2024-01 Raynors Americana Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 1/20/2024
Broadside, 15-¾" x 10", titled THE INJUSTICE OF POLL TAXES, by Henry P. Farrow, Atlanta, ca.1867, text printed in three columns. Old folds. Minor foxing, spotting, and creasing. An eloquent appeal against the disenfranchising poll tax, by a southern champion of Reconstruction. Henry Pattillo Farrow issued this appeal on behalf of the poor of all races in Georgia, at a critical moment in the history of Reconstruction and the future of voting rights in the state, while the Reconstruction Constitutional Convention was meeting. Georgia led the way in making the poll tax a bulwark against fundamental change in race relations in the South. Despite the opposition presented in this broadside, the poll tax was retained in the final draft of the Georgia Reconstruction constitution adopted in 1868, and was carried over in the 1877 revision. The former Confederate officer, Henry P. Farrow appeal, in part, "There is, in the humble judgment of the writer, no species of taxation ever assessed by any government more violative of the principles of the science of political economy and of common sense than taxation of that kind. A poll, or per capita tax, is not upon property; is not upon a profession, a trade, or a business; but it is a tax on man's inalienable rights - 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'
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