A Historical Overview of War Tax Resistance in America

I got the itch the other day to get a birds’-eye historical overview of the war tax resistance movements in America. Here is what I came up with:

  1. resistance by Quaker-dominated colonial assemblies to requisitions for fortifications and military supplies
  2. resistance by individual Quakers to militia exemption taxes or bounty taxes
  3. resistance by individual Quakers to war taxes, including mixed taxes with a military component
  4. resistance to use of the Continental currency
  5. Rogerene Quaker resistance of militia taxes
  6. Restored Israel of Yahweh sect
  7. the “new monastic” movement
  8. 19th century non-sectarian Christian pacifists
  9. World War Ⅰ “bond shirkers” (included Mennonites, political radicals, pacifists, and others)
  10. the Catholic Worker movement
  11. the Concord circle (Alcott, Lane, Thoreau)
  12. Secular anarchist and other “lone wolf” war tax resisters
  13. Peacemakers
  14. the Committee for Non-Violent Action
  15. National War Tax Resistance
  16. the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee

Here is the same diagram with some additional information about the major wars that were at issue in some of these campaigns: