American Taxation, American Slavery (review)

Abstract

Taxation, Slavery. By Robin L. Einhorn (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 337. Illustrations; maps. Cloth, $35.00.)Reviewed by Matthew MasonRobin Einhorn's new book is a valuable entry in growing and muchneeded literature examining exact impact that had on state in early republic-that is, on actual workings and structure of government, rather than on better-researched political debates involving slavery. Unlike other recent treatments that stress ways in which slaveholders dominated and used expanding federal government to protect slavery, Einhorn takes a more traditional approach, arguing that slaveholders limited power of state-in this case to tax-to protect their peculiar institution.1 To say that this approach is traditional is not to say that Einhorn has written a hesitant monograph, or is content to present anew common wisdom. Far from it. This book aims at nothing less than revising central story that most Americans have accepted about growth of national state.Einhorn's attack on traditional narrative relates to causation. What circumscribed national government's tax and other powers, she argues, was not continuing influence of Revolution's ideological hostility to centralized power, but rather slaveholders' successful defense of their economic interests. She assails various traditional narratives, but in particular goes after libertarian story, which celebrates early national period as halcyon days of low taxes and limited government. She is outraged at notion that American was most complete when millions of Americans were chattel property of owners (3). Democracy and liberty Einhorn insists, '''produced stronger and more competent governments in early history,'1'' not weaker ones. Therefore, she concludes, the mistrust of government is not part of our democratic heritage. It comes from slaveholding elites who had no experience with democratic governments where they lived and knew only one thing about democracy: it threatened slavery (7-8, emphasis in original). In colonial, state, and national governments, it was slaveholders defending their interests, not tribunes of the people as portrayed in Jeffersonian/Jacksonian story, who kept taxes low and simple.In a high quality of prose that one probably has no right to expect in a history of taxation, Einhorn brings wide-ranging evidence to support this striking interpretation. She begins by contrasting simple but corrupt tax system of colonial Virginia to more complex and efficient machinery of colonial Massachusetts. Virginia relied on a poll tax that, though regressive, had virtue of simplicity and unobtrusiveness (no assessors doing valuations of private property were necessary), but foundered on rocks of administrative ineptitude and malfeasance. Massachusetts taxes were more complex, were no more progressive, and laid a much heavier burden on taxpayers. But because they were collected by town officials elected annually, system enjoyed much greater legitimacy, as well as efficiency. The contrast was no accident, for democratic town governments in Massachusetts could sustain a recognizably modern machinery (78), whereas slaveholding Virginia remained an underdeveloped society where corruption dovetailed with a social and political system whose very purpose was perpetuating drastically exploitative social relations and keeping masters sovereign (30, 60).2Lest one object to selecting Massachusetts and Virginia as representatives of all northern and southern colonies, respectively, Einhorn briefly surveys other colonies' tax systems. This exploration reveals a strong general pattern (with some exceptions): Northern colonies had more sophisticated tax regimes than slave societies to south. She attributes this pattern both to more democratic governments in northern colonies and to marginal nature of there. …