; and at once, in the elections, they made their power felt. Rensselaer, Columbia, Dutchess, Sullivan, Ulster, Greene, Del- aware, Otsego, Schoharie, Schenectady and Mont- gomery Counties promptly sent representatives of the landholders to the Legislature ; and Albany County espoused their cause by overwhelming ma- jorities. Ira Harris, as their especial representa- tive, was elected to the Assembly in 1845 by a majority exceeding two thousand votes. In 1846 he was elected a delegate to the Constitutional Con- vention, and in the same year again to the Assem- bly, and subsequently to the Senate, and finally to a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court. Silas Wright, whose name was a tower of strength, and who, as the Democratic candidate for Governor, carried the State in 1844 for Polk as President against Henry Clay, was beaten for re-election by John Young in 1846, because his action as Gov- ernor with respect to the anti-rent outbreak in Del- aware County, in which Steele, a deputy sheriff, was killed, had given offense to this new and potent organization. It would be out of place, in a his- tory of Albany County, to detail the successes or the defeats of this organization in other counties or in the State, or its fate in the Legislature, or its decline as a political body. It is sufficient to say that the landholders' party, as a political organization, with its organ, the Freeholder, died out gradually, and that the contest subsequently became strictly legal in its character.

Among the conditions contained in the manorial grants in fee, as well in Albany as in other counties, was a provision that the grantee, his heirs or as- signs, was to pay to the lord or proprietor of the manor, on every sale or vendition of the land ad infinitum, one-quarter of the purchase price ; so that, if a given farm-worth, for instance, $2,000- with all its buildings and other improvements, put on it by the landholder himself, was sold four times, the manor proprietor would get the whole value of the farm, including the improvements ; that is, $500 on each vendition, making the full sum of $2,000 on the fourth sale.

Litigation in the courts first assumed shape on this quarter-sale provision in 1848, and in 1852 the question was carried into the Court of Appeals for final adjudication. The ground taken there by the counsel for the landholders in opposition to the

quarter-sale was, that the condition was void be- cause it was a fine upon alienation, repugnant to the grant and against public policy ; but Judge Ruggles, who delivered the opinion of the court, placed the decision in effect upon the statute of quia emptores, which, althoughi he concluded was not in force within the colony, and, therefore, not in the State, yet, in his own words, "that our statutes of escheats and of tenures, the one passed in 1779 and the other in 1787,/ acting retrospectively, performed the same func- tions and wrought the same changes in the feudal tenures of this State as the statute of quia emptores did in England. They put an end to all , feudal tenure between one citizen and another, and substituted in its place a tenure between each landholder and the people in their sov- ereign capacity ; and, by taking away the grantor's reversion or escheat, they removed the entire foun- dation on which the power of the grantor to restrain alienation by his grantee formerly rested, and they placed the law of this State, in respect to the ques- tion in controversy, on the same footing on which the law of England now stands and has stood since the reign of Edward the First"-that is, since 1290, when the statute of quia emptores was passed.

Judge Ruggles also said : "The right of re-entry for non-payment of rent, or the non-performance of other covenants, is not such an interest in the estate as makes the condition in question valid. It is not a reversion, nor is it a possibility of re- version, nor is it any estate in the land." And again he said : "A rent is not a reversion or a pos- sibility of reversion, and nothing but such a rever- sionary interest in the land has ever been held to authorize a condition against alienation."

And Judge Ruggles adds, in the same opinion, that, although the quarter-sale condition is valid in leases for lives and years, for there the lessor has a reversionary interest in the land, yet on convey- 1 ances in fee it is void, for he has no reversionary interest left. And such was the unanimous judg- : ment of the Court of Appeals ; and so ended all further enforcement of this hoary-headed exaction.

The life and soul of this decision is this: the manor proprietors by sale and conveyance of their lands in fee divested themselves of all estate in the lands, and no relationship whatever of a legal charac- ter thenceforth existed between them and their grantees. They were not landlords, and the grantees were not tenants; for it is idle to call him landlord who does not own the land, and him tenant who does own it. And so quarter-sale con-

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dition died, and by parity of reasoning so died also all other attempted feudal restrictions, by way of covenants or conditions in deeds in fee, to free commerce in manor or other lands in the State of New York.

The Court of Appeals at the time of this decision was composed of the following Judges: Charles H. Ruggles, Chief Judge, and Addison Gardner, Freeborn G. Jewett, Alexander S. John- son, John W. Edmonds, Malbone Watson, Philo Gridley and Henry Welles, Judges.

The Court of Appeals, in a subsequent decision, pronounced in 1859, by Judge Denio, dissented from the opinion of Judge Ruggles with respect to the existence of the statute of quia emptores here, and held that that statute was always the law of the colony, and that it was the law of the State as well before as after the passage of our act concern- ing tenures in 1787. " A contrary theory," said Judge Denio, "would lead to the most absurd con- clusions. We should have to hold that the feudal system, during the whole colonial period, and for the first ten years of the State government, existed here in a condition of vigor, which had been un- known in England for more than three centuries be- fore the first settlement of this country."

After the decision of the Court of Appeals in 1852, the Van Rensselaers and other manor pro- prietors were advised by their counsel to sell, as it was evident that the other feudal conditions, such as the payment of wheat in bushels, fat fowls, days' service with carriage and horses and the like, contained in the conveyances, and forfeiture of the land in case of non-payment, must rest and be rejected upon the same principle as the quarter- sale condition, to wit, want of relation of landlord and tenant between the parties; for if that relation- ship did not exist in the one case, it was obvious that it did not exist in the other, and could not, therefore, exist at all.

