A while back, I started looking for examples of ways tax resisters have organized mutual aid pacts to help diffuse the effects of government retaliation.
In the course of doing the research, though, I started collecting examples instead of a larger variety of collective projects resisters and their sympathizers have used in support of tax resistance.
Here are some of the examples I found:
Tax resister “insurance”
For instance, the Breton Association in
France, which organized to “form a common stock or fund… to indemnify the
subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any
illegal contributions imposed upon the public.”
Another example was the Association
of Real Estate Taxpayers in
Chicago, which formed a cooperative legal fund to fight an offensive legal
battle against the tax.
American war tax resisters today can use the War Tax Resisters Penalty
Fund to defray penalties and interest seized by the
IRS.
The fund is raised as-needed by asking subscribers to contribute an equal
amount.
The oath of the Regulator tax resistance movement in the North Carolina
colony bound its signers to “bear an equal share in paying and making up
[the] loss” if “any of our company be put to expense or under any
confinement.”
Communes, collectives, and co-housing projects.
Some tax resisters have formed mutual support communities.
Whiteway Colony
was founded to try to live up to Tolstoyan ideals. The members of the
Bijou and
Agape communities live below a taxable
income so as to avoid paying taxes.
Supporting resisters as an employer
Some members of the Restored Israel of
Yahweh ran a construction business and agreed not to withhold federal
taxes from the wages of those employees who were fellow-members and who were
resisting taxes.
Vivien Kellems refused to withhold
taxes from her employees’ wages, saying: “They are all free American
citizens, thoroughly capable of performing all of the duties and
responsibilities of citizenship for themselves. And so, from this day, I am
not collecting nor paying their income taxes for them.”
Charles Kanjama recently urged Kenyans
to begin a tax resistance campaign, and said that to foil pay-as-you-earn
withholding, “participating employers and employees can enter into a
voluntary contract to convert monthly employment into quarterly or
half-yearly employment, thus effectively delaying tax liability for several
months.”
British nonconformists and women’s suffrage activists a century ago also
used this tactic. Auctions became rallies, with speeches and banners and
crowds that could number in the thousands. Supporters would pack the auction
house and refuse to leave their seats. On some occasions, violence broke
out. In some cases, auctioneers refused to handle goods that had been seized
for tax refusal.
Simply boycotting the auctions and refusing to buy seized goods is one way
communities offer support. It was part of the Quaker “Discipline” to refuse
to buy seized goods. When Valentine Byler’s horse was seized for non-payment
of the social security tax, “no Amish came to bid on the horses and, due to
a lack of bidders, they went for a good price, with the harnesses ‘thrown
in’ by the auctioneer.”
Pay cash so as not to leave a paper trail
Jessica Ramer and a
Claire
Files contributor brought this idea up. If you pay in cash
whenever you can, you give the recipient the opportunity to decide whether
or not to declare the income.
Cash tips are easy to under-report. I asked about that recently and was
told that most people pay with credit card/debit card and that the
government now uses a percentage method for tips. They look at the charged
meals, look at the number of total meals served, and then look at the
charged tips to figure out how much cash tips you received.
(100 meals served. 50 paid with card, tipping 15%. the government
calculates 15% from 100 meals even if cash tips are only 10%)
You can help out by tipping more when paying with cash or better yet, when
you pay with card, put 1% tip on it and put the rest out as cash. I even
leave a note for the server saying “this is your money, don’t
tell your boss, or the government. share it with the buss boy if that is
the policy.” This will help lower the average tip figures, but
still give the nice server what they have earned.
Use barter to avoid taxable/seizable transactions
Karl Hess found people willing to barter with him as he was dodging
IRS
seizures:
The other day I welded up a fish-smoking rack for a family in Washington,
D.C. It will earn me a year’s supply
of smoked fish. At about the same time, I helped a friend dig a foundation.
He’ll help me lay the concrete blocks for a workshop. Part of my pay for a
lecture at a New England college was the use of the school’s welding shop,
to make some metal sculptures. Three such sculptures have paid my
attorney’s fees in maintaining the tax resistance which is the reason
barter has become such an integral part of my life.
Manufacture and sell goods as alternatives to taxed products
Before the American Revolution, colonists who opposed Britain’s economic
control boycotted British products and began to produce homespun cloth,
alternatives to tea, and so forth. Gandhi’s independence campaign in India
made the wearing and production of homespun cloth central to the opposition,
and the Salt March was focused on the illegal production of untaxed,
non-foreign-monopoly salt.
An example today is home-brewed beer (which beats the excise tax on
alcoholic beverages).
Buycotts and boycotts that favor resisting businesses
One report from World War Ⅰ-era America noted that this was a technique used
by those who opposed the “Liberty Bonds”:
Efforts to prevent banks from handling the bonds have centered chiefly in
Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Missouri and
Oklahoma. The President of a Wisconsin bank has advised the Treasury that
his depositors, mostly Germans, or of German parentage, have withdrawn
many thousands of dollars from his bank because he aided the First Liberty
Loan.
These depositors, he added, had taken their accounts to two rival banks on
the understanding that those banks would not aid the second Liberty Loan.
The two banks, he reported, were not aiding the loan in any way.
Many banks have felt the pressure of German influence in this propaganda,
reports indicate. So pronounced was the movement that the States of
Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana recently decided that they
would withdraw State funds from any bank which did not support the loan.
Social boycotts / shunning / noncooperation with tax collectors
Adolf Hausrath writes of Roman-occupied Judaea,
The people knew how to torment these officials of the Roman customs with
the petty cruelty which ordinary people develop with irreconcilable
persistency, whenever they believe this persistency to be due to their
moral indignation. In consequence of the theocratic scruples about the
duty of paying taxes, the tax-gatherers were declared to be unclean and
half Gentile.… among the Jews the words
“tax-gatherersand sinners,”“tax-gatherers and Gentiles,”“tax-gatherers and harlots,”
“tax-gatherers, murderers and robbers,” and similar insulting
combinations, were not only ready on the tongue and familiar, but were
accepted as theocratically identical in meaning. Thrust out from all
social intercourse, the tax-gatherers became more and more the pariahs of
the Jewish world. With holy horror did the Pharisee sweep past the lost
son of Israel who had sold himself to the Gentile for the vilest purpose,
and avoid the places which his sinful breath contaminated. Their
testimony was not accepted by Jewish tribunals. It was forbidden to sit
at table with them or eat of their bread. But their money-chests
especially were the summary of all uncleanness and the chief object of
pious horror, since their contents consisted of none but unlawful
receipts, and every single coin betokened a breach of some theocratic
regulation. To exchange their money or receive alms from them might
easily put a whole house in the condition of being unclean, and
necessitate many purifications. From these relations of the tax-officials
to the rest of the population, it can be readily understood that only the
refuse of Judaism undertook the office.
A social boycott of tax collectors was practiced in the years before
the American revolution. John Adams wrote:
At Philadelphia, the Heart-and-Hand Fire Company has expelled Mr. Hughes,
the stamp man for that colony. The freemen of Talbot county, in Maryland,
have erected a gibbet before the door of the court-house, twenty feet
high, and have hanged on it the effigies of a stamp informer in chains,
in terrorem till the Stamp Act shall be repealed; and
have resolved, unanimously, to hold in utter contempt and abhorrence
every stamp officer, and every favorer of the Stamp Act, and to
“have no communication with any such person, not even to speak to
him, unless to upbraid him with his baseness.” So triumphant is the
spirit of liberty everywhere.
Harassment of tax collectors was a signature action of the Whiskey
Rebellion. An early published resolution of the rebels read in part:
[W]hereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of
virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country, as to accept
offices for the collection of the duty:
Resolved, therefore, That in future we will consider such persons as
unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them;
withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life
which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to
each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they
deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby most earnestly recommended to
the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them.
Tax collectors were tarred-and-feathered in America, both before and after
the revolution — the violent expulsion of tax collectors was a frequent
technique of the Whiskey rebels. Tax collectors have been the targets of
violent reprisal at many times and in many places. Because of this,
governments have often had to pay high salaries — or, frequently,
percentages of the take — to convince collectors to take on the job, which
only increases the resentment of those being collected from.
During the French Revolution and its aftermath, customs houses were burned
by mobs, tax rolls were destroyed, excise collectors were made to renounce
their jobs and then were run out of town — or in some cases killed.
The first Boer War was triggered when an armed group of Boers seized a
wagon that was being auctioned after it was distrained for resisted taxes.
The Whiskey rebels threatened to destroy the stills of those distillers
who complied in paying the excise tax.
Boycotts / social boycotts of non-resisters
If a tax resisting movement is large enough, it may be able to dissuade
people from paying taxes through boycotts or social boycotts of people
who are tax compliant. In Massachusetts, a group enforced a boycott of
taxed British imports by declaring that
…we further promise and engage, that we will not purchase any goods
of any persons who, preferring their own interest to that of the public,
shall import merchandise from Great Britain, until a general importation
takes place; or of any trader who purchases his goods of such importer:
and that we will hold no intercourse, or connection, or correspondence,
with any person who shall purchase goods of such importer, or retailer;
and we will hold him dishonored, an enemy to the liberties of his country,
and infamous, who shall break this agreement.
Maintain solidarity in the face of divide-and-conquer tactics
In
Germany, the government attempted to break a tax resistance movement by
offering to moderate its enforcement efforts against people who could show
that they had limited means. Karl Marx, who was promoting the resistance at
the time, saw this as a divide-and-conquer tactic:
The intention of the Ministry is only too clear. It wants to divide the
democrats; it wants to make the peasants and workers count themselves as
non-payers owing to lack of means to pay, in order to split them from
those not paying out of regard for legality, and thereby deprive the latter
of the support of the former. But this plan will fail; the people realizes
that it is responsible for solidarity in the refusal to pay taxes, just as
previously it was responsible for solidarity in payment of them.
Keep a record of the “sufferings” of resisters
The Quakers responded to persecution by keeping careful records of
individuals who had suffered thereby. In the archives of Quaker meetings,
you can find lists of people who had resisted militia taxes or tithes for
establishment church ministers, and what property was distrained by which
tax collector.
Sign petitions and public advertisements, engage in public protests
When the American Amish were trying to resist compulsory enrollment in the
social security system, 14,000 of them signed a petition to Congress.
During the Vietnam War, public advertisements were taken out by tax
resisters. In , for instance,
448 writers and editors put a full-page ad in the New
York Post declaring their intention to refuse to pay taxes for the
Vietnam War. The signatories included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K.
Dick, Betty Friedan, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, Paul Krassner, Norman
Mailer, Henry Miller, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Thomas Pynchon, Susan
Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, Norman Thomas, Hunter S. Thompson,
Kurt Vonnegut, and Howard Zinn.
Protests, rallies, pickets, and the like have been a part of many
large-scale tax resistance campaigns.
Hold resisters’ property as an informal trustee
Some resisters who are vulnerable to property seizure find sympathetic
friends who are willing to hold the resisters’ property in their
names as a way of foiling seizure. Some war tax resister
alternative funds function
partially as “warehouse banks” that hold deposits of war tax resisters.
When a frustrated tax collector seized Ammon Hennacy’s protest signs
as he was picketing the
IRS
office — claiming that he planned to auction them off to pay Hennacy’s tax
debt — a friend of Hennacy helped him make new signs, each one marked “this
sign is the personal property of Joseph Craigmyle.”
Keep in contact with resisters and express support
After the press reported that Valentine Byler’s horse had been seized by the
IRS
as he was plowing his field, he got letters of support from all across
the country.
Form groups for mutual support & coordinated decision-making
Here there are too many examples to list.
Give financial aid to evicted rent strikers
When the Irish Land League launched its rent strike, it claimed that
“The funds will be poured out unstintedly to all who may endure
eviction in the course of the struggle. Our exiled brothers in America may
be relied on to contribute, if necessary, as many millions in money as they
have thousands, to starve out the landlords and bring the English tenantry
to its knees.”
Comfort and aid imprisoned resisters
The trick to supporting imprisoned tax resisters is to respect their real
needs and desires. When “someone interfered,” as Thoreau put
it, and paid his taxes in order to spring him from his night in jail, they
thought wrongly that they were doing Thoreau a favor, “for they
thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall.”
Juanita Nelson tells of the support she received in jail, where she had
been taken in her bathrobe from her home. Her supporters took the time to
learn how to support her in a way that was appropriate to her resistance:
Two fellow pacifists, one of them also a tax refuser, had been permitted
to come to me, since I would not go to them. I asked them what was
uppermost in my mind, what they’d do about getting properly dressed?
They said that this was something I would have to settle for myself. I
sensed that they thought it the better part of wisdom and modesty for me
to be dressed for my appearance in court. They were more concerned about
the public relations aspect of getting across the witness than I was. They
were also genuinely concerned, I knew, about making their actions truly
nonviolent, cognizant of the other person’s feelings, attitudes and
readiness. I was shaken enough to concede that I would like to have my
clothes at hand, in case I decided I would feel more at ease in them. The
older visitor, a dignified man with white hair, agreed to go for the
clothes in a taxicab.
They left, and on their heels came another visitor. She had been told that
in permitting her to come up, the officials were treating me with more
courtesy than I was according them. It was her assessment that the chief
deputy was hopeful that someone would be able to hammer some sense into me
and was willing to make concessions in that hope. But he had misjudged
the reliance he might place in her — she was not as critical as the
men. She did not know what she would do, but she thought she might wish to
have the strength and the audacity to carry through in the vein in which I
had started.
And she said. “You know, you look like a female Gandhi in that robe.
You look, well, dignified.”
That was my first encouragement. Everyone else had tended to make me feel
like a fool of the first water, had confirmed fears I already had on that
score. My respect and admiration for Gandhi, though not uncritical, was
deep. And if I in any way resembled him in appearance I was prepared to
try to emulate a more becoming state of mind. I reminded myself, too, that
I had on considerably more than the loincloth in which Gandhi was able to
greet kings and statesmen with ease. I need not be unduly perturbed about
wearing a robe into the presence of his honor.
Support the families of imprisoned resisters
When Gandhi was preparing the groundwork for a tax refusal campaign in
India, he noted that the Indian National Congress “should undertake
to feed the wives and families of those who may be imprisoned.”
Study the law, give legal support
When Elizabeth Cady Stanton was contemplating a tax resistance campaign for
women’s suffrage in the United States, she noted, “One thing is
certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation,
and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by
their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat.”
Combine redirected taxes for dramatic charity giveaways
Larry Rosenwald wrote, of this technique, “To sit on the Grants and
Loans Committee of New England War Tax Resistance, and to dispense the
interest on refused taxes to a youth group in Chelsea, a video for cable
television on United States involvement in Central America, and a
people’s garden in Roxbury is to be reminded of the ideal community,
however blurred and fragmented, that war tax resistance is done on behalf
of, in the hope of helping to make it clear and whole.”
Today I’ll reproduce some excerpts from that book that speak to Quaker tax resistance in the years before the American Revolution.
Some of this I may end up cutting from the book I’m preparing on Quaker war tax resistance because it deals with the tangential (but interesting to me) issue of the Regulator War and the Whiskey Rebellion, both of which were tax rebellions, and in both of which a certain fighting Quaker — Hermon Husband — played a prominent role.
Before the Revolution
Southern Quakers have been pretty uniform in their testimony against war.
Their position met with small respect in any of these colonies.
They refused to train and were fined.
They refused to pay the fine and it was collected by distress or they were imprisoned.
They were alike unmoved by distress or imprisonment.
The officers were forced to abandon persecution by the firm meekness of the persecuted.
Friends were always careful to put their sufferings on record.
Whatever else the Quaker might suffer, he could not bear for the shade of oblivion to come over the record of his testimonies.
They seem to have suffered from militia laws at an earlier period in Virginia than in North Carolina.
The first law that comes under our notice is the one of , which recites that “divers refractory persons” have “refused to appear upon the days of exercise and other times when required to attend upon the public service,” and then imposes on them for each neglect a fine of 100 pounds of tobacco.
The new militia act of makes no exemption of Quakers.
The fine was the same as before.
It was collected by distress, or imprisonment was inflicted, and the records indicate that Friends suffered from the law.
The first trial of this kind in North Carolina dates from .
In the Culpeper rebellion in this colony in , Friends first gave their allegiance to the government of Miller and Eastchurch.
When the party of the people came into power, in accord with their well-known principles of non-resistance, they submitted to it; but declared themselves a “separated people,” and that they “stood single from all the seditious actions” which had taken place in Albemarle in .
