Shorn on the Fourth of July
Hey everybody. Happy effing Fourth. This is my favourite American holiday, though I've always been confused as to why it's a federally-recognised holiday, when in fact what it epitomises (at least in my interpretation) is a celebration of independence to which our federal government can never lay claim. Anyway, seeing as I'm a poor poor university student (tm) who just put nearly all of his (currently accessible) income towards rent and incredibly high (i.e. city monopoly on electricity, thanks Tallahassee) electric bill, it looks like it'll be pre-cooked, microwavable chicken, ramen and bread for my feast fit for one, to be accompanied with excerpts from the Thomas Jefferson Reader. I hope you all enjoy the day off, take care and spend time with the ones you love. It's a good day, regardless of political persuasion. Okay, not the day itself so much as what it represents. Oh, and for those of you who aren't American, well, I hope you have a good day as well.
Below is an article on taxation and the Declaration. If you...get the time. It's a tad lengthy. Adios.
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Originally Posted by Gary North
The history of taxation is mostly a history of rising taxes. It makes depressing reading. Tax increases tend to accelerate as the right to vote is extended to more people. It may take time for this process to be evident, but rarely does it take longer than one generation.
In no nation has this process been more true than the United States. Yet the history textbook writers have successfully told the story as if the reverse were true.
Am I exaggerating? Consider whether the following verifiable story is familiar to you. Is this what you have been told?
THE STORY BEHIND THE TAX STORY
When I was in graduate school four decades ago, I wrote a paper on then-current academic opinion regarding the burden of colonial taxation in 1775, i.e., the cost of funding the British Empire. When I say "academic opinion," I mean the opinions of specialists in colonial American economic history. Here is what I found. The total tax burden imposed by the British Empire on the colonies in 1775, as distinguished from the taxes imposed by colonial legislatures, was approximately 1% of national income in the North, and about 2.5% in the South. The main burden was from customs duties placed on non-British imports into the colonies. These were tariffs, i.e., sales taxes on imports.
Against this "intolerable tax tyranny" of 1%, the colonists were persuaded by political organizers to revolt. They fought and died for seven years. They won in 1783.
From 1783 until 1788, they enjoyed virtually tax-free living at the national level. The national government could only beg states to pay taxes voluntarily. They paid very few. This produced a growing economy and generally stable politics. Prof. Merrill Jensen told this story back in 1950, in his book, The New Nation. It has not yet filtered down into the American history textbooks.
After 1783, a small group of young men who had exercised national leadership during the Revolutionary era were discontented. State governments offered no opportunities for lasting fame. They also wanted a national government that could impose taxes that Americans would have to pay – an end to voluntarism. So, they organized a political convention in 1787 to change all this. They were successful. The voters supported the replacement of the Articles of Confederation. The new national government could impose customs duties and luxury sales taxes, most notably on whiskey.
Americans in 1788 chose to be taxed by their very own national government, which was nearby and powerful, despite the fact that they had fought a revolution against sales taxes on non-British imported goods, imposed by a distant government which had proven itself nearly impotent in collecting direct taxes in the colonies. The voters got what they wanted: national taxation with representation.
George Washington in 1794 then got to command the largest military force of his career: 13,000 men. He led them into Western Pennsylvania to crush a tax revolt against the Federal whiskey tax.
You say that you did not hear the story told in this way?
Let me fill in some gaps.
"NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!"
American school children have memorized this political slogan for a hundred years. But where did it come from? From textbook writers. Nobody ever went into print with this phrase in colonial America.
Linking taxation to representation goes back to the Magna Carta of 1215. The connection regained public attention as a result of the Stamp Act crisis of 1765–66.
The British in 1763 had signed a treaty with France settling the Seven Years War, which was called the French and Indian War in the colonies. This war had drained the treasuries of both countries.
The name of the war is incorrect. It refers to the dates of the official hostilities: 1756–63. It should be called the Nine Years War, because it began, not in 1756, but in 1754. It began on May 28, when an inexperienced 22-year-old Virginia militia officer led about thirty-five troops in an unprovoked surprise attack on a small group of Frenchmen commanded by Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville. The battle is called the Battle of Jumonville Glen. It took place in Western Pennsylvania.
The previous year, the militia’s commander had established an alliance with a village of Seneca Indians. He consulted with their leader the day before the attack. The Indian had encouraged him to strike first, without warning, which he did the next morning. The French lost the skirmish. Nine were killed; 21 were captured. Thirteen were wounded, but the group of about eight Indians without warning killed them. The Virginian met with the wounded French commander to discuss the terms of surrender. Before he could formally surrender, the Indians’ leader smashed his skull with a tomahawk.
France and England had not been at war. This was the opening salvo.
Another 400 men soon arrived. This was not enough. He surrendered on July 3 to a French and Indian force of 600 French and 100 Indians. As a condition of his troops’ release, he signed a document admitting that the French commander had been assassinated while surrendering to him. The French word was "l’assassignat," which the young officer later said he thought meant "killing."
The officer was Lt. Col. George Washington.
And the war came.
As a result of the war, which was mostly a naval battle for control over the West Indies, the French surrendered their claims to territory in North America, but not to the British. In 1762, France had surrendered its territory to its ally, Spain. When Napoleon defeated Spain four decades later, France got this territory back, which he sold to the United States.
