Part 10

By an act of Congress approved April 7, 1798, all that tract of land which today includes the States of Mississippi and Alabama, was constituted one district and called the "Mississippi Territory." Major Winthrop Sargent, a native of Massachusetts, was appointed governor and judges were empowered to frame a code of laws for the Territory, to be drawn from the statutes of other States. This code, known as "Sargent's Code" has been characterized by an able political writer as "directly at variance with all Statute law in America, and utterly repugnant to any known system of jurisprudence derived from the common law of England."[65] Certainly this is true of that part of it "directing the manner in which Money shall be Raised and Levied to defray the charges which may arise within the Several Counties."[66] According to its provisions, the court of general quarter sessions in each county was authorized to make an estimate of the county's average annual expenditure, the estimate to be submitted to the governor and one or more of the territorial judges for approval. The amount approved was then apportioned among the several towns within the county by commissioners biennially appointed by the court of common pleas. If the town numbered sixty or more free citizens, two commissions were appointed; if one hundred or more, three commissioners. These commissioners received the returns of taxables in each township, and assessed the property therein. It was specified that the commissioners should ascertain "the names of all free men, inmates, hired male servants (being twenty-one years of age) and whether profitable or chargeable to the employers" * * * and obtain "a list of all lands not being the property of the United States or appropriated to public uses, the tenements, houses, cabins or other buildings wherein people dwell and which are rented and afford an income to the owners, and all ferries, stores, shops, warehouses, mills, gins, keel or batteaux, boats of the burthen of twenty barrels and upward producing a yearly income, and of the bound male servants and male slaves above the age of sixteen and not exceeding fifty; draught oxen, saddle and draught horses, cows penned or kept up and immediately productive to the owners; together with the stock cattle, including sheep and swine intended for market and thereby productive of annual income and profit."

Lands were assessed "in just proportion to their value," with special regard to their annual profit, and no one having visible property less than one dollar per head annually, save by a due proportion of labor in the opening and keeping in repair highways and public roads. This enumeration, viewed in the light of modern interpretation, virtually means a graduated income tax applied to town and county government. The valuation of real estate was determined, not by its intrinsic worth or actual selling value, but by the annual income [profit] which, on the average, it was deemed likely to produce. Taxation was altogether local, there being no territorial levy as distinguished from the biennial county and township levies. This localization of fiscal activity, an income [profit] valuation, and the fact that visible specific property bore all, or nearly all the burden of taxation, are thus the most striking characteristics of Mississippi's primitive scheme of taxation.

The collection of taxes was vested in the sheriff, who was _ex-officio_ the county collector, as he is today. This officer had powers of imprisonment and distraint. The commissioners appointed by the County Court as assessors were allowed $1 per day, and the sheriffs were authorized to keep 1% of their collections before making their reports to the county treasurers.

This crude fiscal system devised by Sargent remained in effect without substantial modification until 1815. In that year a law was passed providing for a distinct territorial tax and specifying that county taxes should be levied upon the same property and objects enumerated as were within the territorial schedule.[67] County taxes, however, could not exceed one-half of the territorial tax. Henceforth, there was to be commonwealth taxation, as distinguished from purely local taxation. The territorial schedule comprised a general list of ratable objects with fixed valuations. Land was divided into six classes, each class having three qualities. The bases of classification were proximity to the city of Natchez and distance from the Mississippi, Chickasawhay and Tombigbee Rivers. Thus, class number one contained all lands lying within eight miles of the city of Natchez, the first quality of which was rated at $12 per acre; the second, at $8; and the third, at $3. Class number two contained all land lying within fourteen miles of the Mississippi River, with valuations according to quality ranging from $2 to $7. In short, valuations decreased in proportion as the distances from commercial centres and water courses increased; lands, lots and buildings within any city, borough or town were subject to a uniform ad valorem tax of 2 mills; and merchandise and bank stock, to an ad valorem tax of 2-1/2 mills. Capitation taxes of 50 and 62-1/2 cents respectively were levied on each slave and free white male above the age of twenty-one. Slave traders were taxed $5.00 on each slave imported into the Territory, a tax containing the germs of the privilege license system. The schedule was further strengthened by a tax of $1.25 on every pleasurable carriage.

