From The New-York Times January 15, 1861:
THE EXPENSES OF SECESSION.
— The Columbia South Carolinian publishes an ordinance just passed by the City Council “to raise supplies for the year 1861.” Besides a tax of 85 cents on every hundred dollars worth of real estate, and innumerable taxes on horses, wagons, places of amusement, &c., &c., it is ordained that
One dollar per head shall be paid on all slaves under sixty years of age, not liable to street duty; which said tax upon slaves shall be paid by the owner or person having charge and control thereof; one dollar each on every free negro, mulatto or mestizo, under the age of ten years; two dollars each on every free negro, mulatto or mestizo, over the age of ten and under sixteen years; ten dollars on every male free negro, mulatto or mestizo, over the age of sixteen and under sixty years; seven dollars on every female free negro, mulatto or mestizo over the age of sixteen and under fifty-five years, and twenty-five dollars on every male free negro, mulatto or mestizo, over the age of twenty-one and under the age of sixty years, exercising any mechanic art or trade within the limits of the said city.”
The heaviest part of the expense of secession is thus levied on those free negroes who have by industry and mechanic skill become able to maintain themselves. Besides a very heavy tax on each head of such family, every member of it, down to the child in arms, is subjected to an additional exaction. The result must be the speedy reduction of this class of persons to a condition of abject poverty, and then they will probably be sold into Slavery. The sale of free negroes will probably thus come to be the grand resort of the seceding States for money to defray the expenses of their rebellion. What a magnificent basis for a new Confederacy!
If you’re a free black working to support your family you get billed 25 times what your old master would have been charged (actually $25 plus the charge for your family members). I guess freedom really wasn’t free in the Columbia of 1861. And I wonder what bureaucrat gets to earn his pay by deciding whether someone is a mulatto or not.
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Go North, Young Snowman!
From The New-York Times January 15, 1861:
Weather Reports.
RUTLAND, Vt., Monday, Jan. 14.
Yesterday morning at sunrise the thermometer here was 24° below zero. At Middlebury it was 29.
MONTREAL, Monday, Jan. 14.
Saturday was the coldest day of the season. The thermometer stood at 24° below zero. To-day it is 14° below. Weather clear.
