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American Taxation, American Slavery

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A history of taxation may seem like an odd place to challenge fundamental myths about America's past. But that's just what this book does. With an introduction featuring Tolkien's hobbits, and with clarity and economy of words, it sheds light on the dark corners of tax policy. In the process, it reveals how the protection of the institution of chattel slavery defined how our predecessors argued and fought about taxes. For the slave owners who largely dominated colonial and early American politics, the right to own other people as slaves was inseparable from the right to be free of the "slavery" of taxation. The historical connection between slavery and taxation has profound impications for how we understand the history of American democracy and governance. Yes, this is a book about taxation. But be prepared for its bracing style and daring challenge to conventional wisdom. A must read for thinking citizens.

Einhorn's book begins with a comparative overview of taxation in Europe versus taxation in the American colonies and then moves on to a quite absorbing sectional comparison of how taxes were levied and collected in New England versus the South on the eve of the revolution. This sets the stage for chapters that deal with the first and second Continental Congresses and the debates that determined the framework for how the newly independent United States would pay for the revolutionary war and finance its federal government. If much historiography has tended to downplay the role of slavery in this formative period of U.S. politics, Einhorn has succeeded in establishing how central a factor it was in determining how the new federal government would finance itself, and, following the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, how tax policy would unfold in the states. The "three-fifths" method of counting slaves was, tellingly, a compromise about taxes before it was a compromise about representation. Surprisingly readable, and based on well-documented original research, this study is careful to point out that tax policy was not a major theme in the national debates about slavery that culminated in the civil war. Yet this "elephant in the room" long afterwards continued to exert its influence in ways of thought that were originally conceived to accommodate it, and Einhorn has made a powerful case for its significant impact (which is often overlooked in favor of remoter causes such as the political culture of Tudor England) on the formation of American attitudes about the proper role and scope of government.

Einhorn's book is a complete, intricate, and thorough examination of slavery directly and indirectly shaped not just the American taxation system, but fundamental aspects of American federalism. A detailed "must" for tax scholars, historians, and those wanting to understand the evolution of American political economy.

Wars necessitate taxes, and using breathless primary source literature Einhorn takes us through the experiments of how early American colonies constructed tax systems to finance the Revolution. She paints a vivid economic picture of a colonial New England, steeped in the tradition of democratically building fiscal capacity, juxtaposed with a predatory, extractive Virginia.

Einhorn lays out the endless debates about how early taxation policy navigated the interests of the slave-owning elite. From the revolution and beyond, Einhorn constructs a detailed accident of how early politicians attempted to reconcile slavery in designing and funding the new federal government: from the debates around the Articles of Confederacy, the rise of early tariffs, the direct taxation compromises by Constitutional framers, to bitter political debates between Slave-owning Republicans and Northern Federalists.

Stellar research and a provocative, yet endlessly researched, thesis. This book succeeds; one cannot dismiss the ways in which the political confrontation (or evasion) of slavery sculpted our country's institutions
- especially the way we understand taxation.