Download or read book Civil War Taxes written by John Martin Davis, Jr. and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Civil War, both the North and South were challenged by fiscal and monetary needs, but physical differences such as gold reserves, industrialization and the blockade largely predicted the war's outcome from the onset. To raise revenue for the war effort, every possible person, business, activity and property was assessed, but projections and collections were seldom up to expectations, and waste, fraud and ineffectiveness in the administration of the tax systems plagued both sides. This economic history uses forensic examination of actual documents to discover the various taxes that developed from the Civil War, including the direct and poll taxes, which were dropped; the income tax, which stands today; and the war tax, which was effective for only a short time.
Download or read book The Great Tax Wars written by Steven R. Weisman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-10-26 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major work of history, The Great Tax Wars is the gripping, epic story of six decades of often violent conflict over wealth, power, and fairness that gave America the income tax. It's the story of a tumultuous period of radical change, from Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War through the progressive era under Theodore Roosevelt and ending with Woodrow Wilson and World War I. During these years of upheaval, America was transformed from an agrarian society into a mighty industrial nation, great fortunes were amassed, farmers and workers rebelled, class war was narrowly averted, and America emerged as a global power. The Great Tax Wars features an extraordinary cast of characters, including the men who built the nation's industries and the politicians and reformers who battled them -- from J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie to Lincoln, T.R., Wilson, William Jennings Bryan, and Eugene Debs. From their ferocious battles emerged a more flexible definition of democracy, economic justice, and free enterprise largely framed by a more progressive tax system. In this groundbreaking book, Weisman shows how the ever controversial income tax transformed America and how today's debates about the tax echo those of the past.
Download or read book War and Taxes written by Steven A. Bank and published by The Urban Insitute. This book was released on 2008 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: This book explores the long history of American taxation during times of war. As political scientist David Mayhew recently observed, since it's founding in 1789, the United States has conducted hot wars for some 38 years, occupied the South militarily for a decade, waged the Cold War for several decades, and staged countless smaller actions against Indian tribes or foreign powers. The cost of these activities has been immense, with important and lasting consequences for the tax system, the economy, and the nation's political structure. By focusing on tax legislation, we hope to identify some of these consequences. But we are not interested in simply recounting statutory details. Rather, we hope to illuminate the politics of war taxation, with a special focus on the influence of arguments concerning "shaped sacrifice" in shaping wartime tax policy. Moreover, we aim to shed light on a less examined aspect of this history by offering a detailed account of wartime opposition to increased taxes.
Download or read book Clashing Over Commerce written by Douglas A. Irwin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-11-29 with total page 873 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year: “Tells the history of American trade policy . . . [A] grand narrative [that] also debunks trade-policy myths.” —Economist Should the United States be open to commerce with other countries, or should it protect domestic industries from foreign competition? This question has been the source of bitter political conflict throughout American history. Such conflict was inevitable, James Madison argued in the Federalist Papers, because trade policy involves clashing economic interests. The struggle between the winners and losers from trade has always been fierce because dollars and jobs are at stake: depending on what policy is chosen, some industries, farmers, and workers will prosper, while others will suffer. Douglas A. Irwin’s Clashing over Commerce is the most authoritative and comprehensive history of US trade policy to date, offering a clear picture of the various economic and political forces that have shaped it. From the start, trade policy divided the nation—first when Thomas Jefferson declared an embargo on all foreign trade and then when South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union over excessive taxes on imports. The Civil War saw a shift toward protectionism, which then came under constant political attack. Then, controversy over the Smoot-Hawley tariff during the Great Depression led to a policy shift toward freer trade, involving trade agreements that eventually produced the World Trade Organization. Irwin makes sense of this turbulent history by showing how different economic interests tend to be grouped geographically, meaning that every proposed policy change found ready champions and opponents in Congress. Deeply researched and rich with insight and detail, Clashing over Commerce provides valuable and enduring insights into US trade policy past and present. “Combines scholarly analysis with a historian’s eye for trends and colorful details . . . readable and illuminating, for the trade expert and for all Americans wanting a deeper understanding of America’s evolving role in the global economy.” —National Review “Magisterial.” —Foreign Affairs
Download or read book American Taxation American Slavery written by Robin L. Einhorn and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-05-15 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For all the recent attention to the slaveholding of the founding fathers, we still know remarkably little about the influence of slavery on American politics. American Taxation, American Slavery tackles this problem in a new way. Rather than parsing the ideological pronouncements of charismatic slaveholders, it examines the concrete policy decisions that slaveholders and non-slaveholders made in the critical realm of taxation. The result is surprising—that the enduring power of antigovernment rhetoric in the United States stems from the nation’s history of slavery rather than its history of liberty. We are all familiar with the states’ rights arguments of proslavery politicians who wanted to keep the federal government weak and decentralized. But here Robin Einhorn shows the deep, broad, and continuous influence of slavery on this idea in American politics. From the earliest colonial times right up to the Civil War, slaveholding elites feared strong democratic government as a threat to the institution of slavery. American Taxation, American Slavery shows how their 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. Along the way, Einhorn exposes the antidemocratic origins of the popular Jeffersonian rhetoric about weak government by showing that governments were actually more democratic—and stronger—where most people were free. A strikingly original look at the role of slavery in the making of the United States, American Taxation, American Slavery will prove essential to anyone interested in the history of American government and politics.
