Taxation and Voting

Taxation and Voting

Thomas Allen

In The United States Unmasked: A Search into the Causes of the Rise and Progress of These States, and an Exposure Of Their Present Material and Moral Condition (London, Ontario: J. H. Vivian, 1878), pages 129 –131, G. Manigault  explains why suffrage needs to be limited to people who pay a minimum amount of direct taxes:

The colonies quarrelled with the mother country because they were taxed by its parliament in which they were not represented, “No taxation without representation!” This sounds like a safeguard to one’s rights; yet it is but a half truth, valueless and deceptive until you add the suppressed half to it. “No representation without taxation!”

Government is a necessary agency. Society cannot do without it. But it is a costly and burdensome agent; and moreover one whose powers have often been grossly abused and perverted from their true objects. Yet its powers must be entrusted to some person, or persons, or class of persons. The only class of persons to whom the ultimate control over the government can be entrusted with reasonable hope of good results, is that which furnishes the means of supporting the government, and feels the burden of its costly maintenance. This class are the tax-payers, the holders of visible, tangible property, which cannot hide itself from taxation. This class has a direct and obvious interest in watching the government and the officials who administer its powers—in checking extravagance and enforcing economy and honesty in government expenditure; for they furnish the means. They have every motive for watching that the operations of government are directed to the protection of the rights and the redress of the wrongs of individuals, and the safety of the community — and not perverted to purposes for which it was not created. For this class have not only personal and social rights, like other people, but they possess vast acquired and vested rights peculiarly apt to suffer from the neglect or abuses, or perversion of government; rights, on the protection and security of which the welfare and civilization of the country depend. This class may be very numerous, or may consist of comparatively few, according to the circumstances of the particular country. But in every civilized country it forms but a minority, and usually a small minority of the people in it. Yet their right to be intrusted with the ultimate control over the government and its officials will not be hard to see when we have considered two other suppositions. 1st, That of one man being the imposer, collector, and expender of taxes. 2nd, That while the property-holders pay the taxes, those who hold no property and pay no taxes, should impose them. Do not say that this is an impossible case. But it is certain to prove a ruinous arrangement. These imposers of the taxes have no motive for enforcing on the government economy and honesty in its expenditures. They may become interested in its extravagance, its dishonesty, and in the perversion of its powers. Is not this what has happened in the United States? 

The individual States originally had in their political organization this safe-guard against the extravagance, dishonesty, and perversion of their governments. We believe that in every one, certainly in nearly all of them the franchise was limited to the freeholder, a basis of political power wide enough to secure attention to the protection of the personal and social rights of every citizen, choice enough to secure that all who ultimately controlled the government and its officials, should have a direct interest in preserving that government from corruption, and the perversion of its powers. Accordingly these State governments were, for many years, efficient without becoming burdensome or corrupt.

Thus, when the privilege of voting and holding public office is limited to people who pay a minimum amount of direct taxes, governments are frugal and prudent. They are limited and kept within tight bounds. As a result, liberty is protected and flourishes. However, when suffrage is nearly universal as it is today, governments grow without bounds, taxes become exceedingly burdensome, debts explode to unpayable heights, and liberty fades.

Copyright © 2026 by Thomas Coley Allen

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Another Discussion with the Imbecile

Another Discussion with the Imbecile

Thomas Allen

I responded to a comment to an article titled “Supreme Court Sides With Biden Over Border Crisis, Here Are The Conservative Justices Who FLIPPED” by Anthony T (https://wltreport.com/2024/01/22/supreme-court-sides-biden-border-crisis-here-are/). [Note: If you go to this site, you will not see my comments because it has banned me. Apparently, I objected too much about it censoring my comments telling the truth about God’s chosen people and their political movement.] A commenter wrote that federal law trumping State law was a myth. I responded to his comment, “Under Lincoln’s constitution, which is the constitution that we have now, federal law always trumps State law because the States are to the federal government what counties are to State governments.” Then the imbecile responded to my comment claiming that I was using revisionist history and that I loved slavery (see the appendix for my discussion with the imbecile).

