Jack of Harts

Another half century went by before we passed the Sixteenth Amendment, which gave the Federal government the power to collect direct taxes on any income from the American people. The Federal government mainly received its income via tariffs and various luxury or sin taxes before this. It had instituted a brief Income Tax as a wartime measure during the Civil War, but that expired in the 1870s, and the Supreme Court would later rule against direct taxes. A coalition of Democrats and Progressive Republicans cooperated to make the permanent Income Tax as we now know it a reality in 1913.

The Fourteenth Amendment declared that anyone born in the United States or naturalized in it is a citizen of the United States, and that no State can take away their rights as a citizen without due process, nor deny them equal protection of the law. This was written to stop certain States from declaring former slaves to not be citizens, and therefore not eligible to vote. An interesting tidbit is that there is a “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause in that Amendment. If someone is subject to another jurisdiction, or a subject of another nation, are they a citizen of the United States? Many say no. Those who ignore this clause generally support birthright citizenship to children of foreign nationals born in the United States.

The Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution detailed new rules for electing the President and the Vice President. Each Elector originally cast votes for two people and the man who got the most Electoral College votes, as long as it was a majority, became President. The next greatest vote getter became Vice President. This system worked until 1800, when the Republican Party gave Jefferson and Burr the same exact number of votes for President. That sent the tie-breaker to the House of Representatives where the Federalists tried to sabotage the works by electing Burr over Jefferson. Jefferson won in the end, but only after much chaos and bad feelings. Under the Twelfth Amendment, each Elector now casts one vote for President and one vote for Vice President.