Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/646

 614 Confederate taxes. [i 861-3 $15,000,000 led to no effective legislation. The Congress merely pledged the government to provide a revenue sufficient to cancel the bonds. It furthermore deferred action by calling upon Memminger to collect information regarding the tax systems of the various States. This information was presented in July; and finally in August, 1861, an Act was passed laying a tax of J per cent, on all property, in addition to the customary general property tax of the local governments. The tax was apportioned to each State, which was at liberty to assume its quota by paying the amount with a rebate of 10 per cent, to the central govern- ment. Nine-tenths of the tax were thus assumed by the States, which borrowed the necessary sum by the issue of bonds or notes, and thereby avoided the necessity of taxing. One-tenth, at most, of the tax was actually raised by taxation. In all, the Confederate government secured some $18,000,000 ; but delays in collection had been encouraged by the rebate provision and by other laws postponing or even suspending the enforcement of the tax. The assessment, as made by the government officials, placed the valuation of all taxable property at 4,221 millions ; one-third of this amount represented slaves, another third real estate, and less than one-eighth money at interest. The difficulty of levying taxes upon slaves and land was very great; and the government in levying any taxes payable in money was obliged to accept its own depreciating notes in payment, and then to enter the market and purchase supplies for the army, the price of which was constantly rising. In order to remedy this difficulty the next Tax Act provided for a tax in kind similar in character to the produce loans alluded to above. The Act of April, 1863, levied a general tax of 10 per cent, on agricultural produce, payable in that produce in March, 1864, direct to the army for its use, the similar tax on cotton being paid to Treasury officials. The same Act also taxed agricultural produce, manufactures, and money 8 per cent., and profits of the wholesale trader in food-products, 10 per cent. It also levied an income-tax, and provided for an elaborate license system. This was in reality the first effective tax measure of the Confederacy ; but its operation was delayed, and during the year follow- ing its enactment only $3,000,000 (specie value) had been collected. The constitutionality of this tax, it being a direct tax and not appor- tioned among the States as the Constitution required, was seriously questioned; but the question could not be authoritatively determined except by a Supreme Court of the Confederacy. The establishment of such a Court was never undertaken by the Confederate Congress, owing largely to a desire not to wound the particularist sentiment for States rights; since the existence of a Court with appellate jurisdiction over the highest State Courts would inevitably have brought on a conflict between the local and the central governments. The farmers of the South felt the great burden of the tax in kind,