“Then some suffering fell upon friends which we not finding in ye old Book, we thought good to insert here; so that it may be seen generations to come,” says the chronicler, writing of the year .
“It was thus, the government made a Law that all that would not bear arms in ye Muster-field, should be at ye Pleasure of ye Court fined, accordingly friends not bearing arms in ye field; they had several friends before ye Court, and they fined them he that had a good Estate a great sum & ye rest according to their estates; and Cast them into prison, & when they were in prison, they went & levied their fines upon their estates; There were nine friends put in prison, viz. William Bundy John Price, Jona Phelps James Hogg John Thusstone Henry Prows Rich.
Byer Saml Hill Steven Handcock.
They were put in prison about .”
This record of persecution comes to us from the manuscript records of the Society.
It is a new one, and one which the author is inclined to attribute entirely to the disordered state of the colony.
The “rebellion” of Culpeper was at an end, but its leaders were still the controllers of the policy of the government, and the persecution may have been due to vindictiveness against the publishers of the protest which we have noticed.
This is borne out by the fact that of the nine Friends imprisoned, the names of three, perhaps of five, were signed to the protest.
There seems to have been no further persecution.
The North Carolina Quakers were prominent in the first part of the “Cary Rebellion,” .
This was a war of words only….
They refused to fight in the Indian war of .
They steadily exhorted each other not to go to this war, and even punished such of their members as paid the five pound penalty attached to the refusal.
As soon as the Government ceased to persecute them, they settled down to quiet and made good citizens.
North Carolina Quakers seem to have had a comparatively easy time.
In theory they were under disadvantages from muster laws, but in reality they suffered little.
In they protest against the tax levied to provide a magazine for each county, for that would be “to wound” their tender conscience.
In they consult London Friends as to paying the tax levied in provisions to support troops.
We do not know the answer.
Committees were appointed from time to time to confer with the authorities on this and similar matters.
They seem to have come to little conclusion.
Muster fines, sometimes collected by distress, are reported at nearly every meeting, but they were small in amount, and the muster law, like the tithe law, seems to have been spasmodically enforced.
In Virginia, on the other hand, Friends had a harder road to travel.
Fines were heavier and were more rigidly collected.
As early as the Yearly Meeting recorded that “Friends are generally fined for not bearing arms and that grand oppression of priests wages, though the magistrates are pretty moderate at present and truth gains ground.”
In Governor Spotswood came in conflict with Friends over this testimony.
He undertook to force assistance from them on the ground that otherwise the lazy and cowardly would plead conscience; some Friends yielded so far as to assist in building forts.
The sense of the Yearly Meeting was “that those Friends who have given away their Testimony, by hiring, paying, or working, to make any fort, or defense against enemies, do give from under their hands to the monthly meeting for the clearing the truth.”
It is to be understood, of course, that there was no recognition or exemption of dissenting ministers in the military acts.
The military law of exempted “ministers,” while that of confined it to ministers of the Church of England.
This indicates that dissenting ministers had claimed exemption under the broader law, and that the Assembly was not willing to recognize them.
The act of , exempted all Quakers from personal service, but required them to furnish a substitute, or to be fined for neglect.
This law, while seeming to be one looking toward recognition of the peculiar views of Friends, was not in reality such.
To a society which condemns war and all its paraphernalia in toto, personal exemption can be no favor.
It was no favor to a Quaker to allow him to send a substitute or pay a fine.
In they record that their sufferings had been “very considerable,” both on account of “militia and priests’ wages,” and are of the opinion that they “are likely to increase greatly on that account.”
In they say “the men in military power act toward us in several counties with as much lenity and forbearance as we can reasonably expect, as they are ministers of the law; though in some places they are not so favorable,” and Friends had been in prison for neglect of military duties during the visit of Bownas.
and the period just preceding it were times of great trial to Friends in this matter.
The English settlers believed that French agents were trying to stir up the Indians, and that in the onslaught against English civilization the Indians would be led by Frenchmen, little more civilized or humane in their conduct of war than the savages themselves.
To guard against this the Assembly of Virginia passed various acts in , , , , , , , for raising levies and recruits, for the better training of militia, and keeping them in readiness.
The Assembly also undertook to increase the number of available troops, and, to fill the quotas of the militia, passed laws in and , requiring the members of the county militia who had no wives or children to stand a draft; but any person drafted might secure a substitute, or be released on the payment of ten pounds.
If they refused they were imprisoned until they agreed to serve, to procure a substitute, or paid the fine.
From time to time it voted various sums to be expended on these matters and on the better defense of the province.
The tax, since it was laid for war purposes, was a source of trouble.
But Friends generally complied in paying this tax without inquiring too closely into the way it was spent.
English Friends wrote that this was their custom, and it was also the custom of the Pennsylvania Friends.
This caused some of the Friends who were not anxious to pose as martyrs to treat the fine for refusing to stand the draft or procure a substitute as a part of the general levy.
This fine when paid also went for war purposes, but the Society as a whole denounced the practice and warned their members against it.
The act of , did not exempt the Quakers.…
Here, a footnote reads: “The next act, for ‘the better regulating and training the militia,’ in prescribing accoutrements says ‘that every person so as aforesaid enlisted (except the people commonly called Quakers, free mulattoes, negroes and Indians),’ etc., which indicates that they were not on the same footing as others, but that this did not mean exemption is shown clearly from their records.
Nor are they included in the list of exempted persons mentioned in section three of the same act.”
…An act of , provided that every twentieth man of the county militia should be drafted and sent to the frontier at Winchester under Col. Washington.
This is followed by another for “better regulating and disciplining the militia,” which exempted ministers of the Church of England, but no dissenting ministers.
Nor were Quakers mentioned in the section directing the accoutrements, as was done in the similar act of .
They were shown no favors, and the Yearly Meeting records of state that seven young men had already been carried to the frontier.
They asked advice of London Yearly Meeting in the case.
They exhorted the men thus tried to remain faithful to their testimony, took up a collection for their relief, and recorded that Friends were “pretty generally faithful.”
In their epistle to London Yearly Meeting in they stated that those Friends were now released who had been imprisoned the year before, that application had been made to the Assembly about this requirement, and that the officers now had a more favorable opinion of Friends.
This was probably the severest trial through which Virginia Friends were called to go because of this testimony.
The North Carolina Quakers also thought it necessary for them to attend the courts-martial in and give the reasons of Friends for not attending musters, and likewise to send a petition to the Governor against the militia law, but it does not appear that they were brought to trial on these points during the French and Indian war.
In Virginia Quakers appointed a committee to petition the Assembly for relief from military fines, etc. This petition may have had influence on the law passed in .
By this law Quakers were exempted from appearing at private or general musters, and were not required to provide a set of arms as all other exempts were.
So far the law is good; it is further provided that the chief militia officer in each county should list all Quakers of military age, and if needed, these would have to go into actual service just as other persons, except that they might furnish a substitute or pay a fine of ten pounds.
But the number of Quakers who were thus required to serve or find substitutes was not to exceed the proportion the whole number of Quakers bore to the whole number of other militia.
The law required also that no Quaker should be exempted from musters unless he produced a testimonial that he was a bona fide Quaker.
This law was a decided gain for the Quaker, although it was not a complete recognition of his position on war.
It recognized this position absolutely in times of peace by exempting him from musters, and even gave him a privilege over other exempts by relieving him from the requirement to furnish a set of arms. But it failed him entirely in time of war.
As early as an attempt had been made in North Carolina to get a law exempting Quakers, but it was opposed by the Council, who offered to substitute in place of the regular equipment of the soldier that of the pioneer — axe, spade, shovel or hoe.
This failed to become law; but by the terms of a special act, which is substantially a copy of the Virginia law of , passed in for five years, Quakers were released from attendance on general or private musters, provided that they were regularly listed and served in the regular militia in case of insurrection or invasion.
From a petition which the Quakers presented to the Governor and the Assembly of North Carolina in , we may conclude that Tryon had in some cases exempted them from the penalty of the laws.
We find also certificates of unity given to some of their members, who were liable to military duty, in .
These certificates seem to have relieved them practically from all militia requirements.
At the beginning of the Revolution, Friends had been exempted from attending musters in Virginia and North Carolina, but not from being enrolled in the militia or from serving in case of insurrection.
I have found no indications that Quakers had been exempted at this time from military laws in South Carolina and Georgia.
They were too weak in both of these provinces to affect their legislation.
There had been some suffering in South Carolina on account of this testimony about the time of the Yemassee war in .
Quakers kept a careful record of all the fines they suffered by distress or otherwise.
These sufferings varied from year to year according to the personal feeling of the officers.
They were heavier in Virginia than in North Carolina; only in do we find an entry in that State of sufferings amounting to £85 and over for tithes and “malissia” fines.…
I have no idea what a “malissia” fine is.
Any clue?
Oh.
I get it.
It’s a phonetic spelling of “militia” by someone who was unfamiliar with the word.
…The chief cause of suffering there was for tithes.
In Virginia, on the other hand, the fines seem to have been about equally divided.
Another footnote here: “They have recorded fines for neglect of military duty in Virginia as follows: , £12 5s.; , £84 11s. 5d.; , £61 1s.; , £131 8s. 1d.; , £59 14s. 8d.; , £10 9s. 2d.; , £16 14s.; , £4 11s. 6d.; , £86 19s. 4½d., mostly military.
From this time there is no distinction between ‘priest’s wages’ and militia fines.
The sums are as follows: , £98 13s. 5d.; , £108 6s. 10d.; , £90 14s.; , £80 13s.; , £103; , £74 12s. 6d.; , £113 11s. 10d.; , £109; , £133; , £67; , £3 5s.”
There has been an extensive belief that Friends were active in the War of the Regulation in North Carolina in .
This belief is founded partly on the charge of Governor Tryon, that the Regulators were a faction of Baptists and Quakers who were trying to overthrow the Church of England.
This charge, like the similar charge made by the aristocracy in North Carolina in , is more easily made than proved.
The Quakers are easily shown from their records not to have been Regulators.
There were, of course, individual Quakers who took part in the Regulation; many more no doubt sympathized with the principles advocated; but no complicity with the events of was tolerated by the meetings in their organic capacity.
The foundation for this charge lies, no doubt, largely in the fact that Hermon Husband, the leader of the Regulators, had been a Quaker.
He had been disowned by the Society, however, but not for immorality, as Governor Tryon states.
Since no North Carolina Quaker is more widely known than Husband, it is desirable that we know as many facts as possible of his life.
Hermon Husband was born , in all probability in Cecil County, Md. His grandfather, William Husband, made a will, .
He writes himself as of “Sissil” County, Maryland; he had cattle, “Hoggs and sheape,” and negroes, and speaks of “the Iron works that belongs to me.”
He had a good deal of land.
William, the father of Hermon, was also of Cecil County.
His will was probated .
He also had negroes, and was not a Quaker.
His son Joseph, born , was the first of the family to turn Quaker.
His convincement influenced Hermon among others.
Hermon became a prominent man among the Quakers of East Nottingham, Md. He once got a certificate to visit Barbadoes.
He was first in North Carolina about , when he removed to Carver’s Creek Monthly Meeting in Bladen County.
How long he remained here we do not know, but on , he presented a certificate of removal to Cane Creek Monthly Meeting.
He returned from Cane Creek to Nottingham in , and, on , presented a certificate of removal from Cane Creek to West River Monthly Meeting, Md. He got a certificate to go back to Cane Creek, , and on , Friends report to Cane Creek that the marriage of Hermon Husband and Mary Pugh had been orderly.
Footnote: “At this period Husband also set up some claims to authorship, as the following title will show: Some | Remarks | on | Religion, | With the Author’s Experience in Pursuit thereof, | For the Consideration of all People; | Being the real Truth of what happened.
| Simply delivered, without the Help of School-Words, or Dress | of Learning.
| Philadelphia: | Printed by William Bradford for the Author.
| .
Octavo, pp. 88. (Hildeburn’s Issues of the Press in Pa.) The copy in Library Company of Philadelphia has the author’s name noted on the title-page in the handwriting of Du Simitiere.
At the end of the tract it is said to have been ‘written about .’ ”
This year a commotion began in Cane Creek Monthly Meeting which led to the disownment of Husband, the suspension of others, and involved the monthly meeting, the quarterly meeting, and even the Yearly Meeting, in a religious wrangle.
The origin of this trouble was as follows: In , Rachel Wright, a member of Cane Creek Monthly Meeting, committed some disorder.
She offered a paper condemning the same.
This seems to have been accepted, and in she asked for a certificate of removal to Fredericksburg, S.C. But some members of the monthly meeting thought she was not sincere in the paper offered and did not wish to give her the certificate.
A wrangle resulted, and the case was appealed to the quarterly meeting, which recommended that the certificate be given.
Husband, evidently a man who was accustomed to speak fearlessly, was thereupon “guilty of making remarks on the actions and transactions” of the meeting; he spoke “his mind,” and was guilty of “publicly advertising the same”; for this he was disowned by Cane Creek Monthly Meeting, .
But in the meantime his party had grown, and a number of Friends signed a paper in which they expressed dissatisfaction with the disowning of Husband.
The quarterly meeting then appointed a committee to advise with the malcontents, of whom the leaders were said to be Hermon Husband, Joseph Maddock, Isaac Vernon, Thomas Branson, John and William Marshill, and Jonathan Cell, “with divers others.”
In , the committee report “that it would be of dangerous consequences to allow them the privilege of active members, or to be made use of as such in any of our meetings of business until suitable satisfaction is made for their outgoings.”
Maddock, Cell and the Marshills felt “uneasy and aggrieved with the proceedings and judgment of this meeting,” and filed notice of an appeal to the Yearly Meeting.
The Yearly Meeting decided that Western Quarterly Meeting did wrong in granting a certificate to Rachel Wright, “if it was to be made a precedent,” and that the minute of the quarterly meeting which suspended from active membership those who had signed the other paper expressing dissatisfaction with the disowning of Hermon Husband should be reversed.
The quarterly meeting thereupon acknowledged itself wrong in the matter of Rachel Wright; Fredericksburg Monthly Meeting was informed of the conditions surrounding the certificate, and the parties under ban were restored to active membership, for we find Joseph Maddock and William Marshill serving as representatives from Cane Creek Monthly Meeting to Western Quarterly Meeting in .
But this did not restore Husband.
He had been formally disowned, and disappears from this time from the records of North Carolina Quakerism.
It is probable that some of these discontented Friends were led by this trouble to join the Regulators.
It does not appear that the trouble was healed, for we find that two men, Joseph Maddock and Jonathan Sell, laid the foundation of the Georgia settlement of Friends in .
They were no doubt the same as the persons who have just been mentioned.
It is probable that they carried a considerable contingent of settlers with them from Cane Creek.
It is now time for us to return to Hermon Husband and the part taken by Friends in the War of the Regulation.
Caruthers, who gives the traditions among the people who knew him, characterizes Husband as a man of superior mind, grave in deportment, somewhat taciturn, wary in conversation, but when excited, forcible and fluent in argument.
He was a man of strict integrity and firm in his advocacy of the right.
He had considerable property, and took the part of the people in their complaints against the extortions of the officers.
He was a member of the Assembly in .
His participation in the Regulation movement brought the Government down on him, and he was imprisoned for more than fifty days, awaiting trial on charges on which the grand jury could not agree to return an indictment.
He was also presented for riot under an ex post facto law, and was six times acquitted by juries in Craven and Orange counties of all offenses alleged against him.
He was expelled from the Assembly, and after the battle of the Alamance, at which he was not present, was outlawed, and a reward of $100, or 1,000 acres of land, was offered for his arrest, dead or alive.
He soon left North Carolina, returned to Pennsylvania, and became prominent in the Whiskey Rebellion in .
Footnote: “I find in the minutes of Western Quarterly Meeting in a notice of the disorderly marriage of ‘Amey Allin now Husbands.’
Was this a second wife of Hermon Husband?
In , William Husband was disowned by Cane Creek for fighting.
Was he a son of Hermon?”
Husband’s career was clearly inconsistent with the unwarlike creed of the Quakers.
His intentions were probably good, but because he had been a Quaker, the Society has had the credit of being a leader in the movement that culminated in the battle of the Alamance on .
Without entering at all into the merits of that struggle, it is sufficient to say that Friends, as a body, had nothing to do with it, and in their official capacity condemned it to the fullest extent.
A few extracts from their records will show this clearly.
Cane Creek Meeting was in the center of the disturbance.
The first mention we find of the troubles is in , when seven members were disowned for attending a “disorderly meeting,” probably one of the mass-meetings with which the country was then alive.