The French after 1763 were no longer a threat to the colonists. So, the immediate benefits of having British troops stationed in the colonies fell rapidly. "What have you done for us lately?"
Then, in 1765, the British Parliament imposed a small tax on colonial paper. Official transactions had to be printed on taxed paper. So did newspapers. So did playing cards. The paper had to receive an official government stamp from tax collectors sent to the colonies.
This, I would argue, was the most shortsighted political decision of the British Parliament in the eighteenth century. The tax alienated three groups: lawyers, newspaper publishers, and card players.
The media response was immediate. "We shall not submit to such tyranny!"
Tax collectors were chased out of town, tarred and feathered by mobs, and otherwise treated in ways that would get you sent to jail for ten years today.
It was a widespread tax revolt. Most colonists decided that they were not going to pay. The problem was, they needed plausible excuses not to pay, other than the real ones: "We have been manipulated into mob action by lawyers and the media, and we love to play cards."
So, they invented some arguments. This was the main one: "The British Empire cannot lawfully impose internal taxes. It can lawfully impose only external taxes, such as on trade." This was a very good argument, because it meant that smugglers would have to be tried in colonial courts, and juries would not convict.
The British knew this. So, they transferred to Admiralty Courts the right to try smugglers and violators of the Stamp Act. These courts were held in distant Canada.
This abolished trial by jury.
One man understood all this better than anyone else. In 1764, he had inherited a shipping company from his uncle, making him the richest man in New England. His uncle Thomas had been a respected trader, but like all New England traders, he had learned how to evade taxes. He smuggled goods into small ports where British customs agents were absent. If caught, no jury would convict. His nephew had learned the trade well. His nephew was John Hancock.
In October, 1765, a Stamp Act Congress was held in New York City. It adopted a Declaration of Rights and Grievances. This document denied the right of Parliament to tax colonists directly, because the colonists were not represented politically in Parliament. Only colonial legislatures had the right to tax colonists.
Parliament backed down and repealed the Stamp Act in 1766.
But it formally retained the right to tax the colonies.
In 1767, a new government passed what came to be known as the Townsend Acts. Townsend was Chancellor of the Exchequer, the man in charge of taxes. He took seriously the Stamp Act document’s declaration of a distinction between internal and external taxes. So, he imposed lots of taxes on imported goods. Then he died.
These taxes did not produce widespread resistance in the colonies. The once exception took place in 1768, when customs agents impounded Hancock’s ship, Liberty. Hancock organized protests by writing a letter attacking taxation and the quartering of British troops in cities.
The riot in Boston persuaded the governor to call in the British Navy. The presence of the Navy and British troops in Boston was a constant irritant. They did not leave until March, 1776.
The Townsend duties were repealed in 1770, except for a symbolic duty on tea. Americans then started importing Dutch tea. This hurt the British East India Company, the tea seller.
A REVOLT AGAINST A TAX CUT
In May, 1773, the British government granted the failing East India company a monopoly to sell tea in the colonies duty-free. The duties of course were sales taxes. This cut costs. With the Townsend tea tax collected only on non-British tea, East India tea was now cheaper than any other tea in the colonies.
This pressured the colonial merchants to stop selling non-British tea. They tried to organize a boycott of East India Company tea. But boycotts rarely work when the item being boycotted is cheaper than its rivals. The merchants were stymied.
Sam Adams saw an opportunity for some political mischief. He persuaded a group of them to conduct what became known as the Boston Tea Party in December, 1773. They dressed up as Indians and tossed overboard privately owned, duty-free tea. This was a protest in favor of taxes on tea.
The British retaliated by closing the port of Boston. This gave Adams a chance to organize a national protest through his correspondence committees.
On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began in Concord, Massachusetts. Colonists shot and killed British troops in a successful effort to protest. To protest what? Tax-free tea. From that day forward, there would never again be tax-free tea in America.
And the war came.
WHEN, IN THE COURSE OF POLITICAL EVENTS
By June, 1776, the American Revolution had been going on for over a year. A booklet written by an unemployed recent immigrant, Thomas Paine, titled Common Sense, was being read everywhere. Yet the Second Continental Congress had yet to declare independence. Apparently, its members did not possess common sense. This was becoming a huge embarrassment for Congress. The independence movement’s national politicians needed to get to the head of the parade, in order to exercise leadership.
George Washington took command of the Continental army on July 3, 1775. Over the winter, his army and the Massachusetts militia gained control over Boston Harbor by placing the recently confiscated cannons from Fort Ticonderoga on Dorchester Heights. British troops and loyalists boarded ships in Boston Harbor on March 17. The militia had run them off land.
This was Boston’s greatest St. Patrick’s Day ever, even without a parade. (The event had begun to be celebrated in Boston in 1737.)
The British fleet commander promised not to set fire to the city – an act of terrorism against a civilian population – if Washington would allow the fleet to sail out unharmed. Washington agreed. On March 26, the fleet sailed off to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Massachusetts militias went home. Washington took the Continental army to New York City.
This was bad news for Congress. The British would likely reinforce the fleet sometime in summer. Something had to be done. But what?
Congress needed what Congress has needed ever since, every time events have gotten way ahead of them: a public relations campaign. They needed a photo-op, but photography had not yet been invented. So, they had to settle for a press release. It turned out to be a doozy.
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(part 2 continued in next post)
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07-04-2007, 02:59 AM
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