This imbecile is enthralled with slavery. Except for Blacks trying to extort money from wimpy, woke politicians, I have never encountered anyone who is obsessed with slavery as much as he is. Obviously, he envies the antebellum slave owners and desiderates a 100,000-acre plantation with 1000 slaves. Because he cannot fulfill his dream, he has become Confederaphobic, Dixiephobic, and probably Albusphobic.

First, I will discuss revisionist history, which the imbecile despises, and its meaning. Next, I will discuss the causes of Lincoln’s War and the unimportance of slavery as a cause. Finally, I will close with a discussion of phobia.

Revisionist History

A revisionist history is a history that disagrees with the standard orthodox establishment history. It is a historical account based on facts or a perspective that differs from the standard orthodox establishment history, which emphasizes a particular narrative or agenda instead of objective facts. That is, the primary purpose of the standard orthodox establishment history is to declare that the victors had the moral high ground and were not at fault or to advance an agenda of the establishment. More often than not, revisionist history is closer to the truth than is the standard orthodox establishment history.

When it comes to Lincoln’s War, the imbecile is a firm believer in the standard orthodox establishment history: The war was fought over slavery and for no other reason. The South fought to preserve slavery, and the North fought to free the slaves. Furthermore, the South started the war by firing on Fort Sumpter.

According to the imbecile, I am a victim of revisionist history. Admittedly, I do rely more on revisionist histories of Lincoln, Lincoln’s War, the Confederacy, and the South because they are closer to the truth than the standard orthodox establishment history, which idolizes Lincoln and demonizes the Confederacy and the South. To the imbecile’s small mind (if he has one), revisionist history is any history with which he disagrees. The truth is irrelevant. He ignores any facts that conflict with his historical view.

Slavery and the Cause of Lincoln’s War

The imbecile firmly believes that Lincoln’s War was fought over slavery and that the South started the war when it fired on Fort Sumter. Contrary to what the imbecile believes, slavery was much better protected within the Union than without.

With the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and the Dred Scott decision in 1857, Southerners had won their right to settle in the territories with their slaves. Outside the Union, Southerners would not have this right. The importation of slaves into the United States was illegal. If, as often claimed, slavery needed to expand into the territories to survive, then secession would have destroyed slavery without a war.

If the Southern States remained in the Union, the United States government would have apprehended runaway slaves and returned them to their owners. The most efficient and effective fugitive slave laws in the history of the United States were in force on the eve of secession. If the Southern States were an independent country, slaveholders would lack this guarantee. That the United States would enter into a treaty with the Confederacy to return runaway slaves was doubtful.

Those who claim that slavery was the cause of the War never explain why the Southern States would secede to protect slavery when slavery was better protected within the Union than without. Even the “Great Emancipator” Lincoln said in his inaugural address on March 4, 1861, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”[1]

Congress did not perceive that the war was, at least at its beginning, a war to free slaves. In January of 1861, Congress adopted a resolution declaring that it recognized: “Slavery as now existing in fifteen of the United States, by the usage and laws of those states, and we recognize no authority, legal or otherwise, outside of a state where it exists, to interfere with slaves or slavery in such states."[2]

To make perfectly clear that it did not intend to abolish slavery, Congress adopted the following constitutional amendment:

Article 13. No amendment shall be made to the constitution which shall authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish, or to interfere within any state, with the domestic institution thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said state.[3]

People who believe that Lincoln’s War was fought over slavery need to explain away the questions that H.V. Traywick, Jr. raises in “What Was the War About?” (abbevilleinstitute.org/what-was-the-war-about):

If the North was fighting a Crusade of Liberation, why didn’t she wage war on New York and Boston, the largest African Slave-trading ports in the world in 1861? Or on Africa herself and her slave-raiders — such as the Kingdom of Dahomey — the largest exporters of African slaves in the world? Or on New England and her manufacturing profits gleaned from slave-picked cotton, and from rum manufactured from slave-harvested sugar cane and distilled for trading along the African coast for more slaves?