Download or read book Ways and Means written by Roger Lowenstein and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Captivating . . . [Lowenstein] makes what subsequently occurred at Treasury and on Wall Street during the early 1860s seem as enthralling as what transpired on the battlefield or at the White House.” —Harold Holzer, Wall Street Journal “Ways and Means, an account of the Union’s financial policies, examines a subject long overshadowed by military narratives . . . Lowenstein is a lucid stylist, able to explain financial matters to readers who lack specialized knowledge.” —Eric Foner, New York Times Book Review From renowned journalist and master storyteller Roger Lowenstein, a revelatory financial investigation into how Lincoln and his administration used the funding of the Civil War as the catalyst to centralize the government and accomplish the most far-reaching reform in the country’s history Upon his election to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln inherited a country in crisis. Even before the Confederacy’s secession, the United States Treasury had run out of money. The government had no authority to raise taxes, no federal bank, no currency. But amid unprecedented troubles Lincoln saw opportunity—the chance to legislate in the centralizing spirit of the “more perfect union” that had first drawn him to politics. With Lincoln at the helm, the United States would now govern “for” its people: it would enact laws, establish a currency, raise armies, underwrite transportation and higher education, assist farmers, and impose taxes for them. Lincoln believed this agenda would foster the economic opportunity he had always sought for upwardly striving Americans, and which he would seek in particular for enslaved Black Americans. Salmon Chase, Lincoln’s vanquished rival and his new secretary of the Treasury, waged war on the financial front, levying taxes and marketing bonds while desperately battling to contain wartime inflation. And while the Union and Rebel armies fought increasingly savage battles, the Republican-led Congress enacted a blizzard of legislation that made the government, for the first time, a powerful presence in the lives of ordinary Americans. The impact was revolutionary. The activist 37th Congress legislated for homesteads and a transcontinental railroad and involved the federal government in education, agriculture, and eventually immigration policy. It established a progressive income tax and created the greenback—paper money. While the Union became self-sustaining, the South plunged into financial free fall, having failed to leverage its cotton wealth to finance the war. Founded in a crucible of anticentralism, the Confederacy was trapped in a static (and slave-based) agrarian economy without federal taxing power or other means of government financing, save for its overworked printing presses. This led to an epic collapse. Though Confederate troops continued to hold their own, the North’s financial advantage over the South, where citizens increasingly went hungry, proved decisive; the war was won as much (or more) in the respective treasuries as on the battlefields. Roger Lowenstein reveals the largely untold story of how Lincoln used the urgency of the Civil War to transform a union of states into a nation. Through a financial lens, he explores how this second American revolution, led by Lincoln, his cabinet, and a Congress studded with towering statesmen, changed the direction of the country and established a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Download or read book For Good and Evil written by Charles Adams and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1993 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Records the impact of taxation on events in world history, from ancient Egypt to the present, and concludes that taxation has been a force that has shaped world history and has had a direct bearing on the civilization process.
Download or read book IRS Historical Fact Book written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Civil War Taxes written by John Martin Davis, Jr. and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Civil War, both the North and South were challenged by fiscal and monetary needs, but physical differences such as gold reserves, industrialization and the blockade largely predicted the war's outcome from the onset. To raise revenue for the war effort, every possible person, business, activity and property was assessed, but projections and collections were seldom up to expectations, and waste, fraud and ineffectiveness in the administration of the tax systems plagued both sides. This economic history uses forensic examination of actual documents to discover the various taxes that developed from the Civil War, including the direct and poll taxes, which were dropped; the income tax, which stands today; and the war tax, which was effective for only a short time.
