Land and Freedom

Reviews / Votes

"Reeve Huston's Land and Freedom is the most exciting and original book on the social history of Jacksonian-era politics that I have read in many years. Not only does the book retell the fascinating story of New York's Anti-Rent Wars; it connects the riots and revels to the history of mainstream (and not-so-mainstream) politics in persuasive and provocative ways. It has all the markings of a classic piece of scholarship." --Sean Wilentz, Princeton University "In a masterful achievement, Reeve Huston restores the Anti-Rent Wars to its vital place in the history of the antebellum north, describing a struggle that even in failure reshaped society and politics in New York, bridging the two worlds of proprietary manors and Free Soil Republicanism. Huston's balanced attention to practice, language, institutions, and the state make Land and Freedom a model of the newest American political history." --John L. Brooke, Tufts University "This is an excellent book, which tells a good story well. Probably the best work for decades on the New York Anti-Renters, it makes a significant broader contribution to our understanding of antebellum society and politics, and deserves wide attention from scholars and students. Huston's account of the Hudson River Valley and the Anti-Rent movement brings together the history of rural society and the history of party politics in an especially forceful and effective way. Huston achieves something quite striking: he takes a movement that could, on its own terms, be said to have failed, but shows how it was central to the unfolding of American political ideology--in this case, the mid-nineteenth century conflict between slavery and 'free labor.'" --Christopher Clark, University of Warwick "Land and Freedom shows the precise detail and the large significance of New York State's nineteenth-century struggles between great landlords and tenant farmers. Reeve Huston does not reduce any of his subjects to formulaic symbols. He demonstrates instead that achieving the tenants' goals was both a major change and a matter of profound historical irony." --Edward Countryman, Southern Methodist University "Deeply researched and gracefully written, Reeve Huston's Land and Freedom is a subtle and penetrating exploration of one of the most important social movements in antebellum America. Deftly weaving previously unconnected strands of social, economic, intellectual, and political history, Huston's portrait of New York's anti-rent campaign reveals hidden complexities in rural Americans' notions of republican government, market capitalism, and even freedom itself. An outstanding contribution to nineteenth-century history." --Harry L. Watson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill