Fire on any man who runs

The story, from several sources

This account blends Rothbard’s chapter with the other sources listed below and has not yet been separated into Rothbard’s own account and the fuller story. Read Rothbard’s chapter 38 for his account.

Livingston Manor ran for 160,000 acres along the east bank of the Hudson, and its tenants wanted one thing from the war: the land they had cleared and farmed for years. Their landlords, the Livingstons, were leading Whigs, so the tenants became Tories, since only a British victory seemed to promise them ownership. The manor’s committee of safety, run by the Livingstons, drafted them into the militia to fight Burgoyne, and one tenant, Jury Wheeler, told the committee that if he went to the army the first man he would shoot was his captain. In May 1777 about 400 tenants of the manor and a hundred more men rose, armed with homemade and stolen guns. They had been told the British were near, which was false, and so they rose too early. Several hundred militiamen from outside, led by landlords John P. Livingston and Robert Van Rensselaer, were sent against them, with the order to fire on every man fleeing. On May 5 the tenants offered to surrender in exchange for a promise of no revenge. The offer was brusquely spurned. Six tenants were killed and perhaps a dozen put to death, and over 300 were scattered outside the manor, though most were freed after swearing loyalty to the Revolution. By autumn nearly seventy tenants had gone to join Burgoyne. Rothbard’s verdict is that they never won the land, but never again would they be treated like cattle.