It was provided that assessing and collecting officers were to be appointed by the Governor, rather than by the County Court, as heretofore--a change probably due to the differentiation between commonwealth and county taxation.

We may, for the lack of a better designation, call the period from 1817, the date of Mississippi's admission into the Union, to the outbreak of the Civil War, the period of ante-bellum Statehood. Such a division in fiscal history would seem to be perfectly artificial, yet it is justified by the fact that during this period the tax system of the State underwent substantial change. The increased expenses of State administration, an accumulation of State indebtedness, minuter differentiation in industry, giving rise to more numerous classes of wealth and progress in democratic thought--all demanded an extension of the State's fiscal system.

Personal property became as important an object of taxation as real property. The personal property list was no longer limited to slaves, pleasure carriages, moneys arising from the sale of merchandise, and bank stock, but also included gold and silver plate, pianos, weapons, watches or clocks, cattle in excess of twenty head, saddle and carriage horses, merchants' and brokers' capital and money loaned at interest.[68]

This taxation of personal property, usually rated, was supplemented by the privilege license system, with charges partly rated and partly apportioned. Thus, in 1857 auctioneers and peddlers were taxed 3 per cent. on the amount of their sales; saloon-keepers, one-fourth of one per cent. on all sales of vinous and spirituous liquors by the gallon; trading in slaves, horses and mules, 3 per cent. on the amount of their sales; keepers of ferries, toll bridges or turnpikes, one-fourth of one per cent. on all receipts; circuses $25 for each day's performance; nine-pin alleys or any like contrivance, $25 each; theatres or places for theatrical performances, $35 each. Even the poll tax was widened into its application so as to include free negro as well as free white males between the ages of twenty-one and fifty years.

Contemporaneously with this external expansion, the tax system of the State underwent internal changes. Land classifications were abolished, and annual income was rejected as a device of valuation.[69] A method was substituted which is in vogue today, viz: Assessment according to intrinsic value, to be determined by the owner or person in charge on oath, taking into consideration improvements, proximity to navigation, towns, cities, villages or roads, and any other circumstances that may tend to enhance value. The distinction between commonwealth and county taxes was preserved, but not in the same form as the older distinction between territorial and county taxes.

County police boards were now authorized to "order a certain [variable] rate per centum on the amount of the assessment of the State tax," and "to levy a special tax for the erection or repair of the court house, jail or other county buildings."[70] Under the territorial regime, it will be recollected, the county tax could never exceed half the territorial tax.

This period of ante-bellum Statehood was also marked by a radical change in the machinery of assessment and collection. During the territorial period assessing and collecting officers were appointed by the County Courts or by the Territorial Governor; during this period they were chosen directly by the people who were directly responsible for their conduct.[71] The county sheriff was _ex-officio_ the county collector, but the assessor was a separate officer with distinct functions. Both were biennially elected, and the compensation of each was fixed at 5% on the amount of the state tax assessed and collected. This per centum remuneration could not exceed a fixed sum; the assessor's maximum being fixed at $500 per annum and the collector's at $3000. The fiscal machinery thus set in motion during the period of ante-bellum Statehood is patterned on substantially the same model today.

Although this period witnessed the establishment of _some_ of the main features of the modern system of State and local taxation in Mississippi, it cannot be designated as transitional, in the sense Prof. Ely uses the term. There was no change from the taxation of specific kinds of property at varying rates to the taxation of the collective mass of property at one uniform rate. More specific kinds of property were taxed, but there was no disposition to bunch property under a common category at a uniform rate. The objects taxed were as specific and the rates as variable as ever. The period was marked by an extension of the tax system, not by its leveling-out.