In two Quakers were complained of for joining a body of persons to withdraw from the paying of the taxes.
They were disowned.
In Hermon Cox was disowned for joining the Regulators.
In denials were published against Benjamin and James Underwood, Joshua Dixon, Isaac Cox, Samuel Cox and his two sons, Hermon and Samuel, James Matthews, John and Benjamin Hinshaw, William Graves, Nathan Farmer, Jesse Pugh, William Tanzy, John and William Williams, who all seem to have been Regulators.
Thomas Pugh was also disowned for joining, and Humphrey Williams for aiding them.
Three men were disowned by New Garden Monthly Meeting for joining, and a fourth condemned himself in meeting for aiding “with a gun.”
These are all the cases I have found that indicate the participation of the Quakers in the political and civil troubles of the day.
They remained faithful to the Government.
Governor Tryon made a requisition on them for twenty beeves and ten barrels of flour for his army.
They agreed to furnish the things demanded, but pleaded that they could not do it within the limits of time set.
In Friends asserted their loyalty and attachment to George Ⅲ., and at the beginning of the Revolution the Yearly Meeting, in its letter to the Society in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, gave forth their “testimony against all Plotting, Conspiracies, and insurrections against the king and government whatsoever as works of darkness.”
The Regulation, no doubt, had a bad effect on the Society in this section.
The minutes of Cane Creek Monthly Meeting , fill but two pages, as if outside matters were attracting their attention.
There were, moreover, many removals and few arrivals at Cane Creek.
These troubles caused, no doubt, a considerable exodus of Quakers to Bush River, S.C., and to Wrightsborough, Ga., just as they sent many members of the Sandy Creek Baptist Association from the same section to the banks of the Watauga in Eastern Tennessee.
The Prelinger Archive recently released on-line an old silent film docudrama short called The Whiskey Rebellion.
It gives the impression of having run out of budget or of having been spliced together from the surviving film fragments of what was meant to be a larger project.
There’s a lot of shots of George Washington entertaining guests in Philadelphia, and then the whole of the government’s response to the rebels consists of them riding into a village and chopping down one of their “liberty poles.”
To the extent that the film develops a message, it is that the whiskey rebels were wild-eyed, uncouth, alcohol-crazed savages, while the government forces were well-dressed patriots in awe of their hero Washington.
Torch-waving Rebels Advance on the Excise House
The Exise House in Flames, the Rebels Celebrate
“My God, Gentlemen! Western Pennsylvania is in open rebellion!” says Washington
Washington confers with his aides
One (Hamilton?) Advises: “If this new Government dare not show the mailed fist, it must go under.”
The Whiskey Rebels Hang Banners Reading “Liberty And No Excise” from a Liberty Pole
First up is a social boycott resolution by the rebels:
…[W]hereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country, as to accept offices for the collection of the duty:
Resolved, therefore, That in future we will consider such persons as unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them; withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby most earnestly recommended to the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them.
“Tom the Tinker” was an alias used by the tax strikers in their propaganda and other communiques.
In this case, the alias was used to send a threatening letter to a distiller who continued to pay the excise tax in defiance of the tax boycott:
In taking a survey of the troops under my direction in the late expedition against that insolent exciseman, John Neville, I find there were a great many delinquents, even among those who carry on distilling.
It will, therefore, be observed that I, Tom the Tinker, will not suffer any certain class or set of men to be excluded the service of this my district, when notified to attend on any expedition carried on in order to obstruct the execution of the excise law, and obtain a repeal thereof.
And I do declare on my solemn word, that if such delinquents do not come forth on the next alarm, with equipments, and give their assistance as much as in them lies, in opposing the execution and obtaining a repeal of the excise law, he or they will be deemed as enemies and stand opposed to virtuous principles of republican liberty, and shall receive punishment according to the nature of the offense.
And whereas, a certain John Reed, now resident in Washington, and being at his place near Pittsburgh, called Reedsburgh, and having a set of stills employed at said Reedsburgh, entered on the excise docket, contrary to the will and good pleasure of his fellow citizens, and came not forth to assist in the suppression of the execution of said law, by aiding and assisting in the late expedition, have, by delinquency, manifested his approbation to the execution of the aforesaid law, is hereby charged forthwith to cause the contents of this paper, without adding or diminishing, to be published in the Pittsburgh Gazette, the ensuing week, under the no less penalty than the consumption of his distillery.
Given under my hand, .
Finally, here are some excerpts from a report that Alexander Hamilton (the guy on the $10) made to George Washington (the guy on the $1) concerning the rebels and their tactics, and the government’s own strategy in attempting to defeat the rebellion:
Sir:— The disagreeable crisis at which matters have lately arrived in some of the western counties of Pennsylvania, with regard to the law laying duties on spirits distilled within the United States, and on stills, seems to render proper a review of the circumstances which have attended those laws in that scene from their commencement to the present time, and of the conduct which has hitherto been observed on the part of the government, its motives and effect, in order to a better judgment of the measures necessary to be pursued in the existing emergency.
The opposition to those laws in the four most western counties of Pennsylvania… commenced as early as they were known to have been passed.
It has continued with different degrees of violence in different counties, and at different periods.… The opposition first manifested itself in the milder shape of the circulation of opinions unfavorable to the law, and calculated by the influence of public disesteem to discourage the accepting or holding of offices under it, or the complying with it by those who might be so disposed, to which was added the show of a discontinuance of the business of distilling.
These expedients were shortly after succeeded by private associations to forbear compliance with the law.
But it was not long before these more negative modes of opposition were perceived to be likely to prove ineffectual.
And in proportion as this was the case, and as the means of introducing the laws into operation were put into execution, the disposition to resistance became more turbulent and more inclined to adopt and practise violent expedients.
The officers now began to experience marks of contempt and insult.
Threats against them became more frequent and loud; and after some time these threats were ripened into acts of ill treatment and outrage.
These acts of violence were preceded by certain meetings of malcontent persons, who entered into resolutions calculated at once to confirm, inflame, and systematize the spirit of opposition.
[O]ne of these committees… passed some intemperate resolutions, which were afterward printed in the Pittsburgh Gazette, containing a strong censure on the law, declaring that any person who had accepted or might accept an office under Congress, in order to carry it into effect, should be considered as inimical to the interests of the country; and recommending to the citizens of Washington County to treat every person who had accepted or might thereafter accept any such office, with contempt, and absolutely to refuse all kind of communication or intercourse with the officers, and to withhold from them all aid, support, or comfort.
Not content with this vindictive proscription of those who might esteem it their duty, in the capacity of officers, to aid in the execution of the constitutional laws of the land, the meeting proceeded to accumulate topics of crimination of the government, though foreign to each other; authorizing, by this zeal for censure, a suspicion that they were actuated, not merely by the dislike of a particular law, but by a disposition to render the government itself unpopular and odious.
On , the opposition broke out in an act of violence upon the person and property of Robert Johnson, collector of the revenues for the counties of Alleghany and Washington.
A party of men, armed and disguised, waylaid him at a place on Pidgeon Creek, in Washington County, seized, tarred and feathered him, cut off his hair, and deprived him of his horse, obliging him to travel on foot a considerable distance in that mortifying and painful situation.
The case was brought before the District Court of Pennsylvania, out of which processes issued against John Robertson, John Hamilton, and Thomas McComb, three of the persons concerned in the outrage.
The deputy’s report to the marshal states a number of particulars evincing a considerable fermentation in the part of the country to which he was sent, and inducing a belief on his part, that he could not with safety have executed the processes.
The marshal, transmitting this report to the district attorney, makes the following observations upon it: “I am sorry to add, that he (the deputy) found the people in general in the western part of the State, and particularly beyond the Alleghany Mountains, in such a ferment on account of the act of Congress for laying a duty on distilled spirits, and so much opposed to the execution of the said act, and from a variety of threats to himself personally, although he took the utmost precaution to conceal his errand, that he was not only convinced of the impossibility of serving the process, but that any attempt to effect it would have occasioned the most violent opposition from the greater part of the inhabitants; and he declares that if he had attempted it, he believes he should not have returned alive.
I spared no expense nor pains to have the process of the court executed, and have not the least doubt that my deputy would have accomplished it, if it could have been done.”
The reality of the danger to the deputy was countenanced by the opinion of General Neville, the inspector of the revenue, a man who before had given, and since has given, numerous proofs of a steady and firm temper.
And what followed is a further confirmation of it.
The person who had been sent with the processes was seized, whipped, tarred and feathered, and after having his money and horse taken from him, was blindfolded and tied in the woods, in which condition he remained five hours.
Very serious reflections naturally occurred upon this occasion.
It seemed highly probable, from the issue of the experiment which had been made, that the ordinary course of civil process would be ineffectual for enforcing the execution of the law in the scene in question, and that a perseverance in this course might lead to a serious concussion.
The law itself was still in the infancy of its operation, and far from established in other important portions of the Union.
Prejudices against it had been industriously disseminated, misrepresentations diffused, misconceptions fostered.
The Legislature of the United States had not yet organized the means by which the Executive could come in aid of the Judiciary, when found incompetent to the execution of the laws.
If neither of these impediments to a decisive exertion had existed, it was desirable, especially in a republican government, to avoid what is in such cases the ultimate resort, till all the milder means had been tried without success.
Under the united influence of these considerations, it appeared advisable to forbear urging coercive measures, until the laws had gone into more extensive operation, till further time for reflection and experience of its operation had served to correct false impressions and inspire greater moderation, and till the Legislature had had an opportunity, by a revision of the law, to remove, as far as possible, objections, and to reinforce the provisions for securing its execution.
Other incidents occurred from time to time, which are further proofs of the very improper temper that prevailed among the inhabitants of the refractory counties.
Mr. Johnson was not the only officer who about the same period experienced outrage.
Mr. Wells, collector of the revenue for Westmoreland and Fayette, was also ill-treated at Greensburgh and Union Town; nor were the outrages perpetrated confined to the officers; they extended to private citizens who only dared to show their respect for the laws of their country.
Some time in , an unhappy man of the name of Wilson, a stranger in the county, and manifestly disordered in his intellects, imagining himself to be a collector of the revenue, or invested with some trust in relation to it, was so unlucky as to make inquiries concerning distillers who had entered their stills, giving out that he was to travel through the United States, to ascertain and report to Congress the number of stills, etc. This man was pursued by a party in disguise, taken out of his bed, carried about five miles back to a smith’s shop, stripped of his clothes, which were afterwards burnt, and, after having been himself inhumanly burnt in several places with a heated iron, was tarred and feathered, and about daylight dismissed — naked, wounded, and otherwise in a very suffering condition.
These particulars are communicated in a letter from the inspector of the revenue, of , who declares that he had then himself seen the unfortunate maniac, the abuse of whom, as he expresses it, exceeded description, and was sufficient to make human nature shudder.
The affair is the more extraordinary, as persons of weight and consideration in that county are understood to have been actors in it, and as the symptoms of insanity were, during the whole time of inflicting the punishment, apparent — the unhappy sufferer displaying the heroic fortitude of a man who conceived himself to be a martyr to the discharge of some important duty.
Not long after, a person of the name of Roseberry underwent the humiliating punishment of tarring and feathering, with some aggravations, for having in conversation hazarded the very natural and just but unpalatable remark, that the inhabitants of that county could not reasonably expect protection from a government whose laws they so strenuously opposed.
The audacity of the perpetrators of those excesses was so great, that an armed banditti ventured to seize and carry off two persons who were witnesses against the rioters in the case of Wilson, in order to prevent their giving testimony of the riot to a court then sitting, or about to sit.
Designs of personal violence against the Inspector of the Revenue himself, to force him to a resignation, were repeatedly attempted to be put in execution by armed parties, but by different circumstances were frustrated.
In the session of Congress which commenced in , the law laying a duty on distilled spirits and stills came under the revision of Congress, as had been anticipated.
By an act passed , during that session, material alterations were made in it.
Among these the duty was reduced to a rate so moderate as to have silenced complaint on that head; and a new and very favorable alternative was given to the distiller, that of paying a monthly instead of a yearly rate, according to the capacity of his still, with liberty to take a license for the precise term which he should intend to work it, and to renew that license for a further term or terms. This amending act, in its progress through the Legislature, engaged the particular attention of members who themselves were interested in distilleries, and of others who represented parts of the country in which the business of distilling was extensively carried on.
Objections were well considered, and great pains taken to obviate all such as had the semblance of reasonableness.
The effect has in a great measure corresponded with the views of the Legislature.
Opposition has subsided in several districts where it before prevailed; and it was natural to entertain, and not easy to abandon, a hope that the same thing would by degrees have taken place in the four western counties of this State.
But, notwithstanding some nattering appearances at particular junctures, and infinite pains by various expedients to produce the desirable issue, the hope entertained has never been realized, and is now at an end, as far as the ordinary means of executing laws are concerned.
The idea was immediately embraced, that it was a very important point in the scheme of opposition to the law, to prevent the establishment of offices [of inspection] in the respective counties.
For this purpose the intimidation of well-disposed inhabitants was added to the plan of molesting and obstructing the officers by force or otherwise, as might be necessary.
So effectually was the first point carried (the certain destruction of property and the peril of life being involved), that it became almost impracticable to obtain suitable places for offices in some of the counties, and when obtained, it was found a matter of necessity, in almost every instance, to abandon them.
After much effort, the Inspector of the Revenue succeeded in procuring the house of William Faulkner, a captain in the army, for an office of inspection in the county of Washington.
This took place in .
The office was attended by the inspector of the revenue in person, till prevented by the following incidents.
Captain Faulkner, being in pursuit of some deserters from the troops, was encountered by a number of people in the same neighborhood where Mr. Johnson had been ill-treated the preceding year, who reproached him with letting his house for an office of inspection, drew a knife upon him, threatened to scalp him, tar and feather him, and reduce his house and property to ashes, if he did not solemnly promise to prevent the further use of his house for an office.
Capt. Faulkner was induced to make the promise exacted, and, in consequence of the circumstance, wrote a letter to the inspector, dated the , countermanding the permission for using his house, and the day following gave a public notice in the Pittsburgh Gazette that the office of inspection should be no longer kept there.
At the same time another engine of opposition was in operation.
Agreeable to a previous notification, there met at Pittsburgh, on , a number of persons styling themselves “A Meeting of Sundry Inhabitants of the Western Counties of Pennsylvania.”
This meeting entered into resolutions not less exceptionable than those of its predecessors.
The preamble suggested that a tax on spirituous liquors is unjust in itself, and oppressive upon the poor; that internal taxes upon consumption must, in the end, destroy the liberties of every country in which they are introduced; that the law in question, from certain local circumstances which are specified, would bring immediate distress and ruin upon the western country; and concludes with the sentiment, that they think it their duty to persist in remonstrances to Congress, and in every other legal measure that may obstruct the operation of the law.
The resolutions then proceed, first, to appoint a committee to prepare and cause to be presented to Congress an address, stating objections to the law, and praying for its repeal; secondly, to appoint committees of correspondence… and also, if found necessary, to call together either general meetings of the people…; and lastly, to declare that they will, in future, consider those who hold offices for the collection of the duty, as unworthy of their friendship, that they will have no intercourse nor dealings with them, will withdraw from them every assistance, withhold all the comforts of life which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow-citizens we owe to each other, and will upon all occasions treat them with contempt, earnestly recommending it to the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them.
The idea of pursuing legal measures to obstruct the operation of a law, needs little comment.
Legal measures may be pursued to procure the repeal of a law, but to obstruct its operation presents a contradiction in terms. The operation, or, what is the same thing, the execution of a law, cannot be obstructed after it has been constitutionally enacted, without illegality and crime.
The expression quoted is one of those phrases which can only be used to conceal a disorderly and culpable intention under forms that may escape the hold of the law.
Neither was it difficult to perceive that the anathema pronounced against the officers of the revenue placed them in a state of virtual outlawry, and operated as a signal to all those who were bold enough to encounter the guilt and the danger to violate both their lives and their properties.
The following plan… was afterwards put in execution… for carrying, if possible, the laws into effect without the necessity of recurring to force.
1. To prosecute delinquents in the cases in which it could be clearly done for non-compliance with the laws.
2. To intercept the markets for the surplus produce of the distilleries of the non-complying counties, by seizing the spirits on their way to those markets in places where it could be effected without opposition.
3. By purchases through agents, for the use of the army (instead of deriving the supply through contracts as formerly), confining them to spirits, in respect to which there had been a compliance with the laws.
The motives to this plan speak for themselves.
