Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
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18th century Quakers →
Paul Cuffee
When Juanita Nelson went to jail in her bathrobe in after being arrested for her war tax resistance, a sympathetic visitor told her: “You know, you look like a female Gandhi in that robe.”
Gandhi in turn compared his own tax resistance campaigns to those of British nonconformists and women’s suffrage activists that came before him, and he published his own translations of Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience and his interpretations of Tolstoy’s non-resistance theories.
The suffragist Women’s Tax Resistance League carried into battle a banner bearing the portrait of tax resister John Hampden, and Tolstoy took inspiration from Americans like Thoreau and William Lloyd Garrison.
Thoreau and Garrison in turn drew on tales of the American Revolution and the stubborn pacifism of American Quakers.
This family tree of tax resistance shows a family as diverse as any.
There’s a lot of ideological space between the tax resisters Karl Marx and Karl Hess.
Tax resisters have been armed revolutionaries like John Adams and pacifist non-resistants like John Woolman; communists like Marx and capitalists like Vivien Kellems; solitary consciences like Ammon Hennacy and leaders of resistance movements like Mahatma Gandhi.
Some refused to pay a tax because they could not support with their money what their consciences condemned.
Others refused to pay taxes that were being unfairly or illegally assessed.
Others resisted as part of a campaign to overthrow the government.
We Won’t Pay: A Tax Resistance Reader tells their stories, in their words, and will provide inspiration and education for the generations of tax resisters to come.
Here’s an overview of what you’ll find in the pages of We Won’t Pay!:
Cuffee led a small tax resistance effort for the civil rights of black Americans (in the 18th century!).
This is what makes him most notable at The Picket Line, but the rest of his life shows him to have been a heroic and great-spirited man, and it’s a shame that this anniversary will probably go mostly unnoticed elsewhere.
Here’s how the tale of his tax resistance effort was told in Men of Mark ():
Paul and his brother John having been called on to pay personal taxes by the collector, they both refused to do so.
They were given so much trouble about it, that finally they agreed, in the language of Oliver Goldsmith, “to stoop to conquer.”
They paid the taxes, as it was a trifling sum, and determined to make an appeal to the Massachusetts Legislature, believing in the doctrine that they had heard all of their lives, that there should be “no taxation without representation.”
In defiance of the prejudice of the times, their appeal was heard and a law was enacted by the Legislature rendering all free persons of color liable to taxation according to the ratio established for the white men, and, at the same time, granting to them full privileges that belonged to any other citizen of Massachusetts.
What a glorious result!
See what a strong man can do by using that power which he has.
Let us emulate his example.
The right of petition is still ours.
There are still many rights denied us which we could get by simply reaching out our hands to take them.
Let the colored people of that State honor this grand man; and we trust that yet some testimonial to his memory shall be reared.
It is with this hope that we have given him a place in this book.
Let no one despise youth.
We are so apt to think that young men are extravagant and indiscreet when they are bold enough to oppose what might seem, or what is, “popular opinion.”
Do right if you stand alone, remembering there are blows to take as well as to give.
There were many colored people at that time who thought these colored men were fools, and said they were violating the law because they didn’t obey what was an unjust law.
Be discreet and attempt much, if but little be gained.
There is honor even in a righteous effort.
Paul was only about twenty-one years old when he accomplished this result, scarcely able to vote when the privilege was granted.
This at least is how the story is most frequently told.
If you delve into the details, as Henry Noble Sherwood did for his paper Paul Cuffe and His Contribution to the American Colonization Society, things become a bit more complex.
Sherwood says that “an examination of the statutes of Massachusetts has failed to confirm the assertion that legislation was enacted giving the free negro the elective franchise.”
Cuffee petitioned the Massachusetts legislature both in and , and neither petition seems to have been directly effective at the time.
However, his efforts took place in the midst of significant debate about civil rights in Massachusetts.
A proposed post-revolutionary state Constitution would have prohibited people with black ancestry from voting, and would have explicitly acknowledged slavery as a legal institution.
That Constitution was rejected, in part because of these provisions.
The state Constitution that was finally approved in included the phrase “All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights…” It was by reference to this clause, and the lack of any explicit legalization of slavery in the Constitution, that the state judiciary outlawed slavery in Massachusetts in .
It’s possible that Cuffee’s petition, and the injustice of his case, was influential in shaping the Constitution, its interpretation, or public opinion.
But the fact that he had to petition against taxation without representation a second time in shows that the Constitution was not immediately interpreted as extending the right to vote to non-whites.
