How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

by Heather Cox Richardson

When circumstances warranted it, Morrill explained, the government could demand 99 percent of a man’s property. When the nation required it, “the property of the people . . . belongs to the Government.” Taxes paid for about 21 percent of the war’s cost.39

The new federal taxes were overwhelmingly popular. Paying them signaled support for the government and democracy. Even conservative newspapers declared that “there is not the slightest objection raised in any loyal quarter to as much taxation as may be necessary.”

Aryan Cowboys: White Supremacists and the Search for a New Frontier, 1970–2000 (University of Texas Press, 2006); George L. Church and Ed Magnuson, “Geraldine Ferraro: A Break with Tradition,” Time, July 23, 1984; Joan Didion, “Trouble in Lakewood,” The New Yorker, July 26, 1993. 16 Jason Wilson, “Ruby Ridge, 1992: The Day the American Militia Movement Was Born,” The Guardian, August 26, 2017.