Thus, slavery was at best a minor issue. (For more about slavery not being the cause of Lincoln’s War, see “Slavery Not the Reason” by Thomas Allen.)

The primary cause of secession was taxation via a protective tariff. Charles Adams cogently argues in his book Good and Evil, The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization that taxation, not slavery, was the primary cause for Southern secession. Freedom from oppressive taxation is what the Southern States sought through secession and not the preservation of slavery. Adams writes, “Southerners saw themselves as tribute-paying vassals of the North every time they bought Northern goods or paid import taxes.”[4]

The Republicans wanted to raise tariffs to protect Northern industries. This was accomplished in 1861 when President Lincoln signed the Morrill Tariff, which doubled the existing rate. Southerners had to make a choice. They could choose to pay excessive prices for Northern goods — thus, fatting the pockets of Northern industrialists. They could choose to buy foreign goods and pay the tariff — thus, fatting the federal treasury that Northern industrialists controlled. Accordingly, they could choose to transfer their wealth to the North (“federal taxation had an economic effect of shifting wealth from the South to the North,”[5] as Adams writes), or they could do as their forefathers had done in 1776 and choose independence.

In his summary of Adam's book, Pat Buchanan writes:

Adams thesis: Lincoln could not stand before the bar of history and say he had bathed his country in blood to deny Southerners the same right to go free their fathers had invoked 85 years before. He could not say Vicksburg and Antietam had been about taxes. So Lincoln made the abolition of slavery his great moral crusade — but only as an afterthought.[6]

As important as, if not more important than, the political, economic, and social issues, were the theological issues. The theological differences separating the North and South were extensive. The most vocal group in the North was the Unitarian Transcendentalists — man can save himself. The predominant religious belief in the South was Old School Calvinism — man is totally dependent on God for salvation. The North saw man in the abstract. The South saw man as he really was. The difference between these two religious views could not, and cannot, be made compatible. Southern clergymen vigorously supported secession to protect their theology. They were convinced that the North was becoming a godless land.

The London Times saw the war as a lust for empire by the North and a desire for independence by the South. It wrote, “The contest is really for empire on the side of the North and for independence on that of the South, and in that respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the government of George III, and the South and the thirteen revolted provinces.”[7]

To his dying day, President Davis insisted that the war was fought over two basic issues. The first was whether the federal government should be limited (the South’s position) or an unlimited government (the North’s position). Second was whether a free people had a right to withdraw from a union that they had voluntarily entered (the South’s position) or should be forced to remain in a union that they no longer desired to be a part of (the North’s position).

In summary, the North started the War not to free slaves, but to enslave Southerners.  (See “Southern History: The War” by Thomas Allen.)

About who started Lincoln’s War, the imbecile also errs. Following the standard orthodox establishment history, he asserts that the South started the war because it fired the first shot on Fort Sumpter. A Confederate prison guard adequately refuted this fallacious charge when a Union officer whom he was guarding attempted to blame the South for the war by asking, “Who fired the first gun of this war?” The Confederate private responded like a sage, “John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, sir. He fired the first gun. And Mr. Lincoln, in attempting to reinforce Sumter, fired the second gun. And the Confederates have acted on the defensive all of the time. We did not invade your country, but you invaded ours; you go home and attend to your own business and leave us to ours, and the war will close at once.”[8] Once more, the imbecile shows his ignorance, or, more correctly, he shows his stupidity because he is incapable of learning.

Phobia

“Phobia” not only means to be afraid, but it also means a strong dislike of or aversion to something. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition, defines “phobia” as “a strong fear, dislike, or aversion.” Merriam-Webster defines it as “intolerance or aversion for.” Dictionary.com defines “phobia” as “an aversion toward, dislike of, or disrespect for a thing, idea, person, or group.”

I do not accuse the imbecile of being afraid of the Confederacy, the South, or Whites. He gives no indication of such fear. However, his comments show that he obviously has an intolerance for, an aversion toward, a dislike of, and a disrespect for the Confederacy and the South.

Most people believe that staunch, diehard Confederates and Southerners are right-wingers. They are wrong. I have on good authority, the imbecile himself, that they are left-wingers.

