The Human Toll : Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America

How the thirteen colonies deployed the power of taxation to support, promote, and perpetuate the institution of slaveryThe Human Toll documents how the American colonies used tax law to dehumanize enslaved persons, taxing them alongside valuable commodities upon their forced arrival and then as wealth-generating assets in the hands of slaveholders.Anthony C. Infanti examines how taxation also proved to be an important component for subjugating and controlling enslaved persons, both through its shaping of the composition of new arrivals to the colonies and through its funding of financial compensation to slaveholders for the destruction of their “property” to ensure their cooperation in the administration of capital punishment.The variety of tax mechanisms chosen to fund slaveholder compensation payments conveyed messages about who was thought to benefit from-and, therefore, who should shoulder the burden of-slaveholder compensation while opening a revealing window into these colonial s