Historical Highlights

The Ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment

February 03, 1913Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives
About this objectA long-serving Member, Sereno Payne of New York chaired the Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries.On this date, the states of Delaware, Wyoming, and New Mexico approved the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratifying it into law. The amendment empowered Congress to impose an income tax on individuals and corporations. During the House debates of S.J. Res. 40, Members had debated the merits of collecting income taxes. Representatives Sereno Payne of New York and Samuel McCall of Massachusetts argued that income taxes should only be levied to raise revenue during times of war. Congressman Ebenezer Hill of Connecticut also worried that the tax could be unfairly levied on constituents in poorer states: “We are ready to vote for an income tax to meet any emergencies which may arise…and to stand by the Government in time of war; but do not ask us…without consultation with our people at home, to put this burden on them in addition to one already severe because of local expenditures… ” Representative William Sulzer of New York, a supporter of the tax, said, “I have been the constant advocate of an income tax along constitutional lines… I reiterate that through it only…will it ever be possible for the Government to be able to make idle wealth pay its just share of the ever-increasing burdens of taxation.” After a brisk debate on July 12, 1909, lasting for five hours, the bill passed 318–14, with 1 voting “present,” and 55 not voting. The Sixteenth Amendment was the first change to the Constitution since the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed African-American male suffrage, 43 years earlier, in 1870.

Related Highlight Subjects

• Artifacts in the House Collection
• Constitution
• Fifteenth Amendment
• Hill, Ebenezer
• Legislation
• Payne, Sereno
• Sulzer, William

SmartNews Keeping you current

Along with the Capitol and other iconic buildings in Washington, D.C.

By Danny Lewis

smithsonian.com

July 26, 2016

Earliest known photograph of the White House. The image was taken in 1846 by John Plumbe during the administration of James K. Polk. (Library of Congress/John Plumbe)

When First Lady Michelle Obama took the stage during the first night of the Democratic National Convention, she talked about how it felt to be a black woman waking up in the White House every morning—a building constructed with slave labor. It was a powerful moment in her speech, hearkening back to the generations of African-Americans forced into bondage in this country. Up until a few decades ago, little attention was paid to looking into who actually laid the foundations and put up the walls of the White House. But what documentation exists today shows that many of Washington, D.C.’s most iconic government buildings, including the White House, were built by slaves.

In 2005, Congress put together a task force to shed light on the subject. After months of research, the commission announced that while it would never be able to tell the full story of the slaves who built these buildings, there was no doubt that they were intricately involved in the work, Alexander Lane reported for PolitiFact.

“Indifference by earlier historians, poor record keeping, and the silence of the voiceless classes have impeded our ability in the twenty-first century to understand fully the contributions and privations of those who toiled over the seven decades from the first cornerstone laying to the day of emancipation in the District of Columbia,” Senate Historian Richard Baker and Chief of the House of Representatives Office of History and Preservation Kenneth Kato wrote in a foreword to the report.

From a geographical standpoint alone, it should come as no surprise that slave laborers were used to build the nation’s capital. Washington, D.C., was built on landed ceded to the federal government by Virginia and Maryland, and at the time the Potomac region was home to almost half of the country’s 750,000 slaves, Lane reports.

While the White House Historical Association reports that the D.C. commissioners originally tried to bring cheap workers over from Europe to build the new capital, their recruitment efforts fell short. As a result, they forced local slaves to provide the labor, often renting workers from their masters for year-long periods of time.

“Slaves were likely involved in all aspects of construction, including carpentry, masonry, carting, rafting, plastering, glazing and painting, the task force reported,” Lane writes. “And slaves appear to have shouldered alone the grueling work of sawing logs and stones.”

In addition to constructing the buildings, slaves also worked the quarries where the stones for the government buildings came from. Ironically, the Statue of Freedom that sits atop the Capitol dome was made with the help of Philip Reid, a man enslaved by sculptor Thomas Crawford, who was commissioned to build the statue. According to the Architect of the Capitol, Reid was paid $1.25 a day by the federal government for his contributions.

“There is no telling how many stories that have been lost because, as a country, we didn’t value these stories,” historian and reporter Jesse J. Holland tells Smithsonian.com. “We’re always learning more about the presidents as we go forward and we’ll also learn more about the people who cooked their meals and dressed them.”

n 1855, the Wisconsin Supreme Court became the only state high court to declare the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional, as a result of a case involving fugitive slave Joshua Glover and Sherman Booth, who led efforts that thwarted Glover’s recapture. In 1859 in Ableman v. Booth, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the state court.

Source: wiki

Unconstitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act : decisions of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in the cases of Booth and Rycraft.Other TitleWisconsin reportsContributor NamesWisconsin. Supreme Court.Booth, Sherman M.Rycraft, John.Smith, A. D. (Albert Daniel), 1811-1865.Cushing, Caleb, 1800-1879, former owner.Joseph Meredith Toner Collection (Library of Congress)Created / PublishedMilwaukee : R. King & Co., printers, 1855.Subject Headings-  Booth, Sherman M.–Trials, litigation, etc-  Rycraft, John–Trials, litigation, etc-  United States.–Fugitive slave law (1850)-  Slavery–United States-  Glover, Joshua

Source: Library of Congress

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