ified just what taxes were to be deemed
"direct" (Madison in his notes of the Constitutional Convention records:
"Mr. King asked what was the precise meaning of direct taxation? No one
answd.")[1] or what kind of uniformity was intended by the provision
that indirect taxes should be uniform, and more than a century was to
elapse before either of these fundamental questions was finally
settled. The answer to the latter question (that the term "uniform"
refers purely to a geographical uniformity and is synonymous with the
expression "to operate generally throughout the United States") was
given by the Supreme Court in the year 1900 in the celebrated case of
_Knowlton v. Moore_,[2] and met with general approval. The answer to the
question of what constitutes a direct tax within the meaning of the
Constitution, given by the Supreme Court in 1895 in the Income Tax
cases,[3] met with a different reception. The decision upset
long-settled ideas, disarranged the federal taxing system, aroused
popular resentment, and ultimately led to the enactment of the Sixteenth
Amendment.

[Footnote 1: Farrand, "Records of the Federal Convention," Vol. II, p.
350.]

[Footnote 2: 178 U.S., 41.]

[Footnote 3: _Pollock v. Farmers Loan & Trust Co._, 157 U.S., 429.]

The question had arisen early in the life of the Republic in the case of
_Hylton v. United States_, decided in 1796.[1] This litigation involved
the validity of a tax on carriages which had been imposed by Congress
without apportionment among the states. Alexander Hamilton argued the
case before the Supreme Court in support of the tax. The Court adopted
his view and sustained the tax, holding that it was a tax on consumption
and therefore a species of excise or duty. The Justices who wrote
opinions expressed doubt whether anything but poll taxes and taxes on
land were "direct" within the meaning of the Constitution. That point,
however, was not necessarily involved and was not decided, though later
generations came to assume that it had been decided.

[Footnote 1: 3 Dallas, 171.]

The tax on carriages was soon repealed and many years elapsed before the
question came up again. After the Civil War broke out, however, the need
of revenue became acute and various statutes taxing income without
apportionment among the states were enacted by Congress. These met with
general acquiescence. It was felt that they were emergency measures
necessitated by the war, and they were in fact aba