War demands emergency revenue, and especially was this true of the Civil War. When Mississippi formally renounced her allegiance to the Union in 1861, the Constitutional Convention which passed the Ordinance of Secession supplemented this by an "Ordinance to Raise Means for the Defence of the State."[72] This ordinance provided for the collection from each taxpayer of an additional Special State tax of 50% on the regular State tax, and also a tax from every inhabitant of 3-10 per cent. upon all money owned or controlled by such inhabitant--the moneys so collected to constitute a Military Fund.

In 1863 it was further enacted that a special tax of 50 per cent. on the regular State tax should be levied, to be known as the Military Relief Tax, the proceeds to be used for the relief of the destitute families of Confederate soldiers.[73] In 1865, in order the better to provide for the families of the soldiers a direct tax in kind of 2 per cent, was levied on the gross amount of all corn, wheat and bacon, in excess of 100 bushels, 25 bushels and 100 pounds respectively; on the tolls from all grain mills in the State, on the gross profits of leather, whether manufactured for sale or received on shares as commission by tanneries; and on all woolen and cotton factories and fabrics manufactured for sale.[74]

For the benefit of the County Indigent Fund, the Boards of Police of the several counties were empowered to levy a tax in kind of 1/2 per cent. on all corn, wheat and bacon, grown and produced in the State.[75]

The exigencies of war and the depreciation of the Confederate treasury notes, in which taxes were paid, necessitated not only the levy of special taxes, but an increase in the number and rates of the specific objects taxed. Notable among the additions to the regular tax schedule were taxes of five cents a pound on all seed cotton over one bale of 500 pounds of lint, raised by a single hand; of 2 per cent. on the gross profits of iron foundries, machine shops, dealers and speculators[76] in grain, provisions, etc.; of 50 per cent. on the wages of mechanics in excess of 75 per cent. profit above the actual cost of labor and material; of twenty cents on every hundred dollars of railroad stock which paid 3 per cent. per annum. Heretofore the State had encouraged railroad enterprise by exemption from taxation and before the war had even gone so far as to levy special railroad taxes in the several counties in payment of stock subscriptions to these enterprises. But financial expediency dictated that premiums for industrial progress be withdraw and that all the State's fiscal energy be conserved for the business of war. Emergency taxation was supplemented as a fiscal device by depreciated cotton money, Confederate currency and Mississippi Treasury notes, and this extreme economic tension was only relaxed after the last troops of the Confederacy had surrendered.

Upon the downfall of the Confederacy in 1865, the Constitutional Convention assembled by Gov. Sharkey organized Mississippi as a regular State government. The financial problem confronting this Post-Confederate government was as hard a Gordian knot to cut as that which confronted the Confederacy itself. Land was worthless as an object of taxation, because it had no value. Industries were paralyzed, and needed bonuses rather than increased burdens. The debt contracted during the war was not repudiated, and there was a State government to support. How was the difficulty to be solved?

The Constitutional Convention of 1865 and the State legislatures of 1865, 1866 and 1867 acted in a sensible and heroic way in dealing with the situation. A direct tax of $1 per bale was levied on all cotton brought to market and sold; an inheritance tax of 1 per cent. of the gross amount of all collateral inheritances; a tax of 3-10 per cent. upon the amount of the annual rents and tenements. Privilege licenses were exacted from the larger corporations best able to bear them, a notable instance of this being the license of $2000 per annum imposed upon express companies.[77] This selection of taxable objects proved most fortunate, the cotton tax alone yielding sufficient revenue to support the whole state administration. The commonwealth's indebtedness was scaled, and Mississippi was rising Phoenix-like from the ashes of financial despondency.

