Petition for Leniency towards Resisters
Some campaigns support tax resisters by lobbying the government to be lenient toward them.
Example Quakers
When a number of young Quaker men were imprisoned for failure to pay a militia exemption tax in 1778, David Cooper followed them to jail and met with the officers who were holding them captive. He wrote:
I had much conversation with them; they appeared very moderate, but were very earnest for me to pay the fine, and not suffer our sons to be committed to prison. I told them they were aware that our religious principles forbade it; the young men were in their possession, and I had no desire to persuade them to deviate from what they believed their duty as officers required; but only wished them to use their power in a manner that would afford peace hereafter. It was a matter of conscience; they ought therefore to be very tender, and not use rigor… They appeared friendly, and the young men being under the Sheriff’s care, he directed them to go home, and meet him at Woodbury at an appointed day. He afterwards sent them word they need give themselves no further trouble till he called for them. So the matter rested.
Example Regulators
Another possibility is to try to legally rehabilitate convicted resisters after the fact. During the American Revolution, one of the first items on the agenda of the North Carolina revolutionary Convention in August, 1775, was to ensure that the new revolutionary regime would rescind the legal penalties forced on the earlier Regulator tax rebels:
Resolved: That the late Insurgents and every of them, ought to be protected from every attempt to punish them by any means whatsoever, and that this Congress will, to their utmost, protect them from any injury to their persons or property which may be attempted on the pretence of punishing the said late insurrection, or anything in consequence thereof.
Notes and Citations
- Cooper, David “It Was a Matter of Conscience” American Quaker War Tax Resistance, 2nd. ed. (2011), pp. 121–22
- Saunders, William L. (ed.) “The Journal of the Proceedings of the Provincial Congress of North Carolina, Held at Hillsborough 20th August, A.D. 1775” The Colonial Records of North Carolina, Vol. X (1890), p. 169