s far recited, were
still further aggravated in a majority of the rebellious States by the
exaction of taxes from the colored man to an amount altogether
disproportionate to their property. Indeed, of property they had none.
Just emerging from a condition of slavery in which their labor had
been constantly exacted without fee or reward of any kind, it was
impossible that they could be the owners of any thing except their own
bodies. Notwithstanding this fact, the negroes, _en masse,_ were held
to be subjects of taxation in the State Governments about to be
re-organized. In Georgia, for example, a State tax of three hundred
and fifty thousand dollars was levied in the first year of peace. The
property of the State, even after all the ruin of the war, exceeded
two hundred and fifty million dollars. This tax, therefore, amounted
to less than one-seventh of one per cent upon the aggregate valuation
of the State,--equal to the imposition of only a dollar and a half upon
each thousand dollars of property. The Legislature of the State
decreed, however, that a large proportion of this small levy should be
raised by a poll-tax of a dollar per head upon every man in the State
between the ages of twenty-one and sixty years. There were in Georgia
at the time from eighty-five thousand to ninety thousand colored men
subject to the tax: perhaps, indeed, the number reached one hundred
thousand. It was thus ordained that the negroes, who had no property
at all, should pay one-third as much as the white men, who had two
hundred and fifty millions of property in possession. This odious and
unjust tax was stringently exacted from the negro. To make sure that
not one should escape, the tax was held as a lien upon his labor, and
the employer was under distraint to pay it. In Alabama they devised
for the same purpose two dollars on every person between the ages of
eighteen and fifty, causing a still larger proportion of the total tax
to fall on the negro than the Georgia law-makers deemed expedient.

Texas followed with a capitation tax of a dollar per head, while
Florida levied upon every inhabitant between the ages of twenty-one
and fifty-five years a capitation tax of three dollars, and upon
failure or refusal to pay the same the tax-collector was "authorized
and required to seize the body of the delinquent, and hire him out,
after five days' public notice before the door of the Court House, to
any person who will pay the said t