income tax (29).
             For more than twenty years, Congress turned to tariffs and excise taxes to again be the primary sources of government revenues. Cries for the return of the income tax continued inside and outside of government, but efforts were voted down by the Republican majority in Congress, saying that additional revenue was not needed due to already existing surpluses in the budget. Those surpluses not only existed, but they soared about $100 million per year in the 1880s (Witte 70).
             The success of the 1880s ended abruptly with the Panic of 1893, which was "caused by a run on gold and fears in the eastern financial community that the nation would go off the gold standard for the dollar" (70). The panic lowered government
             revenues and soon eliminated existing surpluses. At the same time, the Democratic Party gained control of both the presidency and Congress for the first time in the post-Civil War era. Formal debates over the renewal of the income tax soon followed, and a flat tax of two perc
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