The Cuffee brothers also tried to get relief from taxation on more mundane grounds — that they were legally exempt as Indians (their mother was an Indian), and that Paul was below the age at which poll taxes were due.
This didn’t work and so they were arrested in .
They reverted to their “taxation without representation” defense, asking the authorities to…
…put a stroke on your next warrant for calling a town meeting so that it may legally be laid before said town by way of vote to know the mind of said town whether all free negroes and mulattos shall have the same privileges in this said town of Dartmouth as the white people have, respecting places of profit, choosing of officers, and the like, together with all other privileges, in all cases that shall or may happen or be brought in this said town of Dartmouth, or that we have relief granted us jointly from taxation which under our present depressed circumstances and your poor petitioners as in duty bound shall ever pay.
That didn’t work either.
They eventually paid up and were released.
Following is the petition for relief from taxation that Paul Cuffee and his fellow-protesters presented to the Massachusetts legislature in :
The petition of several poor negroes and mulattoes, who are inhabitants of the town of Dartmouth, humbly showeth, —
That we being chiefly of the African extract, and by reason of long bondage and hard slavery, we have been deprived of enjoying the profits of our labor or the advantage of inheriting estates from our parents, as our neighbors the white people do, having some of us not long enjoyed our own freedom; yet of late, contrary to the invariable custom and practice of the country, we have been, and now are, taxed both in our polls and that small pittance of estate which, through much hard labor and industry, we have got together to sustain ourselves and families withall.
We apprehend it, therefore, to be hard usage, and will doubtless (if continued) reduce us to a state of beggary, whereby we shall become a burden to others, if not timely prevented by the interposition of your justice and your power.
Your petitioners further show, that we apprehend ourselves to be aggrieved, in that, while we are not allowed the privilege of freemen of the State, having no vote or influence in the election of those that tax us, yet many of our colour (as is well known) have cheerfully entered the field of battle in the defence of the common cause, and that (as we conceive) against a similar exertion of power (in regard to taxation), too well known to need a recital in this place.
We most humbly request, therefore, that you would take our unhappy case into your serious consideration, and, in your wisdom and power, grant us relief from taxation, while under our present depressed circumstances; and your poor petitioners, as in duty bound, shall ever pray, &c.
In reading bits and pieces of the life of Cuffee that are scattered here and there in old books and on the web, I am impressed again and again with the calm determination with which this self-made son of a slave asserted his dignity.
There’s a great story in an old copy of the Friends’ Intelligencer that demonstrates this.
Cuffee was the part-owner and commander of a ship, which he’d staffed with a black crew.
When he tried to sail this novelty out of a Virginia port, the bigoted customs house collector wouldn’t permit it.
So Cuffee went to see the President of the United States, James Madison.
“Capt. Cuffee was a Quaker, and used their plain language” — which meant in part that he would not use titles or honorifics when addressing other people, such as the president, and so “on being introduced to President Madison, he said: ‘James, I have been put to much trouble, and have been abused,’ and then proceeded to tell the President his story, giving such proof as was needed in his case…”
“James” — himself a Virginian and a slave owner — ordered the customs house collector at Norfolk, Virginia to clear Cuffee’s ship for departure.
“[A]lthough the Collector believed black men had no rights that white men were bound to respect, yet he was bound in this instance to respect the right of Capt. Cuffe.”
How many Americans today do you suppose would have the self respect to walk up to the president of the U.S. government and address him straightforwardly by his name rather than searching for some sort of kowtowing honorific or European affected third-person title (“your eminence” or some such)?
Some tax resistance campaigns have accompanied their resistance with petitions to the government asking it to change its policies or to rescind the tax.
Here are some examples:
Some 14,000 American Amish petitioned Congress, putting aside that sect’s usual reluctance to participate in political affairs and asking the government to exempt them from the Social Security program, participation in which they felt was anti-Christian.
At the same time, some Amish were actively resisting the tax and suffering from government reprisals.
Congress eventually did carve out an exemption for the Amish and certain other sects.
American Quaker meetings frequently petitioned state legislatures when those bodies were considering laws that would force conscientious objectors to pay a fine or to hire a substitute — neither of which Quakers felt they could conscientiously do.
Here are two examples: from and .
On one occasion, American Quakers successfully petitioned the government to call off unscrupulous tax collectors who were seizing their property to pay such fines, in amounts that far exceeded the amount of the fine, and keeping the surplus (or sometimes the whole amount) for themselves.
