Max M. Edling and Mark D. Kaplanoff

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the WMQ online. About 555 words from this article are provided below; about 14777 words remain.

If you are a individual subscriber to the William and Mary Quarterly, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a subscriber to the William and Mary Quarterly, you can:: • subscribe here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the William and Mary Quarterly (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the William and Mary Quarterly.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

Max M. Edling and Mark D. Kaplanoff | Alexander Hamilton's Fiscal Reform: Transforming the Structure of Taxation in the Early Republic | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.4 | The History Cooperative

Notes and Documents

Alexander Hamilton's Fiscal Reform: Transforming the Structure of Taxation in the Early Republic

THE catalyst of the American Revolution was Parliament's attempt to impose new taxes in the colonies, and taxes and tax resistance therefore form part of the very origin of the United States. But neither taxes nor tax resistance disappeared with Independence. Compared to many other revolutions—the English in 1641 and the French in 1789 foremost among them—the Revolutionary settlement in America must be considered relatively peaceful. In the fifteen years following the Treaty of Peace and Independence, the national government used military force against its own people only twice. But in both these cases—the coercion of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 and of Fries's Rebellion in 1798—the government resorted to arms to subdue tax revolts. A few decades into the nineteenth century, conflict over the tariff played a role in the development of a principled defense of the right to secede from the union. Without question, taxes and tax resistance have an important place in the history of the early American Republic.	1
Perhaps at no point in this history were taxes more controversial than in the period between the peace treaty of 1783 and the meeting of the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. Having rebelled against crown and Parliament in opposition to impositions from a distant government, the citizens of the newly independent states were now asked to pay taxes several times higher than those levied before the Revolution. Congress and the states soon found that many citizens could not, or would not, pay these taxes. When the state governments increased the pressure on the taxpayers, the people protested. They petitioned for relief, they voted governments from office, and they obstructed the administration of taxation in numerous ways. When nothing else worked, they turned to violence. Although Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts is by far the best-known case, strong and sometimes violent protests against taxation occurred in the majority of the states in the 1780s.¹	2
Within less than a decade, this situation had changed completely. Late in 1796, Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott could remark that it "is known that the State taxes have generally been very inconsiderable." The previous year, the president had told Congress that the tax burden on the citizens was now "so light as scarcely to be perceived." The administration was well aware that this situation contrasted sharply with that before the adoption of the Constitution in 1787–1788. In 1795, Alexander Hamilton, Wolcott's predecessor, had written that state taxation in the 1780s had "embraced every object and was carried as far [as] it could be done without absolutely oppressing individuals." Although Hamilton was referring to conditions in Connecticut, his description held true also for other states. Indeed, in some of them things had been even worse. Thus, in Massachusetts taxation "was carried still farther even to a degree too burthernsome [sic] for the comfortable condition of the Citizens." Partly, this oppressive tax burden was caused by administrative mistakes—"that unskilfulness which was the common attribute of the State administration of Finance"—yet it was "still more owing to the real weight of the Taxes." Like so many of his contemporaries, Hamilton believed that Shays's Rebellion "was in great degree the offspring of this pressure."²	. . .

There are about 14777 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.