Appendix

Original comment: Mythology: “Federal law trumps state law.”

This mythology contributes to a growth never ending of federal power. (It actually goes back to George Washington who secretly funded the newspapers calling for a very strong federal government.)

Truth: The states merely delegated small select powers to the federal government.

The federal------really the small government of the collective confederacy of states (conFEDERAcy=FEDERal)-----accepted responsibilities of the compact of the confederacy...in essence a contract...on border protection. Joe says, “give me more money” and I’ll do that job. It’s extortion in that it doesn’t relieve the federal government from its obligation to perform that unto itself formed the reason for its (federal) existence.

Me to Original comment: Under Lincoln’s constitution, which is the constitution that we have now, federal law always trumps State law because the States are to the federal government what counties are to State governments.

Imbecile to Me: Would you PLEASE just STOP the revisionist history already? There is no “Lincoln Constitution” that is DIFFERENT from the Constitution ratified in 1789! If you’re referring to LEGAL AMENDMENTS, the ones pertaining to the SLAVERY you so love were ratified AFTER Lincoln wss [sic] murdered by one of your southern compatriots!

Me to Imbecile: Since you reject revisionist history, that means you believe the official story of the Kennedy assassination and the official governmental conspiracy theory of 9-11.

If Lincoln did not change the Constitution, why did people refer to the United States using a plural verb before his war and a singular verb afterward? Before Lincoln’s War, the United States were a federation of sovereign nations. After his war, the United States became a consolidated empire with an all-powerful federal government, and the States were reduced to provinces. That required a significant change in the constitution even if its words did not change.

By the way, slavery ended in the Confederate States before it ended in the Union States.

Imbecile to Me:  Your last comment proves your insanity! The ONLY states that had slavery after it was abolished in the North were southern states! It’s true that four “border” states that allowed slavery did NOT join the confederates and slavery did not end in those states until a constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery in the entire nation was ratified after the war, but to imply that ALL the Union states had slavery after it was abolished in the confederate states is shear lunacy! The way you say things, how do you account for parts of TEXAS, where slavery continued AFTER the war ended until the so-called “Junetenth” [sic] freedom for the remaining slaves occured [sic]? As for your insistence on calling the Civil War “Lincoln’s war,” again, shear LUNACY since it is well documented that the confederates started the war by attacking Fort Sumpter! You REALLY need to get your facts straight! [Editor's note: Juneteenth occurred on June 19, 1865; the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in December 1865. Consequently, Juneteenth occurred before the Thirteenth Amendment became effective. Furthermore, the war did not end until June 23, 1865, when Cherokee Confederate General Stand Waite surrendered, which occurred four days after Juneteenth.]

Imbecile to Me: You are nuttsiecookoo! [sic] The difference between revisionist history and getting the facts straight are like night and day! Finding out the TRUTH and disclosing it such as with the Kennedy assassination or 9/11 is NOT revisionist history! It’s simply getting the facts straight! Revisionist history is when actual facts are TWISTED to serve the writer’s agenda! YOU constantly engage in revisionist history such as when you call the Civil War “Lincoln's war” when it is well documented that the confederates started the war by attacking Fort Sumpter! As for your insane claim in your last comment, slavery was outlawed in the North for YEARS before the Civil War! Only the 4 “border states” that allowed slavery but had NOT joined the confederates still had slavery after the war, but that was quickly eliminated by Constitutional Amendment. Trying to equate these four anamolous  [sic] states with the ENTIRE North is beyond STUPID!

Me to Imbecile: You are too stupid to learn.

Imbecile to Me: IF you had any actual FACTS to teach then maybe someone could learn from you, but alas, you have NOTHING but sour grapes over LOSING an UNJUST WAR that was started and fought by the confederates to keep SLAVERY intact!

Me to Imbecile: Except for Blacks trying to extort money from wimpy, woke politicians, I have never encountered anyone who is obsessed with slavery as much as you are. Obviously, you envy the antebellum slave owner and desiderate a 100,000-acre plantation with 1000 slaves. Because you cannot fulfill your dream, you have become Confederaphobic, Dixiephobic, and probably Albusphobic.