It aimed, besides the influence of penalties on delinquents, at making it the general interest of the distillers to comply with the laws, by interrupting the market for a very considerable surplus, and by at the same time confining the benefit of the large demand for public service to those who did their duty to the public, and furnishing, through the means of payment in cash, that medium for paying the duties, the want of which was alleged to be a great difficulty in the way of compliance.
But two circumstances conspired to counteract the success of the plan: one, the necessity, towards incurring the penalties of non-compliance, of there being an office of inspection in each county, which was prevented in some of the counties by means of the intimidation practised for that purpose; another, the non-extension of the law to the territory northwest of the Ohio, into which a large proportion of the surplus before mentioned was sent.…
The continuance of the embarrassment incident to this state of things, naturally tended to diminish much of the efficacy of the plan which had been devised.
Yet it was resolved, as far as legal provisions would bear out the officers, to pursue it with perseverance.
There was ground to entertain hopes of its good effects; and it was certainly the most likely course which could have been adopted towards attaining the objects of the laws, by means short of force; evincing unequivocally the sincere disposition to avoid this painful resort, and the steady moderation which has characterized the measures of the government.
In pursuance of this plan, prosecutions were occasionally instituted in the mildest forms, seizures were made as opportunities occurred, and purchases on public account were carried on.
It may be incidentally remarked that these purchases were extended to other places; where, though the same disorders did not exist, it appeared advisable to facilitate the payment of the duties by this species of accommodation.
Nor was this plan, notwithstanding the deficiency of legal provision, which impeded its full execution, without corresponding effects.
Symptoms from time to time appeared which authorized expectations, that with the aid, at another session, of the desired supplementary provisions, it was capable of accomplishing its end, if no extraordinary events occurred.
The opponents of the laws, not insensible of the tendency of that plan, nor of the defects in the laws which interfered with it, did not fail from time to time to pursue analogous modes of counteraction.
The effort to frustrate the establishment of offices of inspection, in particular, was persisted in, and even increased.
Means of intimidating officers and others, continued to be exerted.
In , a party of armed men in disguise made an attack in the night upon the house of a collector of revenue who resided in Fayette County, but he happening to be from home, they contented themselves with breaking open his house, threatening, terrifying, and abusing his family.
Warrants were issued for apprehending some of the rioters upon this occasion, by Isaac Mason and James Findlay, assistant judges of Fayette County, which were delivered to the sheriff of that county, who, it seems, refused to execute them, for which he has since been indicted.
This is at once an example of the disposition to support the laws of the Union, and of an opposite one, in the local officers of Pennsylvania, within the non-complying scene.
But it is a truth too important not to be noticed, and too injurious not to be lamented, that the prevailing spirit of those officers has been either hostile or lukewarm to the execution of those laws; and that the weight of an unfriendly official influence has been one of the most serious obstacles with which they have had to struggle.
In , the Inspector of the Revenue was burnt in effigy in Alleghany County, at a place and on a day of some public election, with much display, in the presence of and without interruption from magistrates and other public officers.
On the night of , another party of men, some of them armed, and all in disguise, went to the house of the same collector of Fayette which had been visited in , broke and entered it, and demanded a surrender of the officer’s commission and official books.
Upon his refusing to deliver them up, they presented pistols at him, and swore that if he did not comply they would instantly put him to death.
At length a surrender of the commission and books was enforced.
But not content with this, the rioters, before they departed, required of the officer that he should, within two weeks, publish his resignation, on pain of another such visit and a destruction of his house.
Notwithstanding these excesses, the laws appeared during the latter periods of this year to be rather gaining ground.
Several principal distillers, who had formerly held out, complied, and others discovered a disposition to comply, which was only restrained by the fear of violence.
But these favorable circumstances served to beget alarm among those who were determined, at all events, to prevent the quiet establishment of the laws.
It soon appeared that they meditated, by fresh and greater excesses, to aim a still more effectual blow at them, to subdue the growing spirit of compliance, and to destroy entirely the organs of the laws, within that part of the country, by compelling all the officers to renounce their offices.
The last proceeding in the case of the collector of Fayette, was in this spirit.
In , further violences appear to have been perpetrated.
William Richmond, who had given information against some of the rioters in the affair of Wilson, had his barn burnt, with all the grain and hay which it contained; and the same thing happened to Robert Shawhan, a distiller, who had been among the first to comply with the law, and who had always spoken favorably of it.…
The Inspector of the Revenue, in a letter of the , writes, that he had received information that persons living near the dividing line of Alleghany and Washington had thrown out threats of tarring and feathering one William Cochran, a complying distiller, and of burning his distillery; and that it had also been given out that, in three weeks, there would not be a house standing in Alleghany County, of any person who had complied with the laws.
In consequence of which, he had been induced to pay a visit to several leading individuals in that quarter, as well to ascertain the truth of the information, as to endeavor to avert the attempt to execute such threats.
It appeared afterwards, that on his return home he had been pursued by a collection of disorderly persons, threatening, as they went along, vengeance against him.
On their way these men called at the house of James Kiddoe, who had recently complied with the laws, broke into his still-house, fired several balls under his still, and scattered fire over and about the house.
Letters from the Inspector, in , announce an increased activity in promoting opposition to the laws; frequent meetings to cement and extend the combinations against it; and among other means for this purpose, a plan of collecting a force to seize him, compel him to resign his commission, and detain him prisoner probably as a hostage.
In new violences were committed.
James Kiddoe, the person above mentioned, and William Cochran, another complying distiller, met with repeated injury to their property.
Kiddoe had parts of his grist-mill at different times carried away, and Cochran suffered more material injuries; his still was destroyed, his saw-mill was rendered useless by the taking away of the saw, and his grist-mill so injured as to require to be repaired at considerable expense.
At the last visit, a note in writing was left, requiring him to publish what he had suffered in the Pittsburgh Gazette, on pain of another visit, in which he is threatened, in figurative but intelligible terms, with the destruction of his property by fire; thus adding to the profligacy of doing wanton injuries to a fellow-citizen, the tyranny of compelling him to be the publisher of his wrongs.
being the month for receiving annual entries of stills, endeavors were used to open offices in Westmoreland and Washington, where it had been hitherto found impracticable.
With much pains and difficulty places were secured for the purpose.
That in Westmoreland was repeatedly attacked in the night by armed men, who frequently fired upon it, but according to a report which has been made to this department, it was defended with so much courage and perseverance by John Wells, an auxiliary officer, and Philip Regan, the owner of the house, as to have been maintained during the remainder of the month.
That in Washington, after repeated attempts, was suppressed; the first attempt was confined to pulling down the sign of the office, and threats of future destruction; the second effected the object in the following mode: About twelve persons, armed and painted black, in the night of , broke into the house of John Lynn, where the office was kept, and after having treacherously seduced him to come down stairs and put himself in their power, by a promise of safety to himself and his house, they seized and tied him, threatened to hang him, took him to a retired spot in a neighboring wood, and there, after cutting off his hair, tarring and feathering him, swore him never again to allow the use of his house for an office, never to disclose their names, and never again to have any sort of agency in aid of the excise; having done which, they bound him naked to a tree, and left him in that situation till morning, when he succeeded in extricating himself.
Not content with this, the malcontents some days after made him another visit, pulled down part of his house, and put him in a situation to be obliged to become an exile from his home, and to find an asylum elsewhere.
During this time several of the distillers, who had made entries and benefited by them, refused the payment of the duties, actuated, no doubt, by various motives.
Indications of a plan to proceed against the Inspector of the Revenue, in the manner which has been before mentioned, continued.
In a letter from him of , he observed that the threatened visit had not been made, though he had still reason to expect it.
Processes issued against a number of non-complying distillers in the counties of Fayette and Alleghany, and indictments having been found at a circuit court, holden at Philadelphia in , against Robert Smilie and John McCulloch, two of the rioters in the attack which had been made upon the house of a collector of the revenue in Fayette County, processes issued against them also, to bring them to trial, and, if guilty, to punishment.
The marshal of the district went in person to serve these processes.
He executed the trust without interruption, though under many discouraging circumstances, in Fayette County; but while he was in the execution of it in Alleghany County — being then accompanied by the Inspector of the Revenue, to wit — on , he was beset on the road by a party of from thirty to forty armed men, who, after much previous irregularity of conduct, finally fired upon him, but, as it happened, without injury either to him or to the Inspector.
This attempt on the marshal was but the prelude of greater excesses.
About break of day, , in conformity with a plan which seems to have been for some time entertained, and which probably was only accelerated by the coming of the marshal into the survey, an attack by about one hundred persons, armed with guns and other weapons, was made upon the house of the Inspector, in the vicinity of Pittsburgh.
The Inspector, though alone, vigorously defended himself against the assailants, and obliged them to retreat without accomplishing their purpose.
Apprehending that the business would not terminate here, he made application, by letter, to the judges, generals of militia, and sheriff of the country for protection.
A reply to his application from John Wilkins, junior, and John Gibson, magistrates and militia officers, informed him that the laws could not be executed so as to afford him the protection to which he was entitled, owing to the too general combination of the people in that part of Pennsylvania to oppose the revenue law; adding, that they would take every step in their power to bring the rioters to justice, and would be glad to receive information of the individuals concerned in the attack upon his house, that prosecutions might be commenced against them; and expressing their sorrow that, should the posse comitatus of the county be ordered out in support of the civil authority, very few could be gotten that were not of the party of the rioters.
, the insurgents reassembled with a considerable augmentation of numbers, amounting, as has been computed, to at least five hundred, and on renewed their attack upon the house of the Inspector, who, in the interval, had taken the precaution of calling to his aid a small detachment from the garrison of Fort Pitt, which, at the time of the attack, consisted of eleven men, who had been joined by Major Abraham Kirkpatrick, a friend and connection of the Inspector.
There being scarcely a prospect of effectual defence against so large a body as then appeared, and as the Inspector had every thing to apprehend for his person, if taken, it was judged advisable that he should withdraw from the house to a place of concealment — Major Kirkpatrick generously agreeing to remain with the eleven men, in the intention, if practicable, to make a capitulation in favor of the property; if not, to defend it as long as possible.
A parley took place, under cover of a flag which was sent by the insurgents to the house, to demand that the inspector should come forth, renounce his office, and stipulate never again to accept office under the same laws.
To this it was replied, that the inspector had left the house upon their first approach, and that the place to which he had retired was unknown.
They then declared that they must have whatever related to his office.
They were answered, that they might send persons, not exceeding six, to search the house and take away whatever papers they could find appertaining to the office.
But, not satisfied with this, they insisted, unconditionally, that the armed men who were in the house for its defence should march out and ground their arms, which Major Kirkpatrick peremptorily refused, considering it, and representing it to them, as a proof of their design to destroy the property.
This refusal put an end to the parley.
A brisk firing then ensued between the insurgents and those in the house, which, it is said, lasted for nearly an hour, till the assailants, having set fire to the neighboring and adjacent buildings, eight in number, the intenseness of the heat, and the danger of an immediate communication of the fire to the house, obliged Major Kirkpatrick and his small party to come out and surrender themselves.
In the course of the firing, one of the insurgents was killed and several wounded, and three of the persons in the house were also wounded.
The person killed is understood to have been the leader of the party, of the name of James McFarlane, then a major in the militia, formerly a lieutenant in the Pennsylvania line.
The dwelling-house, after the surrender, shared the fate of the other buildings, the whole of which were consumed to the ground.
The loss of property to the inspector, upon this occasion, is estimated (and, as it is believed, with great moderation) at not less than three thousand pounds.
The marshal, Colonel Presley Neville, and several others, were taken by the insurgents going to the inspector’s house.
All, except the marshal and Colonel Neville, soon made their escape; but these were carried off some distance from the place where the affray had happened, and detained till .
In the course of their detention, the marshal in particular suffered very severe and humiliating treatment, and was frequently in imminent danger of his life.
Several of the party repeatedly presented their pieces at him, with every appearance of a design to assassinate him, from which they were with difficulty restrained by the efforts of a few, more humane and more prudent.
Nor could he obtain safety or liberty, but upon the condition of a promise, guaranteed by Colonel Neville, that he would serve no other process on the west side of the Alleghany Mountains.
The alternative being immediate death, extorted from the marshal a compliance with this condition, notwithstanding the just sense of official dignity and the firmness of character which were witnessed by his conduct throughout the trying scenes he had experienced.
The insurgents, on , sent a deputation of two of their number (one a justice of the peace) to Pittsburgh, to require of the marshal a surrender of the processes in his possession, intimating that his compliance would satisfy the people and add to his safety; and also to demand of General Neville, in peremptory terms, the resignation of his office; threatening, in case of refusal, to attack the place, and take him by force — demands which both these officers did not hesitate to reject, as alike incompatible with their honor and their duty.
As it was well ascertained that no protection was to be expected from the magistrates or inhabitants of Pittsburgh, it became necessary to the safety both of the inspector and the marshal, to quit that place; and, as it was known that all the usual routes to Philadelphia were beset by the insurgents, they concluded to descend the Ohio, and proceed by a circuitous route to the seat of government, which they began to put in execution on the night of .
Information has also been received of a meeting of a considerable number of persons at a place called Mingo Creek Meeting-house, in the county of Washington, to consult about the further measures which it might be advisable to pursue; that at this meeting a motion was made to approve and agree to support the proceedings which had taken place, until the excise law was repealed, and an act of oblivion passed; but that, instead of this, it had been agreed that the four western counties of Pennsylvania and the neighboring counties of Virginia should be invited to meet in a convention of delegates, on , at Parkinson’s, on Mingo Creek, in the county of Washington, to take into consideration the situation of the western country, and concert such measures as should appear suited to the occasion.
It appears, moreover, that, on , the mail of the United States, on the road from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, was stopped by two armed men, who cut it open, and took out all the letters except those contained in one packet.
These armed men, from all the circumstances which occurred, were manifestly acting on the part of the insurgents.
The declared object of the foregoing proceedings is to obstruct the execution and compel a repeal of the laws laying duties on spirits distilled within the United States, and upon stills.
There is just cause to believe that this is connected with an indisposition, too general in that quarter, to share in the common burdens of the community, and with a wish, among some persons of influence, to embarrass the government.
It is affirmed, by well-informed persons, to be a fact of notoriety, that the revenue laws of the State itself have always been either resisted or very defectively complied with in the same quarter.
With the most perfect respect, I have the honor to be, etc.
Carl Watner has a meditation on the Whiskey Rebellion in the latest issue of The Voluntaryist, inspired by Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau’s study The Whiskey Rebellion in Kentucky: A Forgotten Episode of Civil Disobedience.
Tachau’s study, not available for free on-line anywhere that I noticed, reveals what she calls “a remarkable story of tax evasion” in which “almost the entire population of Kentucky managed to resist the laws of the United States for fully eight years.”
The Whiskey Rebellion is frequently thought of as a Pennsylvania-thing, since it was in Pennsylvania where the resistance became most violent and confrontational and where the federal government chose to exert its military power in trying to shut the rebellion down.
In Kentucky, refusal to pay the excise tax was every bit as widespread, but somewhat less-confrontational (though with occasional acts of violence: “Distillers stole collectors’ records, attacked them in their sleep, threatened those who tried to inspect their stills, docked their horses’ tails, and in at least one instance tarred a collector and rolled him in leaves”).
The federal government was unable to hire local attorneys as prosecutors, as these attorneys either opposed the excise tax themselves or were afraid for their reputations.
Grand juries refused to consider violations of the excise law.
Edmund Randolph was the sole member of Washington’s cabinet to argue forcefully against using force to put down the Whiskey Rebellion (see this letter from Randolph to Washington).
Tachau says that while Randolph lost that battle, what Washington eventually settled on was a combination of Randolph’s plan and those of the hawks.
In Pennsylvania, Washington would lead troops to crush the rebellion.
In Kentucky (or “several counties in Virginia,” as the region was referred to before Kentucky statehood), Randolph’s more conciliatory plan was tried.
As it turns out, neither approach was successful at making the excise tax work as a revenue-generator.
Evasion remained widespread in both regions.
But both Randolph and the hawks saw their proposals less as ways of actually enforcing the tax and more as ways of strengthening the federal government.
Randolph hoped to forestall secessionist sentiment through conciliatory acts; the hawks felt that a strong demonstration of unanswerable violent coercive power was necessary to cement the authority of the central government.
Those goals were to some extent satisfied.
After years of being unable to find a local attorney who was willing to serve as a federal prosecutor in Kentucky, Washington picked William Clarke of Maryland.
He had to bring copies of the revenue statutes with him, since “none was available in the commonwealth” (although they had theoretically been in force for over five years).
