Slavery deadlocked federal taxation from the founding

Evidence

Chief among these was taxation. If they wished to raise an army and fund the government, the framers also had to devise a way to levy taxes on the citizenry. But delegates couldn’t agree on the best way to do this because slavery kept getting in the way. It was impossible to debate taxes without also debating how to tax the enslaved. Should enslaved Black workers be taxed as people or property or not at all? The three-fifths clause provided a potential solution—treat enslaved Black workers as partial citizens for the purposes of taxation—but Southern enslavers quickly realized that that would require them to pay more than Northerners who didn’t enslave people. For example, if the federal government established a poll tax levied on every person, in 1790 the three-fifths apportionment would have mandated that a Virginian be taxed 1.39 and a South Carolinian 1.45 for every $1 charged to a free Northerner. Predictably, Southerners rejected this plan. “Our Slaves being our Property,” argued South Carolina representative Thomas Lynch, “why should they be taxed more than the Land, Sheep, Cattle, Horses?” Lynch and other Southerners wanted their human property to count toward their congressional representation but not against their tax bill. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 540

Categorization

• CANDY: The concrete 1790 numbers (Virginian 1.39, South Carolinian 1.45 per free Northerner’s $1) plus the Lynch quote make a crisp, quotable tidbit about slavery blocking tax design.