In several Quakers wrote to the Pennsylvania Assembly to tell them they would be unwilling to pay a tax that body was contemplating for “purposes inconsistent with the peaceable testimony we profess.”
African-American entrepreneur Paul Cuffee petitioned the Massachusetts legislature in and to complain that he was not permitted to vote, although he was a taxpayer — and he backed this up by refusing to pay.
His petition arrived at a time when the state Constitution was in flux, and may have helped influence its drafters to omit a clause restricting voting to white citizens.
The Benares Hartal in , began with “the people deserting the city in a body, and taking up their station halfway between Benares and Secrole, the residence of the European functionaries, about three miles distant.
A petition was presented to the magistrate, praying him to withdraw the odious impost, and declaring that the petitioners would never return to their homes until their application was complied with.”
Before launching the Bardoli tax strike, representatives from the Indian civil disobedience movement petitioned the government, asking patiently for the concessions they would later demand via satyagraha.
The Rebecca Rioters, with their pseudonymous campaign of midnight toll-gate destruction, had the government nearly begging them to present a list of grievances they could at least pretend to address.
Many groups of Welsh farmers did meet and draft lists of grievances.
A London Times reporter gained the confidence of one Rebeccaite assembly, and set out their grievances in the form of a Times article describing the meeting.
Another group of farmers met to draft a petition of their grievances which they sent to a government representative via a trusted intermediary.
On at least one occasion a group of parishes had petitioned the Turnpike Trust that ran one of the offending toll gates to remove it, before it was destroyed by Rebecca and her daughters.
During the 17th century Croquant tax rebellions in France, the rebels carefully worded petitions to the king that assumed his benevolence and that the tax hikes must have been snuck past his royal highness by deceitful advisors.
In , nonconformists in Massachusetts successfully petitioned the King to free imprisoned resisters to a tax meant for the establishment church there, and to affirm that Quakers should not have to pay taxes to maintain the ministers of another church.
Abby Smith addressed the Glastonbury town council in to explain why she would not be paying her property tax to politicians who took advantage of her voteless state.
A newspaper obtained and publisher her speech, saying that “Abby Smith and her sister as truly stand for the American principle as did the citizens who ripped open the tea chests in Boston Harbor, or the farmers who leveled their muskets at Concord.”
Soon the Smith case became a cause célèbre nationwide.
During the Annuity Tax struggle in Edinburgh, Scotland, “40,000 citizens of Edinburgh petitioned the House of Commons for [the Tax’s] abolition.
The town council, the magistrates of Canongate, the Merchant Company, the Anti-state-church and the Anti-annuity-tax Associations, all exerted themselves with the legislature and the government to procure its repeal…”
The hut tax war in Sierra Leone was preceded by petitions from a variety of groups there asking the government to rescind the tax, and explaining why the tax was felt to be particularly offensive.
In this case, the petitioning may have backfired, as the government stubbornly pushed forward with the tax, but, forewarned of opposition by the petitions, it “came to the conclusion that the exercise of force, peremptory, rapid, and inflexible, was the element to be relied on in making the scheme of taxation a success.”
Like the Garrisonians, Thoreau defied the fugitive slave law; he hid a fugitive in his house.
Like the Garrisonians, Thoreau advocated the secession of the North from the South.
Also like the Garrisonians, Thoreau did not vote.
In his early years he did not vote largely from indifference to politics, but even when he became concerned about the folly of the Mexican War and the corruption of slavery, he remained a nonvoter; in fact he remained a nonvoter all his life.
At an abolitionist meeting Thoreau explained tersely: “The fate of the country does not depend… on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.” All the Concord individualists, including Emerson, were likely to be nonvoters — they were likely to be willing to take but little responsibility for government, the economic order, education, or the church; they were anti-institutional and anti-establishment.
But Thoreau went beyond the Garrisonians by practicing one form of noncooperation with government that the Garrisonians seldom practiced.
“Some are petitioning the state to dissolve the Union,” Thoreau wrote.
“Why do they not dissolve it themselves — the union between themselves and the state — and refuse to pay their quote into its treasury?”
For six years Thoreau did refuse to pay poll taxes, and accordingly in , during the Mexican War, he was imprisoned in Concord for one night until a friend paid his fine.
Prison, said, Thoreau provocatively, “is the only house in a slave state in which a free man can abide with honor.”
The idea of tax refusals as a means of social protest was not new.
There was considerable tradition among Quakers both in England and America to refuse to pay war taxes, and when they did refuse, the government sometimes confiscated their property.
Just before the American Revolution, Americans resisting British encroachments often refused to pay stamp taxes.
