Revenue and Documentary Stamps

When I started collecting stamps, I discovered a category of stamps called "revenue stamps," also known as "documentary stamps." Essentially, the U.S. government decided it needed more money to cover its expeditures, so it started taxing everything. We modern Americans think we have a rough time with taxes. In 1862, the Federal Government faced increased expenses related to fighting the Civil War against the rebellious Confederacy, so it taxed everything in order to cover the costs of fielding an army and equipping it. Civil-War era Americans had to pay a tax on the newspapers they read, their tobacco, playing cards, and official documents. If they sold real estate, bought stocks and bonds, incorporated a business, wrote checks on their bank accounts, or shipped cargo, they had to pay a tax. To make paying the taxes less distasteful, the revenue stamps bore the portrait of George Washington. Americans may have hated paying the taxes, but the loved George Washington, so they went along it. Look at the variety of revenue sources:

One revenue stamp took me completely by surprise: a tax on Marijuana sales. In 1937, the Federal Government enacted the Marihuana Act, to allow the IRS to collect tax on sales of marijuana. If the nation legalizes marijuana again, it should plan to tax it, again, and use the revenue to fight another war, this one against cocaine and meth.

Basically the British Government enacted the hated Stamp Act of 1765 to help pare down the expenses of fighting the Seven Years War, also known as the French and Indian War; but the use of revenue stamps by the British government led to the revolutionary slogan, "No taxation without representation!" The Founders convinced the nation to go to war with Britain over the hated Stamp Act. 

Then, during the American Civil War of 1861-65, the Federal Government enacted a Stamp Act of its own, again to pare down the expenses. Americans may have hated the idea of paying the same tax again, but at least they elected the officials who levied the taxes. They also had a federal government to collect them and not disputatious states hemming and hawing, as happened in the Revolutionary War.  

History teachers must have had a hell of a time trying to explain why the Federal Government used such a discredited concept as taxing newspapers, playing cards, and contracts, even if the proceeds went to finance the Civil War. The government must have lost some credibility when it continued to use revenue stamps after the surrender of the Confederacy in 1865. The taxation of documents and commerce continued with hardly a blip. Everyone must have realized that the IRS took some risks by doing this. Thank God the Gilbert Stuart painting of Washington looks so handsome!