Beginning in the 1750s, a series of riots rippled through the Hudson Valley. Tenants rose in protest against landlords who not only collectively controlled 2.5 million acres of the best soil but who, in many cases, also owned both the local stores where tenants bought supplies and the mills where they ground their grain. Locked into this cycle of dependence and facing inflated real estate prices, they had little hope of purchasing farms. Consequently, they resorted to varied strategies of rebellion and, occasionally, violence. Hudson Valley land riots from the 1750s through the 1790s. He...