There were in Georgia at the time from eighty-five thousand to ninety thousand colored men subject to the tax: perhaps, indeed, the number reached one hundred thousand.

It was thus ordained that the negroes, who had no property at all, should pay one-third as much as the white men, who had two hundred and fifty millions of property in possession.

This odious and unjust tax was stringently exacted from the negro.

To make sure that not one should escape, the tax was held as a lien upon his labor, and the employer was under distraint to pay it.

In Alabama they devised for the same purpose two dollars on every person between the ages of eighteen and fifty, causing a still larger proportion of the total tax to fall on the negro than the Georgia law-makers deemed expedient.
Texas followed with a capitation tax of a dollar per head, while Florida levied upon every inhabitant between the ages of twenty-one and fifty-five years a capitation tax of three dollars, and upon failure or refusal to pay the same the tax-collector was "authorized and required to seize the body of the delinquent, and hire him out, after five days' public notice before the door of the Court House, to any person who will pay the said tax and the costs incident to the proceedings growing out of said arrest, for his services for the shortest period of time." As the costs as well as the capitation tax were to be worked out by the negro, it is presumable that, in the spirit of this tax-law, they were enlarged to the utmost limit that decency, according to the standard set up by this law, would permit.
It is fair to presume that, in any event, the costs would not be less than the tax, and might, indeed, be double or treble that amount.