Description
Book SynopsisShows the deep, broad, and continuous influence of slavery on America's fear and loathing of taxes. This book reveals how the heated battles over taxation, the power to tax, and the distribution of tax burdens were rooted not in debates over personal liberty but rather in the rights of slaveholders to hold human beings as property.
Trade Review"For those seeking to understand complex and ever-changing systems of taxation, their relationship to local and national politics, and how the state and local systems were shaped by the 'peculiar institution,' this seminal and innovative investigation will provide many answers." - Loren Schweninger, American Historical Review "[Einhorn] tells what might have been a complicated story in an engaging and accessible manner. It is her contention that slavery and the reaction to it to a great extent shaped the kind of nation we are today, because it shaped the kind of tax policies we constructed to fund the kind of government we got.... Required reading for anyone who ponders the impact of slavery on our lives today." - James Srodes, Washington Times"
