Tax and fend: Bush's assault on tax fairness is part of an old Republican tradition--but not the only one.

• Author: McIntyre, Robert S.
• Position: Book Review

THE GREAT TAX WARS: Lincoln to Wilson--The Fierce Battles Over Money and Power That Transformed the Nation by Stephen R. Weisman Simon & Schuster, $27.00

SPEAKING BEFORE THE NAACP ANNUAL convention, in 2000, candidate George W. Bush famously apologized for the GOP's history of racial insensitivity. "The party of Lincoln," Bush said, "has not always carried the mantle of Lincoln." As president, Bush has taken a few modest steps to bridge the racial divide--for instance, hiring Colin Powell and Condi Rice. But when it comes to another old and bitter split in American politics, over who shall pay how much in taxes, George W. Bush is no Abe Lincoln.

Unlike Bush, our first Republican president was a long-standing proponent of progressive taxation. As New York Times reporter Stephen R. Weisman explains in his new book, The Great Tax Wars, Lincoln started early, when he pushed (unsuccessfully) for a graduated property tax as an Illinois state legislator, arguing that such an approach was not only equitable within itself, but politically savvy, since the "wealthy few ... are not sufficiently numerous to carry the elections." Then, as president, facing the burden of finding money to wage the Civil War, Lincoln took an even more radical step. Congress had been considering only higher tariffs and excise taxes to pay for the war. But "after a storm of criticism that these new steps would fall most heavily on the poor," writes Weisman, it became clear that something different was needed. After the Union's devastating defeat at Bull Run, and amid a spate of war profiteering and other corporate Scandals, Rep. Schuyler Colfax, a Republican from Indiana, suggested imposing a federal income tax, with higher rates for those best able to pay. Lincoln happily supported the idea.

Many in his own party furiously disagreed. Thaddeus Stevens, the Pennsylvania Republican who chaired the House Ways and Means Committee, complained--in language that still echoes in The Wall Street Journal editorial pages--that it was "vicious" and "unjust" to impose "a punishment Of the rich man because he is rich." When Congress passed a primitive income tax bill in 1862, Lincoln's defiant treasury secretary, Samuel Chase, ignored the law, preferring to fund the war through more government borrowing (sound familiar?). When that source became difficult to tap and Union setbacks continued, Chase talked Lincoln into printing more greenbacks--despite justified fears that doing so would spark inflation.

The following year, Congress passed, and Lincoln signed, a more carefully thought out income tax bill, which included the creation of a new agency to administer it. The new law established a two-rate system of 3 percent (for incomes over $600) and 5 percent (for incomes over $10,000), as well as taxes on inheritances, corporations, and various commodities. By the end of the war, top tax rates had been raised to 10 percent to squeeze "the millionaires ... who can afford to pay liberally of their means" as one proponent put it. But while the North funded its side of the war with a progressive income tax, the South took too long to follow suit. Unbacked by revenue, Confederate money soon became almost worthless, costing the South its ability to finance its rebellion. The North's income tax, Weisman notes, was "crucial...