After much difficulty, Clarke was finally able to get the courts to hear cases against whiskey tax refusers.
However:
Whether the charges were initiated by Clarke or by revenue collectors or by grand juries made no difference: trial jurors regularly acquitted their neighbors of criminal charges.
In Kentucky, violation of the revenue acts was simply not perceived as a crime.
Not one of the fifty criminal charges brought during the four years of Clarke’s tenure resulted in conviction.
Default judgments were set aside, while other charges were abated by death, or quashed, dismissed, or discontinued.
Seven cases went to trial, but the jurors found for the defendants every time, and the judge then ordered their accusers to pay the costs of the suits.
It wasn’t until the election of Thomas Jefferson and the end of the Federalist hold on the executive branch that the whiskey rebels gave in.
Jefferson promised to repeal the tax, and his Treasury secretary waived penalties for anyone who paid back taxes.
Another brief note about the war tax resistance movement in Spain, this time from the Antimilitarist Assembly of Gran Canaria (one of the Canary Islands).
Complaining of Spanish arms sales to Morocco and of the government’s use of the economic crisis to force cuts in social spending (while military spending is “the only thing that has not been cut”), and eager not to be complicit in military spending, the assembly called for war tax resistance.
And now we’re off for a few weeks in Mexico.
I’ve got a few pages of archival material pre-written and I may stumble in to an internet cafe from time to time and slap them up on-site, but other than that you shouldn’t expect to see much here until .
Refusal by juries to convict tax resisters or those associated with tax resistance movements can be a powerful check on government power.
Today I will mention a small handful of such cases from tax resistance campaigns of the past.
Many successful applications of jury nullification never make the papers or the histories — this is because the government, seeing how the cards of public opinion are dealt, decides against bringing cases to trial because they fear the effect an innocent verdict would have.
The government might try transporting the defendants to a more sympathetic jurisdiction, or might hand-pick a “hanging jury” to insure conviction, but either of these tactics risks further alienating the people and bolstering the resisters’ arguments about the faithlessness and illegitimacy of the government and its taxes.
Governor Andros of Connecticut
For example, Governor Andros of colonial Connecticut put members of the Ipswich town meeting on trial after they refused to assess taxes the governor had tried to impose without the consent of the colonial Assembly.
The trial was a sham — the jury was hand-picked by the prosecution and the judge referred to the defendants as “criminals” throughout the course of the trial, telling them they “must not think the privileges of English men would follow [them] to the end of the world.”
But they did think that, and threw that quote back in the faces of Andros and the judge in the case, when they revolted, overthrew the colonial government, and imprisoned the two of them.
The Whiskey Rebellion
During the Whiskey Rebellion, juries had no interest in indicting or convicting people for their refusal to pay the federal excise tax.
Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau, in her paper “The Whiskey Rebellion in Kentucky: A Forgotten Episode of Civil Disobedience,” showed how effective this strategy was:
When they did meet, grand jurors seemed uninterested in charging anyone with anything.
In fact, the only action taken by grand juries during the first four years was to approve the first census.
Their inactivity implied that Kentucky was a notably law-abiding place.
Of course the judge, the marshal, the grand jurors, and everybody else in Kentucky knew that the internal revenue laws were being ignored.
The Kentucky Gazette regularly published notices about the statutes, often accompanied by complaints and threats from Colonel [Thomas] Marshall.
It is possible that the grand jurors felt justified in overlooking their obligation by attending strictly to the instructions that Judge [Harry] Innes gave them.
He regularly delivered eloquent addresses describing the matters that came within their cognizance.
Among those were such traditional offenses as treason, misprison of treason, forgery, interference with the processes of the courts, bribery, perjury, and so on.
These were sometimes lengthy lists, but they had one obvious omission because violation of federal statutes was also within the grand jurors’ purview.
As long as the judge overlooked such widespread evasion, the jurors evidently felt no obligation to take the initiative and bring charges against their neighbors.
Federal prosecutors could themselves bring charges for violation of the excise law to these grand juries, but none did.
Indeed the federal government had difficulty even finding anyone to take the job of prosecutor.
When, five and a half years after the excise tax went into effect, they finally found someone to take the job, it was a recent arrival from out of state, and they had “to furnish [him] with copies of the revenue statutes, because none were available in the commonwealth.”
Then the government finally was able to begin bringing charges against Whiskey Rebels.
It thought it had won.
Not so much:
During the remaining terms of court in , the federal marshal failed to convene grand juries, and [federal prosecutor] Clarke failed to file any informations [charges].
Clarke had run head-on against the power structure, and it was not about to submit tamely to an outsider.
The agents that he had instructed to seize [Thomas] Jones’s stills were charged with trespass; the witnesses whom he had summoned to testify to the grand juries were denied compensation for their travel.
Clarke complained to the treasury department, which initially sympathized with him, but it acknowledged that the judge was master in his own court.
Then, seven plus years after the widely-resisted excise tax came into effect, the government changed the rules: deciding that anyone who was a whiskey distiller would be banned from serving on the grand jury!
One of the bottlenecks to prosecution had been broken through.
Yet as these cases came to trial, it became clear that the distillers did not have much to worry about.
In an early grand jury address, Judge Innes had stated that “trials by jury… are the great bulwark which intervenes between the magistrate and the citizen,” and these petit jurors obviously saw themselves as that great bulwark.
Whether the charges were initiated by Clarke or by revenue collectors or by grand juries made no difference: trial jurors regularly acquitted their neighbors of criminal charges.
In Kentucky, violation of the revenue acts was simply not perceived as a crime.
Not one of the fifty criminal charges brought during the four years of Clarke’s tenure resulted in conviction [emphasis mine –♇].
Default judgments were set aside, while other charges were abated by death, or quashed, dismissed, or discontinued.
Seven cases went to trial, but the jurors found for the defendants every time, and the judge then ordered their accusers to pay the costs of the suits.
It was proving impossible to win convictions — and it is easy to see why.
The law was held in utter contempt by the people the juries were being drawn from.
Bonsteel Tachau notes, for instance, that “[i]n one term of court alone, five members of the jury panels were themselves defendants in cases brought by Clarke.”
The successful resistance by people in Kentucky against attempts to prosecute their neighbors for resistance to the federal excise tax continued until the the anti-tax movement could claim victory with the election of Thomas Jefferson as president, who promised to rescind the tax.
Karl Marx’s jury
When the royal and military aristocracy of Germany tried to shut down the country’s first popularly-elected legislature before they could enact a Constitution, the parliament responded by declaring the government out of business: “So long as the National Assembly is not at liberty to continue its sessions in Berlin, the Brandenburg cabinet has no right to dispose of government revenues and to collect taxes.”
Karl Marx, who was at the time editing a newspaper called the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, trumpeted the news, saying: “From today, therefore, taxes are abolished!
It is high treason to pay taxes.
Refusal to pay taxes is the primary duty of the citizen!”
The government took Marx to court for such incitements to rebellion, but this didn’t discourage him.
Instead, Marx managed to persuade the jury that he’d been right all along.
(Edmund Wilson, in whose book To The Finland Station I first learned about this case, writes that “the effect [of Marx’s defense] on the jury was so great that Marx was thanked on their behalf by the foreman for his ‘extremely informative speech.’”)
Marx wrote of the acquittal:
[T]he case turned only on the political question: whether the accused were authorised by the decision of the National Assembly on the refusal to pay taxes to call in this way for resistance to the state power, to organise an armed force against that of the state, and to have government authorities removed and appointed at their discretion.
After a very brief consultation, the jury answered this question in the affirmative.
The Rebecca Riots
During one of the tollgate demolishings that marked the Rebecca Riots in Wales, Sarah Williams, who was in charge of the toll house being destroyed, rushed back to try to save it from the flames.
She was shot and killed, presumably by one of the Rebeccaites.
Colonel George Rice Trevor explains what happened next:
[A]n inquest was held… Two surgeons… gave evidence that on the body were marks of shot, some penetrating the nipple of left breast, on in the armpit of the same side, and several shot marks on both arms. Two shots were found in the left lung.
In spite of all this evidence the jury found “that the deceased died from effution of blood into the chest [which] occasioned suffocation, but from what cause is to this jury unknown.”
[emphasis mine –♇]
The inquest refusing to find the cause of death to be murder made it difficult to launch an investigation, make arrests, or begin a prosecution.
One way a tax resistance campaign can get a leg up is through the acts of
sympathizers within the tax collection bureaucracy itself. After all, they’re
taxpayers too, and may feel more loyalty to their fellow-subjects than to the
government they’re subjected to.
To this end, some tax resistance campaigns have made strides by encouraging
resignations, defections, and goldbricking among those responsible for
carrying out the tax laws.
In this, they’re following the lead of Thoreau, who wrote:
Today I’ll give some examples of tax resistance campaigns that tried to
persuade the tax collector to switch teams.
Free Keene
A group of activists in Keene, New Hampshire, ranging from Christian
anarchists to “Free State Project” ballot-box libertarians, has been
experimenting with a number of creative civil disobedience projects.
In , Russell Kanning went to the Keene
branch of the Internal Revenue Service and tried to hand out leaflets to the
employees there. The leaflets quoted from the tribunal that presided over
war crimes trials in Japan after World War Ⅱ to the effect that people are
obligated personally to disengage from the crimes of their governments, and
then provided a sample letter these employees could send to resign from their
jobs.
Kanning was arrested by agents from the Department of Homeland Security and
charged with distributing materials in a federal building and failure to obey
a lawful order. After he was booked and released, he immediately returned to
the IRS
office to try again (without the leaflets, which had been confiscated). He was
arrested again and charged with disorderly conduct.
A few months later, Dave Ridley followed-up on Kanning’s action, at the
Nashua
IRS
office. He silently held up a sign that read “Is it right to work for the
IRS?”
and passed a leaflet through the window that read in part:
I have the right to remain silent.
IRS
agents have the right to quit their jobs. If that is not possible, they have
a responsibility to work as inefficiently as possible when taking our money,
and as quickly as possible when returning it.
The police were summoned and hustled him out of the building. They later cited
him for “distribution of handbills.”
Kat Kanning and Lauren Canario were the next activists in line, going to the
Keene IRS
office with a “Taxes pay for torture” sign and a stack of leaflets. They were
charged with “disorderly conduct and loitering, failure to obey a lawful
order.”
At every stage in the process, they tried to directly but non-aggressively
confront not only the
IRS
employees, but also the Homeland Security officers, court bailiffs, judges,
and other government collaborators: asking them why they were interfering
with American citizens “petitioning their government for redress of
grievances,” and asking them to consider taking up a more honorable line of
work.
The first intifada
At the launching of the first “intifada” resisting Israeli rule over
Palestinians, Palestinians who worked for the tax department under the Israeli
occupation resigned their posts. As a result of this and of organized tax
resistance, only about 20% of Palestinians subject to Israeli taxes in the West
Bank paid their taxes in 1993, the last year before Israel relinquished taxing
authority there to the Palestinian Authority.
Greek tax and customs officials
Complicating the Greek government’s campaign to bring in more tax revenue
during the recent Euro-region financial brouhaha, bureaucrats in the Greek tax
and customs office periodically went on strike
to protest the
accompanying austerity measures that cut funding for state employees.
British nonconformists
British members of nonconforming Christian sects who did not want to see their
tax money going towards schools that taught children the official, government
supported faith, resisted their taxes. The newspapers reported:
In Lincolnshire, the sitting magistrate recently refused to try cases of
resistance, and left the bench. Difficulty is experienced everywhere in
getting auctioneers to sell the property confiscated.
Whiskey Rebellion
As I mentioned earlier this month,
part of the problem the fledgeling United States government had when trying to
enforce its excise tax against the Whiskey Rebels was that it had a devil of a
time convincing anyone to serve as a prosecutor or exciseman.
From the beginning, the Whiskey Rebels counted on being able to convince their
neighbors not to help the federal government enforce the tax. George
Washington’s Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton complained to him:
The opposition first manifested itself in the milder shape of the circulation
of opinions unfavorable to the law, and calculated by the influence of public
disesteem to discourage the accepting or holding of offices under it…
Annuity Tax resisters
During the resistance against the Annuity Tax in Edinburgh, Scotland, a number
of members of the town council who were members of churches other than the
tax-supported establishment church resigned rather than be party to
administering the act that enacted the tax.
Auctioneers whom the government usually could call upon to preside at tax
auctions refused to take the contracts, and carters whom ordinarily could be
contracted to cart the goods refused, and so the town had to hire someone new
at a higher rate, and purchase new vehicles to haul seized property about.
There are many ways to support tax resisters when they are targeted by the police or courts, including:
Another way to help is to disrupt the trials or to break resisters out of prison.
Today I’ll give some examples of these tactics.
Alexander Hamilton complained of the American Whiskey Rebels:
“The audacity of the perpetrators of those excesses was so great, that an armed banditti ventured to seize and carry off two persons who were witnesses against the rioters… in order to prevent their giving testimony of the riot to a court then sitting, or about to sit.”
The American tax rebels in the Fries rebellion did what they could to break their comrades out of prison:
As soon as it became known the arrests were made, the leaders of the opposition to the law determined to rescue them, if possible.
For the purpose of consulting on the subject, a meeting was called at the public house…
Notices were carried around the evening before land left at the houses of those known to be friendly to the movement.
By ten o’clock a number of people had assembled, and considerable excitement was manifested.
The general sentiment was in favor of immediate organization and marching to Bethlehem to take the prisoners from the hands of the Marshal.
The crowd was formed in a company, and John Fries elected captain.
They were variously armed; some with guns, others with swords and pistols, while those with less belligerent feelings, carried clubs.
The people of Northampton, meanwhile, had also taken action in reference to a rescue of the prisoners.
A meeting to consult on the subject was called…
Notice was also given for two or three companies of light horse to meet there at the same time…
Fries led a group of about 140 armed rebels to the building where the prisoners were held, and then after a tense standoff with the Marshal and about twenty of his posse, managed to win the surrender of the prisoners.
Victory was sweet, but brief, as this provoked President John Adams to send in the militia.
Fries and some of his companions were captured, convicted of treason, and sentenced to be hanged (Adams pardoned them).
Those forefathers to the Rebecca Rioters known as “Jack a Lents” rescued two of their number who had been arrested for their roles in toll booth destruction.
A news account said:
[T]he whole gang appeared soon after, who demanded the said prisoners, threatening, in case of refusal, to pull his house down, and burn his barns and stables, and immediately discharged several loaded pieces into the house, which happily did no damage.
The justice finding himself and family beset in such a manner, discharged several blunderbusses and fowling-pieces at them, whereby one was shot dead on the spot, and several so wounded, that ’tis not believed they will recover.
At this the rioters fled with precipitation, leaving their two companions behind them.
But the Jack a Lents weren’t giving up.
A later dispatch reads:
[A]bove twenty of those turnpike cutters or levellers, as they call themselves, though that is a character by much too good for them, met with the said keeper [of the county jail] at the King’s Head Inn at Ross fair, and demanding his reasons for detaining those two men in custody, without giving him time to return an answer, dragged him out of the inn into the street, knocked him down several times, and almost murdered him, notwithstanding all that the innkeeper and his servants could do to prevent it, who were used in a very cruel manner for assisting him.
The villains immediately carried the keeper to Wilton’s Bridge, where at first they concluded to throw him into the river Wye; but at length they agreed to carry him to a place where they would secure him till they themselves had fetched the prisoners out of custody.
The better to complete that design, they dragged him four miles in his boots and spurs, to a place called Horewithey, a public-house, where he was kept prisoner, beat in a shameful manner by those merciless wretches, and obliged to write a discharge to the turnkey, being threatened, in case of refusal, to be hanged upon the spot.
When pensioner Sylvia Hardy was taken to court for her refusal to pay her council tax in , her supporters in the Devon Pensioners’ Action Forum tried to blockade the court and prevent the officials from entering.
More recently, hundreds of British “constitutionalist” tax protesters “stormed a courtroom and attempted to make a citizens’ arrest on a judge in support of a man challenging his council tax bill.”
One of them shouted “seal the court” and another sat in the judge’s seat and officiously ordered the accused to be released.
A number of protesters staged a sit-down blockade of the police vehicles that were summoned to the courthouse.
The court hearing was postponed.
During the tax revolts in Turkey in , the government tried to quietly round up the leaders of the rebellion in the dead of night.
That didn’t work out too well, as the rebels turned the tables:
Haci Akif Agha, one of the important local notables and a leader of the revolt, however, offered a successful resistance to the gendarmes who came to arrest him.
