Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

ecame mainly squabbles of family and place.* As is the norm in ruling aristocracies,
the leading landed families were widely interrelated.
After midcentury, however, this situation began to change, as will be seen
further below. The two leading factions of the province came to be headed by
the Livingston and the DeLancey families. To the Livingston camp began to
gravitate the upstate interests, while the New York City interests tended to
join the DeLancey faction. In addition, the Dissenters tended to support the
Livingstons and the Anglicans the DeLanceys.
New York's system of land monopoly greatly aggravated the colony's territorial
disputes with its neighbors, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In
upstate New York, the rebellious tenants of the manorial lords took advantage
of the territorial claims of Massachusetts to a boundary on the Hudson
River. In 1751, the tenants of Livingston manor refused to pay their rents,
and argued that they owned the land outright in fee simple under the authority
of Massachusetts. Tenants of Livingston and Van Rensselaer petitioned to
Massachusetts to include them in its jurisdiction, and ignored Livingston's
orders to leave their land. The embattled tenants were led by Michael Hallenbeck
and Josiah Loomis, and the encouragement of Massachusetts was particularly
given to them by David Ingersoll. The manorial lord Robert Livingston,
Jr., retaliated by burning the house of one of the tenants and throwing the
tenant himself into jail. He also began court action against Hallenbeck.
Armed conflict broke out in 1753 when Livingston sent a troop of sixty
armed men to burn the houses and destroy the crops of the leaders of the tenants
who had refused to obey Livingston's order to leave, especially Josiah
Loomis and George Robinson. The rebels, led by Joseph Paine, retaliated by
chopping down over a thousand of Livingston's manorial trees. In addition,
Massachusetts stepped into the fray, pushing its own jurisdiction by arresting
a Livingston tenant who refused to take a Massachusetts title and, finally,
forcibly transferring his land to another claimant. Loomis and Hallenbeck,
attracted by Massachusetts support of tenant claims, escaped to the Bay
Colony. There they were appointed to a committee of the General Court
engaged in granting New York land titles to settlers. Albany County and the
governor of New York swung into action against the rebels, but failed to
quell the uprising.
In fact, the land conflict was aggravated the following year, as both Massachusetts
and New York sent troops into the area to battle Indians, and both
*Carl Becker put the point very well: "For political purposes, the organization of the
aristocracy rested upon the surviving feudal principle of the personal relation: personal
loyalty, rather than faith in a proposition, was the key to political integrity. The principal
means by which this bond was established . . . was the marriage relation. An effective
political influence was established, not by securing control of a 'machine* within a
party, but by interrelating one's family with the aristocracy as advantageously as possible"
(Carl L. Becker, The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York,
1760-1776 [Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1906], p. 12).
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