Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===Taxation during Reconstruction===
Reconstruction changed the means of taxation in the South. In the U.S. from the earliest days until today, a major source of state revenue was the [[property tax]]. In the South, wealthy landowners were allowed to self-assess the value of their own land. These fraudulent assessments were almost valueless, and pre-war property tax collections were lacking due to property value misrepresentation. State revenues came from fees and from sales taxes on slave auctions.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=375}} Some states assessed property owners by a combination of [[Land value tax|land value]] and a capitation tax, a tax on each worker employed. This tax was often assessed in a way to discourage a free labor market, where a slave was assessed at 75 cents, while a free White was assessed at a dollar or more, and a free African American at $3 or more. Some revenue also came from [[Poll tax (United States)|poll taxes]]. These taxes were more than poor people could pay, with the designed and inevitable consequence that they did not vote.

During Reconstruction, the state legislature mobilized to provide for public needs more than had previous governments: establishing public schools and investing in infrastructure, as well as charitable institutions such as hospitals and asylums. They set out to increase taxes, which were unusually low. The planters had provided privately for their own needs. There was some fraudulent spending in the postwar years; a collapse in state credit because of huge deficits, forced the states to increase property tax rates. In places, the rate went up to 10 times higher—despite the poverty of the region. The planters had not invested in infrastructure and much had been destroyed during the war. In part, the new tax system was designed to force owners of large plantations with huge tracts of uncultivated land either to sell or to have it confiscated for failure to pay taxes.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=376}} The taxes would serve as a market-based system for redistributing the land to the landless freedmen and White poor. Mississippi, for instance, was mostly frontier, with 90% of the bottom lands in the interior undeveloped.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

The following table shows property tax rates for South Carolina and Mississippi. Many local town and county assessments effectively doubled the tax rates reported in the table. These taxes were still levied upon the landowners' own sworn testimony as to the value of their land, which remained the dubious and exploitable system used by wealthy landholders in the South well into the 20th century.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="margin:1em auto 1em auto"
|+ State Property Tax Rates during Reconstruction
! Year !! South Carolina !! Mississippi
|-
| 1869 || style="text-align:right;"|5 mills (0.5%)|| style="text-align:right;"|1 mill (0.1%) (lowest rate between 1822 and 1898)
|-
| 1870 || style="text-align:right;"|9 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|5 mills
|-
| 1871 || style="text-align:right;"|7 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|4 mills
|-
| 1872 || style="text-align:right;"|12 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|8.5 mills
|-
| 1873 || style="text-align:right;"|12 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|12.5 mills
|-
| 1874 || style="text-align:right;"|10.3–8 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|14 mills (1.4%) "a rate which virtually amounted to confiscation" (highest rate between 1822 and 1898)
|-
| 1875 || style="text-align:right;"|11 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|
|-
| 1876 || style="text-align:right;"|7 mills || style="text-align:right;"|
|-
| Sources || style="text-align:center;"|{{cite book|ref=none |url=https://archive.org/details/reconstructioni00reyngoog/page/n538 <!-- pg=2 --> |last=Reynolds |first=J. S. |title=Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1865–1877 |place=Columbia, SC |publisher=The State Co. |year=1905 |page=329}}|| style="text-align:center;"|{{cite book|ref=none |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Idw0AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA13 |last=Hollander |first=J. H. |title=Studies in State Taxation with Particular Reference to the Southern States |place=Baltimore |publisher=Johns Hopkins Press |year=1900 |page=192}}
|}

Called upon to pay taxes on their property, essentially for the first time, angry plantation owners revolted. The conservatives shifted their focus away from race to taxes.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=415–416}} Former Congressman [[John R. Lynch]], a Black Republican leader from Mississippi, later wrote:{{sfnp|Lynch|1913|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}
{{blockquote|1=The argument made by the taxpayers, however, was plausible and it may be conceded that, upon the whole, they were about right; for no doubt it would have been much easier upon the taxpayers to have increased at that time the interest-bearing debt of the state than to have increased the tax rate. The latter course, however, had been adopted and could not then be changed unless of course they wanted to change them.}}