While the manor proprietors, tired of the long continued resistance and the failure to collect al- leged rents, had, previously to 1852, in a few in- tances, sold to some submissive landholders the soil of their farms, as it was called, they now, under the adverse litigation attending the quarter sale, on the advice of counsel mentioned, expressed a willingness to sell at prices ridiculously small, if they really believed the rents claimed were legal and collectable; and speculators or ad- venturers in numbers, ever ready to take chances, however desperate, or, if possibly successful, how- ever detrimental to the general welfare, pressed forward to buy; and they bought. The chief or

principal purchaser was Walter S. Church, then of Allegany County, New York.

It must be here observed, once for all, that the term speculator or adventurer in this case is not made use of in an invidious or offensive sense, or even reproachfully, but by way of designation or discrimination. He is not an inheritor of manorial rights, and he does not take by devise. He simply comes in as a stranger on speculation, and buys casual or disputed claims, as he would buy lottery tickets or stocks in Wall street. He is, therefore, a speculator or adventurer in the contest, in which he purchases chances. If successful in the ven- ture, his fortune is made, and he can take his ease, and live and spend and entertain freely and handsomely. If unsuccessful, he is no worse off than other speculators who spend on a hazard all, perhaps, they possess, and all they can borrow.

The last mentioned purchaser or speculator has, for more than thirty years, made a busy and troublous time of the venture for himself and for the landholders.

That he has been indefatigable in it, is saying little. His labors and his activity have been im- mense, and his presence, wherever or however re- quired to promote or protect his interest, has been almost ubiquitous. Did the controversy drift into the Legislature, as it did from time to time, he con- fronted it there, at every step, with an energy un- tiring and sleepless, and open house and ample table as potent auxiliaries. When it went into the courts in the form of multiplied ejectment suits, prosecuted under his personal direction and in his interest, he was there alike active, untiring and vigilant; and it must be written, or this histor- ical sketch will be imperfect, honored judges did not deem it improper, and have not considered it incompatible with their position, to accept the proffered hospitalities of his bachelor home, par- take of his sumptuous repasts, sip his costly wines, and receive his courtly attentions; and distin- guished lawyers, and lawyers engaged in the cases against the landholders, have participated in the entertainments; even Governors and Lieutenant- Governors have not refused to join in them.

It may be said that these social entertainments have exercised no control in the judgments pro- nounced by the courts. That may be so. But in cases involving civil rights, the forfeiture of real property and enormous pecuniary exactions be- sides, it cannot be expected that the landholders, victims in the actions, have regarded their possible influence with indifference. In a great controversy like this, in which judgments are given upon the

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statutes of landlord and tenant-where such statutes cannot possibly apply-the rule of star e decisis should not be allowed to prevail; and therefore the judges should keep their minds open to further argument and decision, without possible bias in any way or from any direction; for it has been well said that a single decision has never, in any case, been al- lowed to stand if found opposed to principle, and in a conflict of decisions the doctrine of stare decisis does not hold.

It is familiar to every well-read lawyer that there are hundreds of cases in the books that have stood settled as law for centuries, which have been overturned by the broad, luminous and analytical mind of a Mansfield or a Marshall, a Spencer or a Kent-intellects which have elevated and ennobled the race, not debased and degraded it-and it will scarcely do to say that this generation of judges is infallible, or wiser and greater than those illus- trions prototypes.

If it be asked how the controversy has progress- ed since the purchase by the adventurers, and how it stands to-day between them and the landholders, it may be summed up briefly.

In 1858, in the case of Van Rensselaer against Ball, first, among many cases, that went to the Court of Appeals after decision in the quarter- sale suit, the right of the manor proprietors, or the purchasers of their interest, to maintain actions of ejectment against the landholders, was put by that Court, in the opinion written by Judge Denio, before alluded to, upon a statute passed by the Legislature in 1805, authorizing grantors of lands to have the same remedies for the recovery of rents as if the reversion had remained in them.

Now, this statute was passed after the manor proprietors had sold their lands, with scarcely an exception, and could not, therefore, be legitimately employed in the office it was called on to perform; that is, it could not confer a right if none existed before. But this was not all; Judge Denio then proceeded to apply the statutes of landlord and tenant to the cases, after he had demonstrated beyond all contradiction that these statutes could not by any possibility be made to apply, in con- sequence of the prohibitory statute of quia emptores, and our statutes of tenures and escheats.

This decision so shocked the public conscience, that the Legislature in 1860 promptly repealed the statute of 1805, so far as conveyances executed be- fore that time were concerned.

After that statute was repealed, the feudal rent litigation was renewed; and other cases, having gone through the lower courts, were carried to the

Court of Appeals for renewed decision, where they were decided in 1863. That Court then took a new departure, and held that the statute of 1805 was not necessary to the maintenance of the actions, but that the provisions of a statute enacted in 1846, abolishing distress for rent, and for other purposes-a statute passed in the interest of the landholders, through the agency of their own representatives in the Legislature-supplied the place of the statute of 1805. The opinion in the case was written by Judge Henry R. Selden.

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Bi-centennial history of Albany. History of the county of Albany, N. Y., from 1609 to 1886. With portraits, biographies and illustrations, Part 67

Author: Howell, George Rogers, 1833-1899; Tenney, Jonathan, 1817-1888 Publication date: 1886 Publisher: New York, W. W. Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1452

Author: Howell, George Rogers, 1833-1899; Tenney, Jonathan, 1817-1888
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: New York, W. W. Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1452