But in 1867 there was fastened upon the State the reign of "Reconstruction and Radicalism," which meant untold retrogression in fiscal policy. This reign of mongrelism, ignorance and depravity was formally ushered in by a motley assemblage known as "the black and tan convention," so called from the negroes and carpet-baggers composing it. The special taxes levied to cover the profligacy and extravagance of this convention, whose expenses for a period of less than five months aggregated nearly a quarter of a million of dollars, were prophetic of the future. Cotton, cotton gins, grist and saw mills, ferry and wharf boats, grocery, drug and provision stores, banks, hotels, photograph galleries, railroad and steamboat companies--all were impaled on reconstruction's fork. Even the freedom of the press was not respected, sums ranging from $20 to $50 being levied on each daily, tri-weekly and weekly newspaper published in the State. The plunderers modestly concluded their infamous schedule with the provision "that a special tax of 50 per cent. on the State tax be levied in addition to the State tax now assessed upon real and personal property."[78]

The Constitution framed by the "black and tan convention" was rejected and the Conservative administrations of Governors Alcorn and Powers, both property owners and taxpayers in the State, had the effect of tempering fiscal excesses. However, this temperance was only temporary and, as compared with the former period, might be called rank intoxication. In 1869 the State levy was only 1 mill on the dollar; in 1870, 5 mills; in 1871, 4 mills; in 1872, 8-1/2 mills; and in 1873, 12-1/2 mills. This was only the State tax. In many counties a county tax of 100 per cent. on the State tax was added, besides a Special tax in some counties to pay the interest on their bonded debt, and a Special tax in the incorporated towns of from 5 to 10 mills on the dollar for town purposes. In this way it happened that the total tax paid by citizens was 2 8-10 per cent. outside the cities, and from 3-1/2 per cent. to 4 per cent. in cities and towns.[79]

With the election and inauguration of Adelbert Ames as Governor in 1874, the spirit of plunder and revenge which animated the aliens and negroes burst forth with a fresh fury. The tax on land was increased to 14 mills, a rate which virtually amounted to confiscation. Cotton was taxed $10 per bale and the proceeds were invested in the Freedman's Savings Bank, a gigantic swindling agency at Washington. The poll was increased from $2 to $6 a head, and the responsibility for the payment of the negroes poll was saddled on his white employer. This farce fiscal comedy reached its climax in the imposition of a 1 per cent. tax on all amounts expended by the citizens of the State in travel.[80] The people simply could not pay these taxes, and over 6,400,000 acres of land were forfeited for nonpayment.

On January 4, 1875, the taxpayers driven to desperation by this confiscation of their property met in convention and submitted to the Legislature a most respectful appeal for relief. The Legislature treated the petition with contempt, an action which resulted in the organization of taxpayers' leagues over the State and the speedy overthrow of carpet-bag government.

This struggle between taxpayers and tax-layers in Mississippi is but another illustration of the truth of Edmund Burke's saying that "from the earliest times the great battles for human freedom have been fought out on the question of taxation."

But the price of the victory was dear and the penalty paid for experience was great. In addition to a payable and interest-bearing debt of $984,200, the carpet-baggers left outstanding, unpaid on January 1, 1876, non-interest bearing Auditor's warrants amounting to $414,958.31. During the last six years of their regime, as is shown by the Auditor's and Treasurer's books for these years, they spent $8,501,337.86, strictly on account of the expenses of State government, an average of $1,484,699.55 per annum. They collected nearly a million dollars of what is known as the Common School fund, and spent it all in riotous governmental living, save the pittance of $57,000 in U. S. bonds left in the treasury to the credit of that fund.

This money was not spent on the common schools, the purpose for which it was collected, but was misappropriated and unaccounted for, and a debt against the State on account of that fund, was left January 1, 1876, amounting to $830,378.18. This, too, in spite of the fact that the average rates of State and county taxation during the six years in question were 8.87-1/2 mills and 12.49-2/3. mills respectively, making a combined average of $21.37-1/2 on the thousand.

