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Review
| American Taxation, American Slavery, by Robin L. Einhorn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 352 pages. $35.00, cloth.
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| Taxes bring out the beast. This is especially true, argues Robin Einhorn, when self-interested elite minorities seek to protect themselves from the dreaded tax collector. According to her innovative thesis, it was Southern slave owners who crafted an ingeniously effective and enduring argument which the wealthy elite still employ today. They cast themselves as victims who needed special tax protection against a democratic majority hostile to their property interests. She will no doubt find enthusiastic readers among those angered by recent efforts to abolish the Estate Tax, though she may not convince everyone of the connections between slave holders' arguments and contemporary partisan tax issues. Einhorn begins with "colonial tax systems." All Northern colonies, she writes, developed the capacity at a local level to assess property. Conversely, all Southern colonies, except South Carolina where "elites distributed [tax] burdens among themselves" (p. 99), lacked "sufficient levels of [local] administrative capacity to assess the value of property." (p. 81) In the South, Einhorn argues, slavery generated "a culture of 'sovereign mastership' [that] made the assessment of property seem unduly intrusive to taxpayers who thought of themselves as the 'masters' of 'families.'" (p. 82) This elite Southern culture, she contends, has cast a long shadow over American history. |
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In the second part of the book, Einhorn covers familiar ground: discussions of taxation generated debates over slavery and angry threats by Southerners to end the union if slavery appeared to be endangered. Taxing imported goods, first with the impost and then the tariff, muted the vexing issue of slavery. Yet tariffs could not allay the "doomsday fantasies of slave owners" that prohibitively high taxes might be placed on their slaves. (p. 199) Nor could it stop the slave holders from demanding special protection for slavery. Einhorn explores episodes when slave holders' fears roused them to action. One episode occurred when Congress tried to salvage the Revolution's requisition system with Article 8 of the Articles of Confederation, a provision calling for a wildly unrealistic national real estate assessment. The ensuing debate over real estate apportionment raised troubling questions about how to count slaves. Knowing that Congress was desperate for a viable confederation, James Madison proposed and Congress consented to the infamous three-fifths rule in the Constitution in 1783. By doing so, writes Einhorn, "Northerners had swallowed an unspeakable twisted argument: the evil of slavery justified tax breaks for slave-holding states!" (p. 144) Einhorn also explores how the Constitution's direct taxation clause put slave holders on edge. (As Leonard Richards points out, Gouverneur Morris inserted "direct taxes" in order to defeat the three-fifths formula. Morris never intended that either would be part of the Constitution.) A second episode occurred during the 1788 ratification struggle in Virginia when terrified slave owners fantasized that the direct tax clause opened the door to a "prohibitive slave tax" and, ultimately, abolition. (p. 178) They demanded protection, arguing that "slavery was a lamentable evil that impoverished them." (p. 180) Einhorn points out that if an apportioned slave tax had been levied in 1790, slave owners in New Hampshire would have paid the highest rates. (p. 183) As it turned out, Congress levied direct taxes only four times (1798, 1813, 1815, and 1861). Almost immediately taxes became a partisan issue. Thomas Jefferson understood that voters responded better to "promises of tax cuts" than to "promises of tax equity." (p. 195) The final section of the book focuses on property taxes and "uniformity clauses" which "required that different forms of property be...assessed in the same way and taxed at the same rate." (p. 202) Southern states first employed these provisions to protect against "prohibitive slave taxes." (p. 209) Midwestern states also adopted uniformity clauses. In these states lawmakers mistakenly equated uniformity with equality or simply overlooked the practical implications of these provisions. Wealthy Americans, however, realized the benefits. After the Civil War uniformity clauses provided protection for "elites against the tax decisions of 'dominant factions' and 'rapacious' majorities." (p. 244). |
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Taxes certainly bring out the beast. This creature, however, is perhaps best understood as a hydra. Einhorn's erudite study throws a bright light on the Southern head. What about the others? Clearly economic self-interest also flourished among northern industrialists. When they invented favorable tax policies with incorporation laws (designed to protect individual fortunes) and corporate welfare (insuring the continuity of those very same fortunes) the beast had grown many new and menacing heads. Einhorn's book offers a most welcome neo-progressive analysis but we should probably not place all the blame for this beast on the South. |
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