His resistance publicised the arrests, and the citizens immediately organised themselves for the release of the prisoners.
The morning after the arrests, a large crowd of furious Muslims surrounded the Governor’s residence, demanding the return of the exiles.
The Governor escaped to a private house, but was captured and kept prisoner in the İbrahim Pasha Mosque.
The crowd also took revenge against the local police, and went to retrieve the exiled mufti and his companions, “the Governor having been compelled under the threat of death to give orders for their return.”
In 1737, in North Carolina, rumor spread that a man had been imprisoned for refusing to pay a property tax (he had in fact been imprisoned for contempt of court).
500 armed people marched on Edenton, where the prisoner was held, meaning to free him, but by the time they got there he had already been released.
The “mob” thereupon dispersed, threatening, however, “the most cruel usage to such persons as durst come to demand any quitrents of them for the future.”
This was the account of the affair the Governor himself gave, to which he added a declaration of his inability to punish them if they carried out their threats.
There is a semi-organized movement in Chicago to make parking meters unusable through vandalism, including smashing them, disassembling them, making them unreadable with spray-paint, stuffing them with pennies, jamming them with glue or expanding foam, or removing them entirely.
Disabling speed-trap cameras has become almost a popular sport in the United States.
I’ve seen video of people dressed up in Santa suits and temporarily disabling cameras by wrapping them in colorful gift boxes.
Others have used everything from “sticky notes, Silly String, and even a pick-axe” to stop the cameras from taxing speeders.
In Palmer Park, Maryland, recently, the authorities had to install a new set of surveillance cameras to keep an eye on their speed cameras because they were getting vandalized so frequently.
Toll-booths
Greek resisters occupy a highway toll plaza in .
During of the Rebecca Riots in Wales, there were over a hundred attacks on toll-houses, toll-gates, and toll-bars.
“During this period, all the gates and bars in the Whitland, Tivyside, and Brechfa Trusts were destroyed.
Two gates only out of the twenty-one survived in the Three Commotts Trust, whilst between seventy and eighty gates out of about one hundred and twenty were destroyed in Carmarthenshire.
Only nine were left standing out of twenty-two in Cardiganshire.”
Here is one account:
The secret was well kept, no sign of the time and place of the meditated descent was allowed to transpire.
All was still and undisturbed in the vicinity of the doomed toll-gate, until a wild concert of horns and guns in the dead of night and the clatter of horses’ hoofs, announced to the startled toll-keeper his “occupation gone.”
With soldier-like promptitude and decision, the work was commenced; no idle parleying, no irrelevant desire of plunder or revenge divided their attention or embroiled their proceedings.
They came to destroy the turnpike and they did it as fast as saws, and pickaxes, and strong arms could accomplish the task.
No elfish troop at their pranks of mischief ever worked so deftly beneath the moonlight; stroke after stroke was plied unceasingly, until in a space which might be reckoned by minutes from the time when the first wild notes of their rebel music had heralded the attack, the stalwart oak posts were sawn asunder at their base, the strong gate was in billets, and the substantial little dwelling, in which not half an hour before the collector and his family were quietly slumbering, had become a shapeless pile of stones or brick-bats at the wayside.
When the Scleddy turnpike-gate was attacked, they “broke the gates, posts, walls, and toll-boards into pieces so small that in the morning there was not a piece of the timber larger than would make matches”
Toll-booth destruction was also part of the riots in Naples in : “the toll-booths throughout the town were demolished; the mob went from one gate to another.
Everywhere the toll-gatherers had escaped — nobody thought of making any resistance…”
Toll-booth attacks are also a trademark of the current “won’t pay” movement in Greece.
Resisters there have mobbed highway toll plazas, raising the bars and waving cars through.
Miscellany
Danny Burns reports that during the Poll Tax rebellion in Thatcher’s Britain, “In Lothian, it was widely reported that Anti-Poll Tax activists had managed to put a bug into the computer, which randomly wiped out every sixth record on the register.
The virus story was never proven.
However, a month before it was mentioned in the newspapers, its effects were accurately described to two Anti-Poll Tax activists by two computer hackers one of whom had worked for Lothian Regional Council and had been sacked.”
There are some examples in Hippolyte Taine’s history of the French Revolution:
“At Limoux, under the pretext of searching for grain, they enter the houses of the comptroller and tax contractors, carry off their registers, and throw them into the water along with the furniture of their clerks.”
In Anjou, the tax clerks’ horses are seized and sold at auction.
“In Touraine, ‘as the publication of the tax-rolls takes place, riots break out against the municipal authorities; they are forced to surrender the rolls they have drawn up, and their papers are torn up.’ ”
“In Creuse, at Clugnac, the moment the clerk begins to read the document, the women spring upon him, seize the tax-roll, and ‘tear it up with countless imprecations;’ ”
When the IRS seized tax resister Mary Cain’s newspaper, and put a chain and padlock on the front door, “Mrs. Cain sawed off the lock and chain and mailed them to the Internal Revenue Department with a defiant note.”
Whiskey Rebels were known to steal the records of tax collectors.
During the resistance in Missouri against taxes to pay off owners of corruptly-issued railroad bonds, “a gang of armed men rode into the county seat of Osceola and held tax officials at gunpoint while its members stole all the official tax records.”
A British customs official tarred and feathered in America
The textbook case of humiliation-attacks on tax collectors is the “tarring and feathering” practiced, in particular, by American revolutionaries.
After the revolution, the Whiskey Rebels took up the practice.
In one case:
A party of men, armed and disguised, waylaid [Robert Johnson, collector of the revenues] at a place on Pidgeon Creek, in Washington County, seized, tarred and feathered him, cut off his hair, and deprived him of his horse, obliging him to travel on foot a considerable distance in that mortifying and painful situation.
On other occasions, the rebels “docked [collectors’] horses’ tails, and in at least one instance tarred a collector and rolled him in leaves.”
One process server “was seized, whipped, tarred and feathered, and after having his money and horse taken from him, was blindfolded and tied in the woods, in which condition he remained five hours.”
A delusional man named Wilson, “manifestly disordered in his intellects, imagining himself to be a collector of the revenue, or invested with some trust in relation to it, was so unlucky as to make inquiries concerning distillers who had entered their stills, giving out that he was to travel through the United States, to ascertain and report to Congress the number of stills, etc. This man was pursued by a party in disguise, taken out of his bed, carried about five miles back to a smith’s shop, stripped of his clothes, which were afterwards burnt, and, after having been himself inhumanly burnt in several places with a heated iron, was tarred and feathered, and about daylight dismissed — naked, wounded, and otherwise in a very suffering condition.”
Violent humiliation attacks known as “carding” were also part of the Tithe War in Ireland.
According to one account:
Carding the tithe proctors (who certainly were the genuine tyrants of Ireland) was occasionally resorted to by the White Boys, and was performed in the following manner.
The tithe proctor was generally waked out of his first sleep by his door being smashed in; and the boys in white shirts desired him “never to fear,” as they only intended to card him this bout for taking a quarter instead of a tenth from every poor man in the parish.
They then turned him on his face upon the bed; and taking a lively ram cat out of a bag which they brought with them, they set the cat between the proctor’s shoulders.
The beast, being nearly as much terrified as the proctor, would endeavour to get off; but being held fast by the tail, he intrenched every claw deep in the proctor’s back, in order to keep up a firm resistance to the White Boys.
The more the tail was pulled back, the more the ram cat tried to go forward; at length, when he had, as he conceived, made his possession quite secure, main force convinced him to the contrary, and that if he kept his hold, he must lose his tail.
So, he was dragged backward to the proctor’s loins, grappling at every pull, and bringing away, here and there, strips of the proctor’s skin, to prove the pertinacity of his defence.
When the ram cat had got down to the loins, he was once more placed at the shoulders, and again carded the proctor (toties quoties) according to his sentence.
In , “An irate dry cleaner” named LaSaunders Hudson “who wouldn’t pay his taxes forced three state revenue agents to march naked out of his store”
Mabile said as the agents were removing their underwear, Hudson advised them that “this is part of the punishment we are going to give the white man for injustices done the black man.”
During the salt tax (gabelle) riots in Bordeaux in , “A few tax collectors were killed.
Their bodies were dragged through the streets and covered in heaps of salt to underline the point.”
In , Irish settlers in Canada who were refusing to pay a county tax there were confronted by a deputy sheriff who had intended to seize property for back taxes.
Instead, “they compelled him to eat the writs he had, and then gave him a limited time to get out of the township.”
In one town, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, “the moment the clerk begins to read the document, the women spring upon him, seize the tax-roll, and ‘tear it up with countless imprecations;’ the municipal council is assailed, and two hundred persons stone its members, one of whom is thrown down, has his head shaved, and is promenaded through the village in derision.”
Sometimes the humiliation attack would be performed on the tax collector in absentia or in effigy:
During the Tithe War in Ireland, resisters
audaciously dug a grave within sight of Dinefwr Castle, the family seat, and announced that [Colonel George Rice] Trevor would occupy it by .
Trevor, however, surrounded by soldiers, survived unscathed.
During the Whiskey Rebellion,
[T]he inspector of the revenue was burnt in effigy in Allegany county, at a place, and on a day, of some public election, with much display, and without interruption, in the presence of magistrates and other public officers.
Today I’ll give some further examples of terrorism and intimidation directed at tax collectors — this time by means of attacks on their homes and property.
Bailiffs, the officials responsible for seizing goods from Poll Tax rebels in Thatcher’s Britain, were targeted in this way.
In one case, the home of a bailiff company’s chief was surrounded by protesters, who, finding that the target of their protest was not at home, “had a look at his double garage — the door was open.
… Well, there wasn’t a car inside, but there was a mountain bike, fishing tackle, clothes, bottles of wine, garden equipment.
In fact, the place was chock-a-block.
A mock auction was held in front of the press.
Anyway, his possessions ended up strewn all over the garden, and slogans were daubed across the back of his wall: ‘Fuck off bailiff, we’ll be back!’
The police arrived about five minutes after we had gone.
We heard that Mr. Roach [the bailiff company chief] was escorted home later that night in a police car.
It’s good to give people like that a taste of their own medicine.”
“a party of armed men in disguise made an attack in the night upon the house of a collector of revenue who resided in Fayette County, but he happening to be from home, they contented themselves with breaking open his house, threatening, terrifying, and abusing his family.”
This tactic was used frequently during the Rebecca Riots in Wales, for example:
“A plantation belonging to Timothy Powell, Esq., of Pencoed (a magistrate active against Rebecca), was fired… and four acres were burnt.”
A crowd of some 7–800 Rebeccaites surrounded the home of tithe collector Rees Goring Thomas and fired guns through the windows at the terrified occupants.
“[P]arts of the walls were so thickly marked with shots and slugs that scarcely a square inch was free from them, while the windows and curtain were thickly perforated… There were in all fifty-two panes of glass broken in five windows.
… While these outrages were carried on at the house, several of the mob forced open the door, and entered the beautiful walled garden adjoining the house, where they committed devastations of a most disgraceful character.
Nearly all the apple trees and wall-fruit trees of different kinds, were entirely destroyed, being cut to pieces or torn up from the roots.
The various plants and herbs with which the garden abounded were all destroyed, and a row of commodious greenhouses, extending from one side of the garden to the other, was attacked, and a large quantity of glass broken with stones.”
That same crowd then attacked the home of a game warden, firing a blank directly into the face of his wife.
“They then broke the clock, a very good one, an old pier-glass which had been handed down for several generations, the chairs, table, and all the little furniture the poor people possessed.
They also carried away the gamekeeper’s gun, and 10s. or 12s. worth of powder and shot, and previous to leaving took from the drawers all the clothes of the family, which were torn, trodden upon, and partly burnt.
They then left the place, after firing several times.
Several of the painted doors, leading from the road to the plantation, were destroyed by the Rebeccaites.”
During the French Revolution, in Baignes, the home of the director of the excise “is devastated and his papers and effects are burned; they put a knife to the throat of his son, a child six years of age, saying, ‘Thou must perish that there may be no more of thy race.’ ”
In , French tithe resisters “wearing disguises sacked the granary of the tithe collector, and no witnesses could be found to testify against them.”
In Naples, in , “the populace began to attack the houses of those whom they knew had, by farming tolls or in any other way, become rich at the expense of the people.
… [T]he houses were emptied: first that of the cashier of taxes, Alphonso Vagliano.
Beautiful household furniture, plate, pictures, everything that could be found was dragged into the streets, thrown together in a heap and burnt; and when one of the people wanted to conceal a jewel, he was violently upbraided by the rest,” because the point was terroristic vandalism, not looting.
“All the rich and noble persons who were concerned in the farming of tolls, as well as all members of the government, saw their houses demolished.
… Above forty palaces and houses were consumed by the flames on , or were razed to the ground…”
During the French Gabelle Riots of mobs roamed the streets setting fire to tax collectors’ houses.”
Today I’ll continue this chronicle of the more brutal side of tax resistance campaigns with some examples of direct violent attacks on individual tax collectors.
During the Tithe War in Ireland, a Mr. Hudson was leading a party to serve notices on people who had not paid their parish tithes when the group was met by resisters who threw stones at them.
Hudson shot one, at which point the rest of his party abandoned him, whereupon “he was brutally murdered by the mob, who mangled his corpse in a very frightful manner.”
There were several examples of such attacks during the Whiskey Rebellion.
These examples come from Alexander Hamilton’s report to President Washington:
“The officers now began to experience marks of contempt and insult.
Threats against them became more frequent and loud; and after some time these threats were ripened into acts of ill treatment and outrage.”
A deputy reported that “from a variety of threats to himself personally, although he took the utmost precaution to conceal his errand, that he was not only convinced of the impossibility of serving the process, but that any attempt to effect it would have occasioned the most violent opposition from the greater part of the inhabitants; and he declares that if he had attempted it, he believes he should not have returned alive.”
“Designs of personal violence against the Inspector of the Revenue himself, to force him to a resignation, were repeatedly attempted to be put in execution by armed parties, but by different circumstances were frustrated.”
“The idea was immediately embraced, that it was a very important point in the scheme of opposition to the law, to prevent the establishment of offices [of inspection] in the respective counties.
For this purpose the intimidation of well-disposed inhabitants was added to the plan of molesting and obstructing the officers by force or otherwise, as might be necessary.
So effectually was the first point carried (the certain destruction of property and the peril of life being involved), that it became almost impracticable to obtain suitable places for offices in some of the counties, and when obtained, it was found a matter of necessity, in almost every instance, to abandon them.”
“[A]nother party of men, some of them armed, and all in disguise, went to the house of the same collector of Fayette which had been visited in April, broke and entered it, and demanded a surrender of the officer’s commission and official books.
Upon his refusing to deliver them up, they presented pistols at him, and swore that if he did not comply they would instantly put him to death.”
The Fries Rebellion also was notorious for its violence against tax assessors.
Here are some examples from William Davis’s book on the subject:
“In a few instances, and before any matured plan had been agreed upon, the officers were prevented by threats from making the assessments…”
“[A]s threats of serious injury had been made against the assessors, who were forbidden to enter the township, they declined to attempt it.”
“The assessor of this township had been so much intimidated and threatened he was afraid to go about in the discharge of his duties.
Mr. Foulke also expressed some fears of going into the township, as threats had likewise been made against him, and he anticipated trouble.”
“Captain Kuyder, who was in command of a company of militia, called them into service to assist in driving the assessors out of the township.”
“[Fries] proclaimed his opposition to the law; and said ‘I now warn you not to go to another house to take the rates; if you do you will be hurt.’ ”
“[The assessors] came to the unanimous conclusion they would not be justified in further attempt to take the rates in Milford township, on account of the violent opposition of the inhabitants, led on by John Fries.”
The rebels confronted a small band of assessors, who split up on seeing them.
“Rodrock now rode in advance, and, when he had passed about half through the crowd, without giving heed to their commands to stop, they started to run after him from both sides of the road, some carrying clubs and others muskets, and made motions as if they intended to strike him.”
He was halted, threatened at gunpoint, and then he fled; his companions were captured.
One was dragged back to a pub and beaten.
When he refused to hand over an assessment he had made earlier in the day, “They again took hold of him and shook him severely; and one man came forward and said he should be shot.”
Fries told him he would be if he ever came back to assess.
“The circumstances which took place at Quakertown decided the assessors to make no further attempt to take assessments in Milford, as they were convinced it would lead to difficulty, and, possibly, bloodshed.”