During the Revolution the young Quaker-raised sailor, Paul Cuffee, the son of a Negro father and an Indian mother, refused to pay his Massachusetts taxes because as a nonwhite he was not allowed to vote.
He was jailed, but he continued to agitate the question, using the popular slogan, no taxation without representation, and by Massachusetts Negroes had won the right to vote.
In the early years of the Nonresistance Society, it considered the question of refusing to pay taxes.
For example, the society’s treasurer, Charles K. Whipple, argued in that the American Revolution could have been won more speedily and under more favorable circumstances for the later development of America if the Revolutionists’ tax refusals had been entirely nonviolent and on a larger scale.
[See ♇ 27 October 2007.]
The result would have been widespread suffering for Americans, Whipple admitted; their property would have been confiscated to pay the taxes.
But if they had patiently submitted to this and continued their noncooperation, the prisons would have been “filled to overflowing” with nonviolent rebels, the British could have accomplished nothing, and their power would have come to a stop without blood.
In Negro leaders became well aware of circumstances in which they felt it was unjust for them to be required to pay taxes. Charles Lenox Remond, writing from England — where he was lecturing with one of the Nonresistance Society’s tax-refusal advocates, John A. Collins — urged Negroes to be more radical in their demands, and added: “Let every colored man, called upon to pay taxes to any institution in which he is deprived or denied its privileges and advantages, withhold his taxes, although it costs imprisonment or confiscation.
Let our motto be — no privileges, no pay.” … The black national convention, meeting in Cleveland, adopted a resolution that came close to being an endorsement for Negroes refusing to pay taxes wherever they could not vote: “Whereas we firmly believe with the fathers of , that taxation and representation ought to go together; therefore, resolved, that we are very much in doubt as to the propriety of our paying any tax… until we are permitted to be represented.”
Garrisonians usually recommended paying taxes even if the taxes seemed unjust.
When the tax question came up during the Mexican War, the Negro antislavery lecturer W.W. Brown gave the stock Garrisonian answer: we are coerced to pay taxes; we are not to blame for what the government does with the money it seizes from us.
As usual with the Garrisonians, when they discussed whether they should pay taxes, they discussed it more in moralistic than in pragmatic terms.
They were more likely to ask whether paying taxes was consistent with nonvoting and disunion than to ask whether it would be an effective form of protest, and, if so, under what circumstances and at what cost.
Despite the usual Garrisonian opposition, there were a few abolitionists, in addition to Thoreau, who helped to strengthen the slender thread of tax-refusal tradition by deliberately refusing to pay taxes.
Before Thoreau refused to pay taxes, his Concord friend, nonresistant Bronson Alcott, had already refused.
Alcott had acted as a general protest against government interference with individual liberty, including government support of slavery.
Three years before Thoreau was sentenced to jail for tax refusal, Alcott had already been sentenced to jail for the same reason, but Alcott was released before being actually jailed because someone quickly paid his tax.
A Negro storekeeper in Bath, in upstate New York stopped paying taxes for a new school building in when he discovered that his children as Negroes were to be excluded from it.
The tax collector insisted on his paying, and when the storekeeper still refused, the collector auctioned off some of his goods in his store.
The storekeeper was noble, said Douglass’s North Star.
In , Garrisonian leader [Robert] Purvis protested the new policy that segregated his children in the public schools of Byberry, Pennsylvania, by refusing to pay school taxes; the Liberator called it a “manly protest.”
Purvis also protested at the same time by boycotting the segregated schools, having his children privately tutored.
Purvis’s influence was weighty.
He was the highest-ranking Negro in the antislavery societies; he had served as one of the vice-presidents of the American Antislavery Society and for at least five years as president of one of its strongest auxiliaries, the Pennsylvania Antislavery Society.
In addition, gentlemen farmer Purvis was the second largest taxpayer in his township.
Purvis’s weight made itself felt.
He succeeded in having the Byberry schools reopened equally to white and black children. [See ♇ 4 November 2013.]
In the struggle for the control of Kansas in the mid-1850s, free-soil settlers sometimes refused to pay taxes to the pro-Southern Kansas government because they did not recognize it as legitimate.
John Brown was a guerrilla abolitionist who supported such refusal, and his brother-in-law, American Missionary Association agent Samuel Adair, was a Tappanite nonviolent abolitionist who also supported it.
Adair joined his Kansas community in an open decision to refuse to pay taxes, for which pro-Southerners punished the community with violence.
The quote from Lenox Remond comes from a letter that appeared in the Liberator on .