Imbecile to Me: Now I KNOW for a fact you are a braindead lefty because only they call anyone who disagrees with their stupidity “phobic,” which basically means “afraid,” and I am not afraid of your revisionist LIES any more than I’m afraid of fairies, tran-nies [sic], vmuslimes [sic], illegal border crossers [sic], cross dressers, or any of the other perverted people out there!

THE END

Endnotes

1. Beverly B. Munford, Virginia’s Attitude Toward Slavery and Secession (Richmond, 1909), pp. 193-194.

2. Ibid., p. 194.

3. Ibid., p. 195.

4. Charles Adams, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization (Lanham, 1993), p. 328.

5. Ibid., p. 337.

6. Pat Buchanan, “Abolition of Slavery Was Only an Afterthought,” Citizen Informer (Spring, 1994), p. 9.

7. Charles L. C. Minor, The Real Lincoln from the Testimony of His Contemporaries (1928, reprinted 1992) p. 112.

8. Michael A. Grissom, The Last Rebel Yell, (Nashville, 1991), p. 313. 

Copyright © 2024 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Calhoun and States’ Rights

Calhoun and States’ Rights

Thomas Allen

In Chaining Down Leviathan: The American Dream of Self-Government 1776-1865 (McClellanville, South Carolina: Abbeville Institute Press, 2021), Luigi Marco Bassani discusses John C. Calhoun’s concept of States’ rights. The following summarizes that discussion.

Calhoun used “State” to designate the people of a State and not its government, which the people (body politic of that State) created. Each State was a self-governing political community, and the people of each State were the sovereign authority — not their government. Concurrent majority and the concept that the Constitution was an agreement between the States were the core features of Calhoun’s political thoughts. Thus, he objected to the notion that a simple numerical majority should decide all political issues.

According to Calhoun, sovereignty belonged either to the States or to the Union. Because sovereignty was indivisible, it could not belong to both. He argued that sovereignty resided in the people of the individual States and not in the people of the Union as a whole.

Calhoun asserted that the Supremacy Clause invested no power in the federal government. It clearly did not establish the supremacy of the federal government. Further, he maintained that the authority of the federal government set up by the Constitution was limited to the delegated powers and that laws enacted pursuant to these delegated powers were supreme. However, the Supremacy Clause did not extend beyond these delegated powers, i.e., the supremacy of the federal government is not absolute. The States and the people of the States retained all authority not expressly delegated to the federal government.

Conflict, according to Calhoun, did not originate in society. Governmental action caused conflict by creating two opposite social classes: taxpayers and tax consumers. Moreover, suffrage led to conflict between the different interests in a community because each interest strove to obtain the power to protect itself from the others and to advance its own agenda. However, conflicting interests did not lead to a government. Politics was what caused the conflict between various interests.

Calhoun thought equalizing the fiscal appropriations of a government was impossible. Taxation and public expenditures caused two conflicting interests. While those who controlled the government benefitted from the taxes, those who did not control the government paid more in taxes than they received back in disbursements. Consequently, political power, government, is the cause of conflict in society.

For many years, Calhoun sought in the Constitution the defense against the federal government’s intrusions. He based his arguments on the individual States being contracting parties to and, therefore, the real principals of the Constitution.

The Constitution centered around the States. This centralness appeared in how Representatives and Senators were chosen. The people of the several States chose members of the House of Representatives. The legislatures of the States elected senators. (Now, the people of each State elect that State’s Senators via the seventeenth amendment.) Representatives and Senators must be inhabitants of the State from which they are elected. Moreover, Representatives were never considered a delegate of a part of the American people.

Calhoun noted that States were the source of the federal government’s political powers. Political power flowed from the States to the federal government and never vice-versa. The Constitution gave certain powers to the federal government and prohibited others. However, it never gave any powers to the States; it only prohibited certain powers. All powers that the States did not expressly delegate to the federal government, they reserved for themselves, i.e., the States retained all powers not expressly delegated. Thus, the Constitution established a federal government with highly limited powers.

