I have not started Philip Leigh’s book Causes of the Civil War, but I bought a signed copy and received it the other day. As I was looking through his list of sources, I came across the Congressional Research Service report titled U.S. Federal Government Revenues: 1790 to the Present. This concise 15-page report provides a mini education on how the Federal Government raised revenue from 1790 to 2006.

Here are some things I found interesting:

• There were two sources of revenue for the Federal Government in the 1850s: Tariffs and public land sales. Land sales only accounted for between 3.5% to 17.8% of revenue in the 1850s.

• Beginning in 1857 Federal revenues began falling and continued to fall though 1860. Some of this was likely due to the economic slowdown and the 1857 Tariff Bill.

• In 1856 revenue was $72.9 million and by 1860 it was $55 million, a 25% drop. In 1861 it fell again to $40.5 million. It is not hard to see why Lincoln was so interested in revenue collection at Southern ports.

• In 1862 the US revenues recovered to $49.3 million due to the Morrill tariff that was passed in 1861. It was not enough to subdue the South though. In 1863 excises taxes and an income tax were implemented so that by 1865 the Federal Government took in $296.5 million! The excise taxes accounted for 60% of the 1865 revenue.

• 1866 was the first full year the South was again part of the Union from a revenue perspective and the Federal Government took in $489.7 million.

By 1875 the income tax was repealed, and the excise taxes were reduced so the revenue reduced to $250 million annually with only slight growth in the coming decades. The Civil War resulted in an ongoing central government that required nearly four times the revenue it raised prior to the war.