Explore "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A sheriff in the Hudson River Valley near Albany, New York, about to go into the hills in the fall of 1839 to collect back rents from tenants on the enormous Rensselaer estate, was handed a letter:
. the tenants have organized themselves into a body, and resolved not to pay any more rent until they can be redressed of their grievances. The tenants now assume the right of doing to their landlord as he has for a long time done with them, viz: as they please.