From the Staunton Vindicator, March 29, 1861:
Mr. Bennett, one of the financial officers of the State [Virginia], has already called for an increase of 20 cents in the one hundred dollars on the present rate of taxation. If the policy of the submissionists is adopted, and Virginia becomes a part of the Northern Confederacy, her negroes will be transported South. This will remove one source of revenue, and then the taxes on lands, &c., will be doubled! Think of it, farmers–”Submission,” or what is called ”Union,” will drive four hundred millions of taxable property out of the State, and force your farms and stock to bear the increase of taxes consequent thereupon. Do not be deceived, people of Virginia! We must go with the South as against the North, and the sooner we take our position the better.
In other words… well, think of it… even if you didn’t have slaves, as a property-holding (land, livestock, etc.) Virginian, the thought of an exodus of slaves would be reason for concern… a threat of higher taxes.
The politics of fear at work? Either go with the lower South by supporting Virginia secession or… face higher taxes…
*The 20 cent increase would be applied to what was already a tax of 40 cents on one hundred dollars.
**As used here, ”submissionists” eludes to those who continued to refuse to support the thought of Virginia secession.
usc
March 29, 2011
I am not sure about the “politics of fear” but there is possibly something to be said for the warning. Slaves, right or wrong, were a major market object in the economy. Taking a major market object of the economy or changing that market objects place, wholesale, would have had devastating affects on all property owners and business men, of which farmers must be included.
To be honest, the “tax rate increase” should have been the least of this person’s worries. The market affects of having slaves…then not having slaves would have been terrible and long lasting. Perhaps that’s why states such as Mississippi took years to recover from the Civil War. I read that Mississippi’s GDP in 1860 was about 150 million…it took them till about 1990 to get back to that GDP (in inflation adjusted dollars).
Out.
Robert Moore
March 29, 2011
It might seem minimal to us, looking back, but that concern over taxes could have been real enough to get some to move off “the fence”, while reinforcing others in their stand on secession. This was just one of the persuasive measures taken by this paper to rally support around secession (and perhaps, catch the attention of readers of the pro-Union paper in the same town).
Bill Newcomer
March 29, 2011
Let me see. According to this logic when Maryland and Kentucky stayed in the Union all the slaves in those two states would have been transported south, and taxes in those states would go up as a result. I understand this article was written before the fact and there was indeed a politics of fear, real or imagined, at work. On that score not much has changed on the political scene. I can only give the writer the benefit of the doubt, and assume he really beleived what he wrote would indeed happen.
Robert Moore
March 29, 2011
I agree, Bill. A bit extreme, but I think the fear of what “black Republicans” might do made imaginations run wild. It might even be that the writer didn’t really believe it, but was hoping to tap into others and their imaginations/ fears.
Mike Simons
March 31, 2011
Well it is good to see the use of Fear in poltics is nothing new. I can see what they are trying to do my ancestor’s family had 1000 slaves and losing them would and did wreak the family economy. I often wish I could talk to IP and ask how it was from growing up on a 2000 acre plantion and sugar mill with 1000 slaves to being a dirt farmer in Eastern Arkanas just 5 short years later.