Anti-Masking Statutes and Anonymous Protest in the Age of Surveillance
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Anti-Masking Statutes and Anonymous Protest in
the Age of Surveillance
Nicholas Doherty
I. INTRODUCTION
In the fall of 1845, the Hudson Valley in New York was home to what
would come to be known as the Anti-Rent Wars.1 At the time, large parts of
upstate New York were controlled by a few wealthy families who had been
granted vast tracts of land, referred to as manors, by the Dutch crown when
the state was originally settled.2 These landowners, called patroons, rented
land to tenant farmers in what essentially operated as a feudal system.3 By
the time the Anti-Rent Wars began, more than 250,000 people, roughly eight
percent of the population of New York, lived and farmed on land controlled
by patroons under long-term or lifetime leases.4 These leases permanently
tied the leaseholders to the land with no opportunity to buy it.5
The Anti-Rent Wars began in 1839 when Stephen Van Rensselaer IV, a
wealthy patroon who had recently inherited the Manor of Rensselaerswych
from his father, demanded back rent from his tenants and sought to evict
those who could not pay.6 When local sheriffs were sent to serve the farmers
with eviction notices and perform distress sales, they were met by groups of
1 David Levine, History ofAmerica's Other Revolution: The Anti-Rent Wars, HUDSON
VALLEY MAGAZINE (July 30, 2015), http://www.hvmag.com/Hudson-Valley-
Magazine/August-2015/History-of-Americas-Other-Revolution-The-Anti-Rent-Wars/
[https://perma.cc/V95B-4QYG].
2 id.
3 Id.
4 Id.; Reeve Huston, The Parties and The People : The New York Anti-Rent Wars and
the Contours of Jacksonian Politics, 20 J. OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC 241 (2000).
5 Huston, supra note 4.
6 Herb Hallas, Halloween History: New York's Anti-Mask Law, NEW YORK HISTORY
BLOG (2013), http://newyorkhistoryblog.org/2020/10/30/halloween-history-new-yorks-
anti-mask-law/ [https://perma.cc/B3FC-6T8G].](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/sjsj18&div=22&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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