"The final and sad end of anti-rentism in this county..."

From the Troy News, September 30, 1865, reprinted in "Notes From the Newspapers, 1865-1867," in Collections on the History of Albany, from Its Discovery to the Present Time, Vol. 3, Joel Munsell, Albany: 1870

Page 266

The final and sad end of anti-rentism in this county was reached last week by a judgment confirmed in a suit of Van Rensselaer against Martinus Lansing, a respectable and wealthy farmer of Greenbush. The papers were filed in the county clerk's office in this city at four hours twenty minutes P M., Tuesday, and about the same time Deputy Sheriff Griggs, with a party entered the premises, drove out the inmates, and took complete possession. The farm is probably worth $20,000. This is probably a final and complete loss of the premises to Mr. Lansing, and is a forerunner of what is likely to occur in other cases now in litigation. Anti-rent put itself above the law. It went into politics, and was ruined. It elected governors, judges, congressmen, senators, legislators, sheriffs, and town and county officers, ruined the Van Rensselaers, and worried them out of their handsome estate, was petted and patronized as long as it had votes to give, and now after long years of struggle the law finally puts its broad hand upon anti-rentism, and hopelessly squelches it. The lawyers who have grown rich out of it, and the politicians who have been boosted into office by its help abandon it, and none are so poor as to do it reverence, least of all those who have profitted most by it.