This limitations of taxation is what kept the U.S. federal government relatively in check prior to the Civil War.
Comparatively in check, and it wasn't a very civil war. Warfare never is. It was in fact the War for Southern Independence and is officially, now, the "War Between the States" though for many decades it was officially the "War of the Rebellion."
However, I think it is important to understand that the comparison isn't one which favors the federalist system. Yes, we are certainly much worse off now that the central government is more obviously unlimited in its scope, power, and ambitions. But, the Southerners had a point - the federal government was out of control then.
Keep in mind that these Southerners were men who very much identified with guys like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. They did not throw down their national government for "light or transient reasons." They set up a new government with a constitution very nearly identical to the one which had gone before, with the addition of term limits and a line item veto.
Yes, of course slavery was a part of the constitution of the Confederacy, but as we all know it was also deeply embedded in the constitution of the USA prior to 1865. Indeed, the comparison is so close that Sam Houston, then governor of Texas, on learning of the decision to send a delegation to the Confederate States convention in Montgomery, Alabama in 1861, asked "Why leave one ill-formed Union only to join another?"
The unchecked growth of the U.S. federal government didn't really get underway until the Civil War
Again, I would say that the writing was so much on the wall by 1860 that you would find anyone who felt very strongly about limited government pressuring his state to utilize its sovereign power to secede. Otherwise South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, various tribes in Oklahoma, and the Republic of Arizona would not have done so.
There was a war to settle the matter of whether the US national government would be limited by its constitution. The side for unchecked power won. The losing side wasn't satisfied with that decision, and guys like Nathan Bedford Forrest led a very clever campaign of resistance right up until the Posse Commitatus Act and other limitations on federal power were put in place. Yes, certainly those didn't last. But it does suggest that people determined to be free can make some headway on the matter.
Regards,
Jim http://www.ezez.com/
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