Partly-printed DS as president, one page, 21 x 16.5, February 23, 1864. President Lincoln appoints John W. Killinger as "Assessor of Internal Revenue in the Tenth Collection District of the State of Pennsylvania." Boldly signed at the conclusion in ink by President Abraham Lincoln, and countersigned by Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase. In fine condition, with a thin strip of toning along the right edge.
In July 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln and Congress passed a Revenue Act that created the office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue and enacted a temporary income tax to pay war expenses. Under Chase's direction, the Treasury Department oversaw the creation of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (later renamed the Internal Revenue Service), responsible for collecting this new tax. By the end of the war, 10% of Union households had paid some form of income tax, and the Union raised 21% of its war revenue through income taxes.
The appointee, John Weinland Killinger (1824–1896), was an attorney from Lebanon, Pennsylvania, who served as a Republican in the House of Representatives for three separate terms between 1859 and 1881. The anti-slavery Killinger served in the U.S. Congress from 1859 to 1863 under Presidents James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln. He was chairman of the House Committee on Post Office Expenditures from 1861 to 1863. By this commission issued in 1864, Republican President Abraham Lincoln appointed Killinger to serve as assessor of internal revenue in Pennsylvania, a position he held until 1866.
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