For Calhoun, the States were the sole actors in the Union. Unlike Jefferson, who favored a federal-type relationship between centers of government within a State, Calhoun did not. He favored a simple administrative relationship between the State government and local authorities. However, he believed that the United States were an authentic federation.

Calhoun objected to governmental interference in the economic pursuits of individuals, who understood their own interests better than any government. Accordingly, he supported free trade and, therefore, low tariffs. Fervently, he objected to protective tariffs and the South paying disproportionately a much larger share of federal revenue than the North paid. Consequently, the North was exploiting southern producers and consumers for the benefit of the northern manufacturing industry. This redistribution of wealth was not limited to the South. It also was used against northern workers and would result in a class struggle — all courtesy of the federal government.

Furthermore, Calhoun recognized that the centralization and concentration of power in the federal government were being used for northern interest and were causing corruption that threatened the freedom of the country. Interposition by the States was the solution to this centralization of power. However, States could not interpose their authority to interfere with the powers that the Constitution expressly delegated to the federal government. Likewise, the federal government could not interfere with the powers that the States had retained for themselves.

Moreover, the Constitution was based on distinguishing between government and sovereignty. Governmental powers resided in the institutions either of the States or the federal government. Sovereignty resided in the people of each State respectively. Three-fourths of the States were the final constitutional authority.

Because the Constitution created the departments of the federal government, sovereignty did not and could not reside in any department of the federal government. Their sole purpose was to execute the provisions of the Constitution. Any act of the federal government that altered the nature of the Constitution or changed any condition of the parties to it was usurpation.

Calhoun believed that the Supreme Court might judge acts of a State whether they violated the constitutional prerogatives of the federal government. However, the Supreme Court should not and could not legitimately judge an act of the federal government whether it violated the constitutional prerogatives of a State. For the Supreme Court to do so placed it above the States that created the Constitution and vested in it the power to alter the powers of the federal government and the States. 

Calhoun recognized that the text of the Constitution could not impose practical restraints on the federal government. Reason and justice could never restrain power: Only power could restrain power. Only the States possessed sufficient power to restrain the federal government. Therefore, each State should have and did have the right to judge for itself if the federal government had violated any of its rights.

Calhoun maintained that the Constitution implicitly allowed secession because it was a contract between sovereign parties. The ratification process proved this conclusion. As distinct political entities independent from each other, the States ratified the Constitution. Moreover, no State was part of the Union under the Constitution until it ratified the Constitution. Furthermore, the Union was a union of sovereign States without a direct link between the federal government and citizens.

Secession had nothing to do with the federal government. It was an act of a State withdrawing from a partnership with the other States. Although secession was extreme, it was not foreign to the constitutional system. However, according to Calhoun, secession did not derive from the contractual nature of the Constitution; it derived from its political nature.

Calhoun rejected the notion of the will of the majority being the will of the people. For him, the “will of the majority” meant a particular interest or coalition of interests that prevailed over others. Like most people of his era, he believed that a government based on a numerical majority was tyrannical by nature. To overcome the tyranny of an absolute numerical majority, he advocated a concurrent majority on all important issues.

For Calhoun, the term “United States” was geographical and not political. However, he conceived of the United States as more than a league of States. Yet, the States should never become a centralized democracy where an absolute majority ruled. Such a rule would result in abandoning constitutional guarantees. Consequently, States should and did have the right to judge as the last resort the limits that the Constitution placed on the federal government. This right should be defended at all costs. Otherwise, the United States would become a dictatorship of the executive branch.

Both Jefferson and Calhoun considered a State to be the people of the State and not the governmental power. However, Jefferson believed that the United States were for a special purpose only while Calhoun believed them to be an assemblage of nations.

For Calhoun, nullification was peaceful in nature and did not damage the prerogatives of the federal government. When a conflict between a State and the other States could not be resolved, the State had to choose either secession or submission. As a political sovereign and partner with the other States in establishing the Union, each State acting individually and independently had the right to secede peacefully.

Copyright © 2022 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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