Indebtedness was thus the legacy which the "Modern Period" [1876-1898] in Mississippi's fiscal history received from the period of "Reconstruction and Radicalism." Although burdened with this incubus and with increasing expenditures for educational and eleemosynary institutions, the "Modern Period" has been characterized by a decrease in both State and County tax rates and by a proportionate reduction in State indebtedness, both in amount and interest charge.

The first year of this period, i. e. 1876, gave earnest or fiscal reform. State taxes were reduced from 9-1/2 mills on the dollar to 2-1/2 mills. The taxing power of county boards of Supervisors was restricted, a law being passed which prohibited them from levying taxes for county purposes, which added to the State tax, would exceed 16-1/2 mills on the dollar, except for indispensable purposes. Supernumerary officials were dismissed, the common school system improved, sinecures abolished and salaries reduced. The highest rate of compensation was no longer paid for the lowest standard of qualification. This policy of economy in State administration has yielded substantial results.

The average rate of State taxation for the past 22 years, inclusive of 1876, has been 4.66 mills, as opposed to an average of 8.87-1/2 mills for the six years preceding 1876. The average rate of county taxation for the same period has been 11.1 mills, as opposed to 12.49-1/2 for the six years preceding. Combining averages, we find a saving to the credit of home rule of 5.60-1/2 mills on the dollar, or 5.60-1/2 on the thousand.

Reduction in tax rates has meant a reversal of the policy of confiscation. Of the 6,400,000 acres of land forfeited for nonpayment during Reconstruction rule, all save 250,000 acres have been redeemed. Property valuation has largely increased, the value of real and personal property in the State today being estimated at $156,432,328.

Conservative capital is seeking investment in all branches of industrial enterprise and economic progress is following in the wake of fiscal reform.

Although the total payable debt of the State has increased from $830,750 in amount and $45,507.50 in interest charges in 1876 to $1,105,780.41 in amount and $53,421 in interest charges in 1897, this increase is seen to be a proportionate decrease when all the facts are considered.

The obligations, amounting to $876,256.57 in principal and interest, handed down from reconstruction times have all been paid. During the past 22 years $6,755,706.57 has been appropriated and actually paid to common schools, as opposed to $1,323,765.62 appropriated and $327,742.25 paid during the six years preceding 1876.

During the "Modern Period" the State University at Oxford, the Alcorn University, the Normal Schools at Holly Springs and Tugaloo have been liberally supported. The A. & M. College has been established, built, equipped and supported at an aggregate expense of $697,909.95. The Industrial Institute and College has been built and supported at a cost of $329,735.99.

Higher education has been liberally supported, eleemosynary institutions established and equipped, and the Confederate pension fund largely increased.

Yet these extraordinary expenditures have only meant an addition of $282,943.91 in principal and interest to the State's payable indebtedness. This fact alone gives character to the administration of the State's finances, and bodes well for a wise use of the commonwealth's taxing power in the future.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] Lowrey and McCardle: Hist. Miss., p. 71.

[66] Miss. Laws, 1799, pp. 121-133.

[67] For provisions, Cf. Digest of the statutes of M. T., 1816, pp. 415-424.

[68] Revised Code of Miss., 1857, pp. 72-73.

[69] Hutchinson's Code of Miss., (1798-1848) pp. 188 and 202.

[70] Miss. Rev. Code, 1875; pp. 417-18.

[71] Miss. Rev. Code., 1857, pp. 70-72.

[72] For provisions, Cf. Proceedings of Constitutional Convention, 1861, pp. 12-15.

[73] Miss. Laws, 1862-63, p. 70.

[74] Indigent beneficiaries were divided into three classes, viz: (1) Those entirely dependent. (2) Those deficient in breadstuffs. (3) Those deficient in bacon. No beneficiary could receive more than 6 bushels of corn, 1 bushel of wheat, and 50 pounds of bacon during the year.

[75] Miss. Laws, Feb'y and March, 1865, pp. 3-10.

[76] Miss. Laws, 1862-63, pp. 153-155.

[77] Miss. Laws, 1866-67, pp. 412-414.