“When the people of the township heard that another person had been appointed in place of the one first named, and had undertaken to discharge the duties of the office, they became very violent and threatened him with personal injury.
The leaders of the opposition collected a number of the disaffected into a mob, who waited upon the assessor, and gave him to understand harm would be done him if he attempted to take the rates.
This demonstration intimidated him to such degree he resigned, and declined to have anything more to do with it.”
“[T]he people were so much enraged at Nicholas Michael, the assessor, for accepting the appointment, they went in large numbers to his house at night to do him bodily injury, but, being informed of their intention, he sought safety in flight.
The next day he went to the commissioner and made complaint of the treatment he had received, tendered his resignation, and begged its acceptance… …they went to Judge Traill, an associate judge of the county; but, when they arrived there, Michael became alarmed and begged to be allowed until the next morning to consider the matter; saying, that if he informed against the people, he and his family would be ruined.
In the morning he wished to be put in jail to be kept from danger, so great were his fears, but his request was not complied with.”
“[Mr. Bailliott, a collector] was waylaid upon his return from Bethlehem, whether he had been on business, and so severely beaten a physician was brought from that place to attend him.”
The French Revolution also featured attacks on collectors:
“At Toulon a demand is made for the head of the mayor, who signs the tax-list, and of the keeper of the records; they are trodden under foot, and their houses are ransacked.…”
“Especially against collectors of the salt-tax, custom-house officers, and excisemen the fury is universal.
These, everywhere, are in danger of their lives and are obliged to fly.
At Falaise, in Normandy, the people threaten to ‘cut to pieces the director of the excise.’
… For four hours the clerks are on the point of being torn to pieces; through the entreaties of the lord of the manor, who sees scythes and sabres aimed at his own head, they are released only on the condition that they ‘abjure their employment.’ ”
“ ‘No collector dare send an official to distrain; none that are sent dare fulfill their mission.’ ”
“At Saint-Etienne-en-Forez, Berthéas, a clerk in the excise office, falsely accused of monopolizing grain, is fruitlessly defended by the National Guard; he is put in prison, according to the usual custom, to save his life, and, for greater security, the crowd insist on his being fastened by an iron collar.
But, suddenly changing its mind, it breaks upon the door and drags him to death.
Stretched on the ground, his head still moves and he raises his hand to it, when a woman, picking up a large stone, smashes his skull.
— These are not isolated occurrences.”
“[A]t Béziers, thirty-two employés, who had seized a quantity of contraband salt on the persons of armed smugglers, are pursued by the crowd to the Hôtel-de-Ville; the consuls decline to defend them and run away; the troops defend them, but in vain.
Five are tortured, horribly mutilated, and then hung.”
“ ‘The arrears of taxes to be collected is here very considerable, white all proceedings of constraint are dangerous and impossible to execute, owing to the fears of the bailiffs, who dare not perform their duties, and the violence of the tax-payers, on whom there is no check.’ ”
In , a tax official in Issoudun, France, was “dragged… through the streets, [the crowd] shouting out at each street-lamp, ‘Let him be hung!’ ”
During the Poujadeist tax strikes in France, “unabashed Poujade vigilantes went right on chasing tax collectors down the roads, mobbing police and defying troops assigned to escort them” … “Angry ‘Poujadistes’ began resorting to physical violence against stubborn tax inspectors who insisted on seeing the accounts.”
Today I’ll continue our look at the violent side of tax resistance campaigns by giving some examples of assaults and intimidation directed at collaborators with the tax system:
In Paris during the French Revolution, legal proceedings against people who destroyed the tax offices were abandoned when neither the officers in charge of the investigation or the National Assembly itself had the courage to stand up to popular indignation and threats.
Witnesses who were called to testify against the Fries Rebels “were generally very reluctant to give information, being afraid the insurgents would do them some injury.”
In the Whiskey Rebellion, “William Richmond, who had given information against some of the rioters… had his barn burnt, with all the grain and hay which it contained…”
During the Rebecca Riots, two or three hundred Rebeccaites met at an inn in Pontyberem and, during the course of the meeting, forced the innkeeper to swear not to admit the toll collector at the inn.
In another example: “the dead body of Thomas Thomas… was found in a river near Brechfa!
This man had been very much opposed to the Rebecca movement, and… had been to Carmarthen to make a complaint to the authorities against some Rebeccaites; on his return home that night he found his house, etc., on fire.
Bearing this in mind, together with other circumstantial evidence, it is plain that he had some bitter enemies in the neighbourhood, and it was generally believed that he had been waylaid and murdered.”
Thomas had on another occasion testified against his servant and had him jailed, and for this the Rebeccaites ransacked his house, destroying what they could.
During the Tithe War in Ireland, resisters did what they could to prevent people from cooperating with attempt to seize and auction off resisters’ goods:
[I]t almost invariably happened that either the assembled spectators were afraid to bid, lest they should incur the vengeance of the peasantry, or else they stammered out such a low offer, that, when knocked down, the expenses of the sale would be found to exceed it.
The same observation applies to the crops.
Not one man in a hundred had the hardihood to declare himself the purchaser.
Sometimes the parson, disgusted at the backwardness of bidders, and trying to remove it, would order the cattle twelve or twenty miles away in order to their being a second time put up for auction.
But the locomotive progress of the beasts was always closely tracked, and means were taken to prevent either driver or beast receiving shelter or sustenance throughout the march.
One clergyman had to import some sixty workers to help him take his tithes “in kind” from the farmers in his parish, “from distant counties, and at high wages, who yet were incapable of obtaining more than a small portion of tithes, being interrupted by a rabble — chiefly women — though men were lurking in the background to support them.”
In colonial North Carolina during the Stamp Act agitation, “The stamp masters were seized and forced to swear they would have nothing to do with the stamps, and it being known when the vessel bringing the stamps would come up to Wilmington, Colonels Ashe and Waddell, having called out the militia from Brunswick and the adjoining counties to the number of some 700 men, seized the vessel and held her until her commander promised not to permit the stamps to be taken from her.”
During the Reform Bill uprising in the , “Threats had been employed to prevent auctioneers from selling distrained goods; and an auctioneer in Bath had been obliged, in consequence of intimidation, to issue a handbill, in which he gave public notice, that he would not receive for sale any goods distrained for the non-payment of King’s Taxes.”
Irish Household Tax resisters recently mobbed Ireland’s Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, surrounding his car and chanting “fucking scumbag” Another politician who witnessed the event said: “In my view, there was an element of thuggery to it.
Some of the protestors prevented him from getting out of the car park.”
When Ondárroa tried to hire an outside debt collection company to go after resisters; “Upon learning of the assignment of this work to the Bilbaoan firm Gesmunpal, the nationalist left spread slogans via Internet in favor of ‘civil disobedience,’ as well as calls and letters against the company.
Gesmunpal resigned.”
During the Annuity Tax resistance movement in Edinburgh, a newspaper was sued for publicizing the names of the people who rented carts to the government for hauling away distrained goods — the grounds of the suit being that such publicity would be damaging to the business of the carters.
The Poll Tax resistance movement in Thatcher’s Britain included attacks and threats directed at collaborators with the tax, for example:
“Attacks and threats have been made against Bristol newsagents and shops where people can pay the Poll Tax.
Windows have been smashed and graffiti daubed over businesses which have become agents for the Bristol-based company ‘Penalty Points.’
The firm installs special tills with its agents to collect the community charge on behalf of local authorities for a fee.
Mr. Ross Hendry, a spokesman for the company… said ‘because of the attacks, one newsagent in Patchway has now declined taking an agency after a brick was thrown through his window.
He said another newsagent in Bishoport Avenue, Hartclife had the words ‘Poll Tax scab’ and ‘you’re the first’ scrawled in white paint across his window.
A Circle K store in Cardiff where the revolutionary scheme was launched on with 48 agents, had its door locks jammed with superglue.”
some of the posters with threatening messages aimed at bailiffs and other poll tax collaborators
Intimidation of bailiffs (people authorized to seize and sell property for tax arrears) was widespread: “Housing schemes and estates were plastered with posters.
One showing a vicious dog, read ‘Bailiffs?
Make my day!’
Another showing a picture of Malcolm X holding a machine gun looking out from behind the curtains, read: ‘Bailiffs we’re ready.’
A third showed a picture of a bailiff swinging in a noose.
It read ‘Dead bailiffs don’t knock on doors.’
In some areas bailiffs and registration officers were photographed and their portraits were reproduced on posters which read ‘wanted’ and listed their ‘crimes.’
These images were extremely popular… People were used to seeing images of themselves in the role of victim.
Now wherever they looked there were images of their adversaries in this role.”
“Wherever the council registration officers went they were harassed.
In Glasgow violent threats drove canvasser Robert Stevenson to quit his job.
He was physically threatened twice in four weeks and continually harassed:
I’d just put the form through the door when this guy across in the garden opposite started shouting.
He was sitting in the garden with about four others and they were all giving me dirty looks.
He said that if I came back to collect the form I would need a tank for protection.
I was in no doubt that they were serious.
I didn’t finish my last street.
I just chucked it.
“…another canvasser… was ‘harassed by a gang.’
In this case, it was reported that:
Four or five youths cornered him in a close in Gairbraid Avenue and subjected him to abuse.
A Strathclyde police spokesman revealed: “They said it was a ‘No Poll Tax Area’ and told the worker to get out, which he did.”
“Following these reports, the Poll Tax registration officer admitted that ‘there had been at least four other incidents involving canvassers’ and… canvassers had been threatened (leaflets were grabbed from their hands).
Already over two members of his staff had resigned because of fears about their personal safety.”
Mayors and municipal councils resigned en masse to support the French wine-growers’ tax strike of , and, according to one account, “there have been threats to burn the property of those mayors failing to resign.”
“Mr. Trueman, a Poll Tax snooper whose job was to call on people and badger them into filling the registration forms, [was] unable to cope with the abuse…
Mrs. Trueman found the corpse of her husband as she came back from shopping.
Fred Trueman, 52, an employee of Bristol City, had hanged himself.
“No-one can imagine what terrible pressure he had to work under,” she claimed.
“He was sworn at and threatened; he couldn’t stand it any more.”
Social boycott can also be a potent tactic to use against tax collectors or collaborators with the tax collection process.
Here are some examples:
Adolf Hausrath writes about how social boycott was used to discourage tax collectors in Roman-occupied Judaea:
The people knew how to torment these officials of the Roman customs with the petty cruelty which ordinary people develop with irreconcilable persistency, whenever they believe this persistency to be due to their moral indignation.
In consequence of the theocratic scruples about the duty of paying taxes, the tax-gatherers were declared to be unclean and half Gentile.… among the Jews the words “tax-gatherersand sinners,”“tax-gatherers and Gentiles,”“tax-gatherers and harlots,” “tax-gatherers, murderers and robbers,” and similar insulting combinations, were not only ready on the tongue and familiar, but were accepted as theocratically identical in meaning.
Thrust out from all social intercourse, the tax-gatherers became more and more the pariahs of the Jewish world.
With holy horror did the Pharisee sweep past the lost son of Israel who had sold himself to the Gentile for the vilest purpose, and avoid the places which his sinful breath contaminated.
Their testimony was not accepted by Jewish tribunals.
It was forbidden to sit at table with them or eat of their bread.
But their money-chests especially were the summary of all uncleanness and the chief object of pious horror, since their contents consisted of none but unlawful receipts, and every single coin betokened a breach of some theocratic regulation.
To exchange their money or receive alms from them might easily put a whole house in the condition of being unclean, and necessitate many purifications.
From these relations of the tax-officials to the rest of the population, it can be readily understood that only the refuse of Judaism undertook the office.
The current Greek “won’t pay” movement included a joint statement from several outraged groups that called for a social boycott of legislators who went along with the tax-and-austerity plans: “do not talk to them, do not listen, do not socialize, do not invite, do not serve them, do not put gasoline in their cars…”
A social boycott of tax collectors was practiced in the years before the American revolution.
John Adams wrote:
At Philadelphia, the Heart-and-Hand Fire Company has expelled Mr. Hughes, the stamp man for that colony.
The freemen of Talbot county, in Maryland, have erected a gibbet before the door of the court-house, twenty feet high, and have hanged on it the effigies of a stamp informer in chains, in terrorem till the Stamp Act shall be repealed; and have resolved, unanimously, to hold in utter contempt and abhorrence every stamp officer, and every favorer of the Stamp Act, and to “have no communication with any such person, not even to speak to him, unless to upbraid him with his baseness.”
So triumphant is the spirit of liberty everywhere.
Sam Adams led those opposed to the tea tax to declare “That whoever shall directly or indirectly countenance this attempt [to send and collect duties on East India Company tea to America], or in any wise aid or abet in unloading, receiving, or vending the tea sent or to be sent out by the East India Company while it remains subject to the payment of a duty here is an enemy to America.” and to decide “that a committee be immediately chosen to wait on those gentlemen, who it is reported are appointed by the East India Company to receive and sell said tea, and to request them from a regard to their own characters and the peace and good order of this town and province immediately to resign their appointment.”
During the Whiskey Rebellion, the rebels passed a social boycott resolution that said in part:
…[W]hereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country, as to accept offices for the collection of the duty:
Resolved, therefore, That in future we will consider such persons as unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them; withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby most earnestly recommended to the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them.
Islanders living off the coast of Galway County in Ireland refused to appoint tax collectors from among their number, and “where collectors are available on the mainland owners of boats have refused to facilitate their passage to the islands,” according to a newspaper account.
“On a few occasions the Civic Guards have persuaded the owners to lend their service and their boats, or their boats alone, for the guards to cross.
In such cases the guards have met with anything but a cordial reception.”
During the Dublin water charge strike:
Through contacts in the trade union movement we were able to discover the names of all the water inspectors and imagine their surprise the night before disconnections were due to begin when each of them received a hand-delivered letter appealing to them as trade union members not to cut people’s water off.
They decided not to respond positively to our polite request so the next morning when they left home under the cover of darkness, they each discovered a car-load of activists sitting outside their homes ready to follow them wherever they might go to try to do their dirty work.
One of them didn’t like it so much that after driving around and being followed for an hour he went to the local copshop to complain about being intimidated.
During the Bardoli satyagraha, tax collectors and collaborators were vigorously shunned.
Here are some excerpts from Mahadev Desai’s The Story of Bardoli:
There were meetings in talukas contiguous to Bardoli… calling upon people in their respective parts not to cooperate with the authorities engaged in putting down the Satyagraha… by helping in the attachment of property by engaging as labourers or sending carts on hire…
…the police proceeded to hire a taxi.
The driver, whose car had been engaged by the Satyagrahis, refused to break his engagement and place his bus at the disposal of the Collector.
His licence was demanded, it was not with him, but he showed his brass badge, which he was asked to surrender.
Another taxidriver whose car had been engaged by [campaign commander] Sjt. Vallabhbhai was deprived of his licence too.
Kadod… was trying to go one better than other villages by resolving to cut off supplies of provision, etc. to the attachment officer posted in the village.
Sjt. Vallabhbhai in a long and moving speech expounded the principles of Satyagraha, and told them that their resolution was not in keeping with principles and must be canceled: “In a struggle based essentially on truth and nonviolence we must not do anything in resentment or anger.
It is a sign of weakness.
…do not refuse them the ordinary amenities of life.
They must get whatever they want at market rates.”
It would appear, that three carts were commandeered. for removing the kit and luggage belonging to the Deputy Collector from the Bardoli thana [district] to Valod.
The man to whom the carts belonged came to realise his mistake and went to the thana in company with Sjt. Ravishankar to call back his men.
One of the cartmen, as soon as he saw his master, said, they were not at all willing to go but they were helpless.
Sjt. Ravishankar pleaded with the Mamlatdar that if the men were not willing they should not be forced.
He was ordered to leave the thana which he did; and the cartman leaving the cart followed him.
The other cartmen also ultimately left leaving the carts in the thana compound.
Moderate reformist K.M. Munshi wrote to the government after visiting Bardoli:
Your japti officer has to travel miles before he can get a shave.
Your officer’s car which got stuck would have remained in the mud but for Mr. Vallabhbhai, officially styled “agitator living on Bardoli.”
Garda to whom lands worth thousands have been sold for a nominal amount does not get even a scavenger for his house.
The Collector gets no conveyance on the railway station unless one is given by Mr. Vallabhbhai’s sanction.
The threat of social boycott also played out at other points in the Indian independence struggle, with one account noting for instance that “the native police, fearing social boycott if they pressed their own kinsmen too hard, in some cases sat idly by and watched proceedings,” during the Dharasana salt raid.
