As a curious anti-climax to the feudal system under which the ])eople of Rensselaerwyk lived ])rior to the War for Independence, there occurred in the earl\' half of the nineteenth century an agitation known as the anti-rent war, that stirred Alban\' and the surrounding countr}^ for man}' years. This trouble was the result of a persistent effort on the i^art of the heirs of the Van Rensselaer estate to collect rents which they claimed as their due u]Jon property formerly a part of that domain. The tenants as persistently resisted, denying the claim. When the sheriff and his posse attempted to enforce an order in

544 The Hudson River

favour of the kmdlords a riot ensued. This experience was several times repeated, and the mihtia was called into service to quell what bid fair to be an insurrection. In man}' respects this trouble formed a parallel to those disturbances that have marked the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland. In a mock-heroic poem of ninety-three cantos, written after the style of Hudibras, and published anonymously in 1855, H. R. Schoolcraft a]:)otheosised the heroes of the anti-rent war, and pictures, among other things, the tarring and feathering of the sheriff. The anti-rent trouble was finally settled, in 1852, by the State, which issued titles in fee simple to those in actual possession of the disputed property. Other feuds marked the middle period in Albany's history, the transition stage between a somewhat overgrown village and the cit>- of a hundred thousand inhabitants. For instance, there was the great battle on State Street, in which the |)rinci])al actors were John Ta\der and General Solomon Van Rensselaer, a number of lesser combatants participating. The fray occurred in 1807, and was occasioned by some caustic resolutions presented at a RepubHcan meeting and aimed at General Van Rensselaer and his fellow Federalists.