Download or read book Reluctant Rebels written by Kenneth W. Noe and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2010-05-14 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the feverish mobilization of secession had faded, why did Southern men join the Confederate army? Kenneth Noe examines the motives and subsequent performance of "later enlisters." He offers a nuanced view of men who have often been cast as less patriotic and less committed to the cause, rekindling the debate over who these later enlistees were, why they joined, and why they stayed and fought. Noe refutes the claim that later enlisters were more likely to desert or perform poorly in battle and reassesses the argument that they were less ideologically savvy than their counterparts who enlisted early in the conflict. He argues that kinship and neighborhood, not conscription, compelled these men to fight: they were determined to protect their families and property and were fueled by resentment over emancipation and pillaging and destruction by Union forces. But their age often combined with their duties to wear them down more quickly than younger men, making them less effective soldiers for a Confederate nation that desperately needed every able-bodied man it could muster. Reluctant Rebels places the stories of individual soldiers in the larger context of the Confederate war effort and follows them from the initial optimism of enlistment through the weariness of battle and defeat.
Download or read book Confederate Finance written by Richard Cecil Todd and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Confederate Finance, first published in 1954, looks at the measures taken by the Confederacy to stabilize its currency and offer a basis for foreign exchange. By the end of the Civil War, the Confederacy had resorted to a number of financial expedients, including the most desperate of measures. The Confederate government seized the property of enemies, levied direct taxes, and placed duties on exports and imports. In addition, donations and gifts were gratefully accepted. All the while, treasury notes flooded the market, and loans were floated in an attempt to continue the Confederacy's existence. Richard Cecil Todd shows how these measures were used by the Confederate government to meet its obligations at home and abroad. He also discusses the organization and personnel of the Confederate Treasury Department.
Download or read book Federal Taxation in America written by W. Elliot Brownlee and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-03 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This brief survey is a comprehensive historical overview of the US federal tax system.
Download or read book The Whiskey Rebellion written by Thomas P. Slaughter and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 1986 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses the rebellion in relation to interregional tensions, international diplomacy, frontier expansion, republican ideology and the social and political conflict of the l780s -1790s.
Download or read book Freedom s Lawmakers written by Eric Foner and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1996-08-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Freedom's Lawmakers, Eric Foner has assembled the first comprehensive directory of the over 1,500 African Americans who held political office in the South during the Reconstruction era. He has compiled an impressive amount of information about the antebellum status, occupations, property ownership, and military service of these officials -- who range from U.S. congressmen to local justices of the peace and constables. This revised paperback edition also contains new material on forty-five officials who were not included in the first edition.In his Introduction, Foner ably analyzes and interprets the roles of the black American officeholders. Concise biographies, in alphabetical order, trace the life histories of individuals -- many previously unknown -- who played important parts in the politics of the period. This useful and informative volume also includes an index by state, by occupation, by office during Reconstruction, by birth status, and by topic.
Download or read book The Revenue Imperative written by Jane S Flaherty and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a comprehensive overview of the Union financial policies during the American Civil War. This work argues that the revenue imperative, the need to keep pace with the burgeoning expenses of the conflict, governed the development of fiscal policy.
Download or read book Rebellion Rascals and Revenue written by Michael Keen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging and enlightening account of taxation told through lively, dramatic, and sometimes ludicrous stories drawn from around the world and across the ages Governments have always struggled to tax in ways that are effective and tolerably fair. Sometimes they fail grotesquely, as when, in 1898, the British ignited a rebellion in Sierra Leone by imposing a tax on huts—and, in repressing it, ended up burning the very huts they intended to tax. Sometimes they succeed astonishingly, as when, in eighteenth-century Britain, a cut in the tax on tea massively increased revenue. In this entertaining book, two leading authorities on taxation, Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod, provide a fascinating and informative tour through these and many other episodes in tax history, both preposterous and dramatic—from the plundering described by Herodotus and an Incan tax payable in lice to the (misremembered) Boston Tea Party and the scandals of the Panama Papers. Along the way, readers meet a colorful cast of tax rascals, and even a few tax heroes. While it is hard to fathom the inspiration behind such taxes as one on ships that tended to make them sink, Keen and Slemrod show that yesterday’s tax systems have more in common with ours than we may think. Georgian England’s window tax now seems quaint, but was an ingenious way of judging wealth unobtrusively. And Tsar Peter the Great’s tax on beards aimed to induce the nobility to shave, much like today’s carbon taxes aim to slow global warming. Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue is a surprising and one-of-a-kind account of how history illuminates the perennial challenges and timeless principles of taxation—and how the past holds clues to solving the tax problems of today.
Download or read book The American Civil War in Texas written by Johanna Burke and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses Texas history during the Civil War (1861-1865) when Texas voted to join the Confederacy.