When the salt march reached the sea near Danmi, where Gandhi planned to harvest sea salt in violation of the taxed monopoly:
The police and labourers [who had been hired by the government to try to destroy all the natural salt deposits in the area] are boycotted by the villagers in the neighbourhood and have to journey to a village ten miles away to procure food.
During the Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance, social boycott was practiced against tax enforcers:
Of late months, no auctioneer would venture to the Cross to roup for stipend.
What human being has nerve enough to bear up against the scorn, hatred, and execration of his fellow-creatures, expressed in a cause he himself must feel just?
The cabman who brought the officers, seeing they were engaged in such a disagreeable duty, took his cab away, and they had some difficulty in procuring another…
During the government investigation of the Annuity Tax resistance campaign the following exchange took place:
Q: What was Mr. Whitten’s express reason for declining to act as auctioneer?
A: He was very much inconvenienced on that occasion, and he believed that his general business connection would suffer by undertaking these sales, and that he would lose the support of any customer who was of that party.
During the Fries Rebellion, social pressure made it difficult for the government to recruit collaborators:
[I]n every tavern [Jacob Eyerley] stopped at, the law was the subject of general conversation and denunciation, and great pains were taken to find the friends of government, in order to persuade them not to accept the office of assessor.
In consequence of this feeling there was great difficulty in finding suitable persons for these appointments.
When Thatcher’s poll tax was being introduced, the government tried to recruit convenience stores and newsstands to be tax collection points.
When the resistance got wind of this, they contacted the stores, letting them know they would be boycotted if they allowed themselves to be used in this way.
Several then refused to participate.
A threat of social boycott was used to deter potential buyers of property seized from Steuben County resisters of taxes meant to pay back purchasers of crooked railroad bonds:
The scene was upon the farm of William Atkins, where 200 of the solid yeomanry of the town had assembled to resist the sale… A Mr. Updyke, with broader hint, made these remarks: “I want to tell you folks that Mr. Atkins has paid all of his tax except this railroad tax; and we consider any man who will buy our property to help John Davis and Sam Alley as contemptible sharks.
We shall remember him for years, and will know where he lives.”
The tax collector finally rose and remarked that in view of the situation he would not attempt to proceed with the sale.
During a tax resistance campaign in the German countryside between the world wars:
The carters refused, even with police protection, to carry off the distrained cattle, for they knew that if they did they would never again be able to do business with the peasants.
One day three peasants even appeared in the slaughter yards at Hamburg and announced that unless the distrained cattle disappeared at once from the yard’s stalls the gentlemen in charge of the slaughterhouse could find somewhere else to buy their beasts in the future — they wouldn’t be getting any more from Schleswig-Holstein.
I gave some examples of social boycotts and shunning being used as a way of discouraging non-participation in a tax resistance campaign.
Campaigns have also used threats of violence and other, more ambiguous threats as a way of trying to coerce reluctant people into resisting their taxes.
Here are some examples:
During the Whiskey Rebellion, rebels threatened to destroy the stills of distillers who complied in paying the excise tax.
Here are some other examples:
A letter from “Tom the Tinker” (a collective alias used by the rebels) to one distiller told him that he must stop paying the tax, must join them in their paramilitary activities, and must publish the letter containing these threats in the newspaper at his own expense.
Alexander Hamilton complained that “nor were the outrages perpetrated confined to the officers; they extended to private citizens who only dared to show their respect for the laws of their country.”
Also: “a person of the name of Roseberry underwent the humiliating punishment of tarring and feathering, with some aggravations, for having in conversation hazarded the very natural and just but unpalatable remark, that the inhabitants of that county could not reasonably expect protection from a government whose laws they so strenuously opposed.”
“Robert Shawhan, a distiller, who had been among the first to comply with the law, and who had always spoken favorably of it… had his barn burnt, with all the grain and hay which it contained.”
There were “threats of tarring and feathering one William Cochran, a complying distiller, and of burning his distillery; and that it had also been given out that, in three weeks, there would not be a house standing in Alleghany County, of any person who had complied with the laws.”
“[M]en called at the house of James Kiddoe, who had recently complied with the laws, broke into his still-house, fired several balls under his still, and scattered fire over and about the house.”
“James Kiddoe, the person above mentioned, and William Cochran, another complying distiller, met with repeated injury to their property.
Kiddoe had parts of his grist-mill at different times carried away, and Cochran suffered more material injuries; his still was destroyed, his saw-mill was rendered useless by the taking away of the saw, and his grist-mill so injured as to require to be repaired at considerable expense.”
During the Fries Rebellion, also, one family “said there were some bad people living in the neighborhood who would do them injury if they submitted to the rates.”
The Rebecca Rioters sometimes took or threatened reprisals against those who willingly paid tolls or who refused to join their tollbooth destruction gallivants:
One notice from the rioters read: “This is to give notice, that the goods of all persons who will henceforth pay at Water Street Gate will be burned and their lives will be taken from them at a time they will not think — ’Becca.”
“Mr. Thomas of Clynarthen, having refused to join them, had his wheat-field entirely destroyed before morning, by their turning cattle from the mountain into it that night.”
“[T]he farmyard of Mr. Howell Davies, a respectable farmer living in the village of Conwil, and an Anti-Rebeccaite, was set on fire.
With the assistance of the neighbours the fire was ultimately got under, but not until two ricks of hay and three stacks of corn or straw had become a prey to the devouring element.”
During the tax strike in a French wine region, “there have been threats to burn the property of those mayors failing to resign and of those taxpayers who satisfy the taxgatherers’ demand.”
And “committees have been nominated to see individuals who have not undertaken not to pay taxes.”
In Ghana in , a meeting of rebellious groups “swore not to let the grandees go to the fort nor pay any tax, even if the government should fight with them, and to make war with any party breaking the agreement.”
At one point, making good on this threat, “[a] stir was made by some ruffians when they perceived the chiefs of Christiansborg were on the point of giving in, upon which the whole assembly, amounting to over 4000 men, at once took up arms to [threaten to] attack the merchants.”
A report on the Beit Sahour tax resistance movement said of businesses in the town that “if they paid, they undermined the resistance movement, [and] were harassed and threatened by intifada leaders.”
Other descriptions are more vague, and may or may not imply violent threats:
In the French revolution, “[i]f a docile taxpayer happens to be found, he is not allowed to pay the dues; this seems a defection and almost treachery.”
During the Irish Tithe War, “the public opinion of Ireland was dead against the payment of tithes.
That public opinion hinted pretty plainly to those who were willing, for peace and quietness, to pay tithes to their Protestant masters, that such payment would not necessarily secure to them peace and quietness.”
A meeting of Kilkenny farmers passed a resolution saying that, “we consider the man that pays tithes (unless he be a Protestant) an enemy to his neighbour, an enemy to his country, an enemy to his religion, and an enemy to his God.”
Today I’m going to cover another tactic in the same ballpark: the use of
smuggling to get consumer goods to market while evading a tax or a
government-enforced monopoly. Smuggling can serve a tax resistance movement in
multiple ways:
Smuggling can deprive the government of revenue.
Smuggling can raise money for resistance activities.
Smuggling can forge bonds between a variety of people in a geographically
distributed, semi-organized underground, in a way that can later be
capitalized on for resistance activity.
Here are some examples of smuggling being used in the course of tax resistance
campaigns:
In the years leading up to the American Revolution, “the restrictions on
imports from the West Indies were systematically and persistently ignored,
producing a condition of smuggling so universal and well-nigh respectable
as to raise the question whether the operations of the merchants could
properly be designated by that term.”
Indeed the economy of the American colonies relied on smuggling to such an
extent that the government’s threat to crack down on the evasion of duties
on imported molasses did more to fan the flames of revolution than any of
its other saber-rattling. Revolutionary John Adams wrote later:
I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential
ingredient in American independence. Many great events have proceeded
from much smaller causes.
The burning of
the Gaspée — a ship that the government was
using to track down smugglers — in
ratcheted up the tension between the colonists and Mother England soon
before the Revolutionary War broke out.
The U.S.
government tried to defeat the Whiskey Rebellion by purchasing as much
taxed whiskey as it could get its hands on (ostensibly as requisitions
for the Army) while at the same time trying to interrupt the black market
for untaxed whiskey by seizing what they could find of it. This didn’t
work as planned, as the rebels shifted to smuggling their goods out of
the state, “to the territory northwest of the Ohio [river],” where the tax
law did not apply.
A Colombian anarchist recently published a guide to
“Contraband as a Strategy of Tax Avoidance”
to help potential tax resisters in countries where a value-added or sales
tax is the primary funder of the national treasury.
Gandhi’s salt march and salt raids promoted the harvesting, distribution,
and sale of salt illegally produced outside of the approved government
monopoly.
Some tax resistance campaigns have had their own anthems or fight songs.
Mahadev Desai, in The Story of Bardoli, mentions such songs on a few occasions:
I paid a visit along with Sjt. Vallabhbhai to one of these [Raniparaj] villages.
… The young women, who had taken the Khadi pledge three years ago in the presence of Gandhiji and shed their trinkets and heavy brass ornaments, were all there in spotlessly white Khadi, brimming over with joy and lustily singing Satyagraha songs.
The mention of the Satyagraha songs reminds me of one or two things that happened during the month.
… Phulchandbhai had already some songs ready, and the atmosphere in the taluka gave him the inspiration for many more.
These friends were posted at Valod, and thanks to their bhajans they were in great demand everywhere.
The plain and homely songs spread the message of Satyagraha in a most effective manner, and men, women, and children had them on their lips.
One cannot speak too highly of the part played in the movement by Phulchandbhai and his songs.
I shall describe one of the scenes.
We visited Nani Phalod, a small village, at about 9 p.m. There was a huge procession of men and women, the former singing Satyagraha songs, and the latter singing a song from an old saint of which the refrain was: “All our sorrows have ended, now that the Master has come.”
There were huge meetings everywhere, attended by hundreds of women, laying heaps of [homespun] yarn before Sjt. Vallabhbhai, as in , and lustily singing bhajans.
The invincible spirit of the people evidenced everywhere was bound to exasperate the officials even more.
The women of Varad… had their own songs, some of them being old songs of the saints and some composed by themselves to suit the fight in which they were engaged, and tacked on to the originals.
One of these songs sung soulfully by them ran:
With full knowledge take up your arms even like a Gnani (seer).
Let Purity and Contentment be your armour and Courage your shield.
The valiant shall rush to the forefront, the laggards will be beaten and will take to their heels.
With full knowledge, therefore, take up the fight like the Gnani.
The path of fight is not strewn with roses.
It is sharp as the edge of the sword, for it is the fight for Truth.
Let us therefore be wide awake like the Gnani.
With full knowledge etc.
The tyrant has run amok and crushed the ryot under his heels.
We slumbered so long, we have now found our Guru and are blessed with knowledge.
With full knowledge etc.
He has taught us to pit righteousness and truth against oppression and injustice.
God is sure to run to the rescue of right and vanquish the wrong.
With full knowledge etc.
Vallabhbhai our leader assures us that ultimately victory is ours.
Let us therefore keep our pledge.
With full knowledge etc.
The boycotts and tax strikes of the American Revolution also had their songs.
When patriots gathered to spin home-spun yarn, the work would be accompanied by “many stirring tunes, anthems, and liberty songs,” such as the following:
Young ladies in town, and those that live round, Let a friend at this season advise you; Since money’s so scarce, and times growing worse, Strange things may soon hap and surprise you.
First, then, throw aside your topknots of pride; Wear none but your own country linen; Of economy boast, let your pride be the most To show clothes of your own make and spinning.
What if homespun they say is not quite so gay As brocades, yet be not in a passion, For when once it is known this is much worn in town, One and all will cry out— ’Tis the fashion!
And, as one, all agree, that you’ll not married be To such as will wear London factory, But at first sight refuse, tell ’em such you will choose As encourage our own manufactory.
No more ribbons wear, nor in rich silks appear; Love your country much better than fine things; Begin without passion, ’twill soon be the fashion To grace your smooth locks with a twine string.
Throw aside your Bohea, and your Green Hyson tea, And all things with a new-fashion duty; Procure a good store of the choice Labrador, For there’ll soon be enough here to suit you.
These do without fear, and to all you’ll appear, Fair, charming, true, lovely and clever; Though the times remain darkish, young men may be sparkish, And love you much stronger than ever.
Then make yourselves easy, for no one will teaze ye, Nor tax you, if chancing to sneer At the sense-ridden tools, who think us all fools; But they’ll find the reverse far and near.
The modern American war tax resistance movement has in recent years managed to collect its own funk anthem (“What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes?” by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings):
I was talking to a friend of mine Said he don’t want no wars no more They’re building bombs while our schools are falling Tell me what in the hell we’re paying taxes for
What if we all stopped paying taxes? Now, what if we all stopped paying taxes? Stop paying taxes y’all
Now tell me who’s gonna buy their bombs Their tanks, their planes and all their guns Well, tell me who’s gonna pay for their wars If we all get together and cut their funds
Hey, listen people, listen to what I’ve got to say What if we all stopped paying taxes?
folk song (“Don’t Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons” by Norman Blake):
Don’t send your money to Washington To fight a war that’s never done Don’t play their games don’t be their pawns And don’t be afraid of the neo-cons
and rap (“Uncle Sam Goddamn” by Brother Ali):
You don’t give money to the bums On the corner with a sign, bleeding from their gums. Talking about you don’t support a crackhead — What you think happens to the money from yo taxes?
Shit, the government’s an addict With a billion dollar a week kill-brown-people habit And even if you ain’t on the front line When the master yell crunch time you right back at it
You ain’t look at how you hustling backwards And the end of the year add up what they subtracted: 3 outta twelve months your salary Paid for that madness… man that’s sadness
War tax resister Joan Baez was fond of including the Whiskey Rebellion celebration tune “Copper Kettle” in her concerts.
Get you a copper kettle Get you a copper coil Cover with new made corn mash And never more you’ll toil
You just lay there by the juniper While the moon is bright Watch them jugs a-fillin’ In the pale moonlight
Build your fires of hickory Hickory or ash or oak Don’t use no green or rotten wood They’ll catch you by the smoke
My daddy he made whiskey My granddaddy did to We ain’t paid no whiskey tax Since !
When a youth activist group joined war tax resisters at a recent Tax Day demonstration at the Oakland federal building, they brought their lyrical skills along:
People, People, People, can’t you see? They kill around the world with tax money. Stealing from workers how there money’s made, I guess that’s why we’re broke and they’re so paid!
People, People, People, can’t you see? They tax the poor more, the rich stay greedy. No money for health or to educate, I guess that’s why we’re broke and they’re so paid!
On-line, you can see some of the rehearsal video showing how they combined the lyrics with pantomime to drive the point home.
At another American “Tax Day” protest, this one in St. Louis in , war tax resisters at the federal building sang a protest song with lyrics like these:
For the cost of cluster bombs that maim and leave to bleed our kids could have more teachers helping them to read
Tax resisters against the British colonial government in Ghana had a fight song for the occasion:
Cannon they have loaded, but couldn’t fire, Cannon they have loaded, but couldn’t fire. Whitemen dishonestly imposed poll-tax on the blacks. The poll-tax we will never pay, the grandees never deliver up, Go tell the white man to come out!
Luzerne County, Pennsylvania is home to an unusually corrupt government culture (or maybe it’s just that they got caught).
Federal authorities charged 23 county residents with various corruption charges, including three judges and a county commissioner.
But then the county government decided to hike taxes by 10%.
Fred Heller said no.
Why fund a nest of crooks?
He recorded a protest song titled “Take This Tax and Shove It” and started a campaign to get county residents to refuse to pay their taxes, at least until the government stables have had all their manure shoveled out.
Excerpts:
Take this tax and shove it We ain’t paying you crooks no more The good ol’ boys stole all our cash And ran out the courthouse door
Residents in Castine, Maine, upset at their local taxes being siphoned off by state politicians, started a tax resistance campaign and accompanied it by protest songs:
Write me a song of the Revolution, ’cause that’s what it’s gonna be. Write me a song of the Revolution, ’cause that’s what’s in store for me! I can’t sit by and watch this country go right down the drain. I gotta stand firm on the Constitution and stay aboard the freedom train.
When Meo farmers killed a tax collector during a tax strike aimed at the British-backed Maharaja in , they commemorated the occasion with a song:
Rebels in the open the Meos did then rejoice They conferred among themselves and spoke in a single voice Your názim’s dead and ever since we aren’t ruled by any prince To London by now you should’ve fled, and do take along your dead.
