At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the war for independence may have been long over, but the true conclusion to the American Revolution was still being written. The choices in the 1800 election could not have been starker: Federalist John Adams prized the need for strong central government and national unity. Republican populist Thomas Jefferson championed weaker government, states' rights, and individual liberties. Or so we think. "American Taxation, American Slavery" casts the Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800 in a dramatically different light, tracing the enduring appeal of antigovernment rhetoric in the United States to slavery rather than to love of liberty and freedom. We are all familiar with the states' rights arguments of proslavery politicians who wanted to keep the federal government weak and decentralized. But here Robin Einhorn shows the deep, broad, and continuous influence of slavery on this idea in American politics. From the earliest colonial times right up to the Civil War, slaveholding elites feared strong and democratic government as a threat to the institution of slavery. "American Taxation, American Slavery" shows how their heated battles over taxation, the power to tax, and the distribution of tax burdens were rooted not in debates over personal liberty but rather in the rights of slaveholders to hold human beings as property. Along the way, Einhorn exposes the antidemocratic origins of the enduringly popular Jeffersonian rhetoric about weak government, showing that state governments were actually more democratic - and stronger - where most people were free. A strikingly original look at the role of slavery in the making of the United States, "American Taxation, American Slavery" will prove essential to anyone interested in the history of American government and politics.
(0 Comentarios)
