America's *Other* Declaration of Independence & the Anti-Rent War (Part II) | HISTORY This Week

By HISTORY

Community Score: 50% | 409 views | 1w

0 community ratings: null thumbs up, null thumbs down

July, 1845. Dr. Smith Boughton, the man behind the mask of "Big Thunder," is sitting in a Hudson jail after a trial that ended in a hung jury. The Anti-Renters had to celebrate Independence Day with cannon fire and readings of the Declaration, but without their leader. The rebellion across Upstate New York is escalating: an undersheriff with a bully's reputation is terrorizing farm families in the Catskills, masked Calico Indians are massing at rent sales, and before summer's end, a lawman will lie dying in a tenant farmer's bed. New York now has to decide: are these rebels murderers, or is the system they're fighting the real crime? What happens when the Anti-Renters trade their tin horns for the ballot box? And how does a local revolt over rent end up shaping the politics of a nation? Special thanks Reeve Huston, emeritus associate professor of history at Duke University and author of Land and Freedom: Rural Society, Popular Protest, and Party Politics in Antebellum New York; V

Tags: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, the history channel, documentary history channel, history documentary, documentary, history channel full episodes, documentaries, history channel documentaries