"Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." [link|http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s32.html| Thomas Jefferson ]

""We are all the more reconciled to the tax on importations, because it falls exclusively on the rich, and with the equal partition of intestate's estates, constitutes the best agrarian law. In fact, the poor man in this country who uses nothing but what is made within his own farm or family, or within the United States, pays not a farthing of tax to the General Government, but on his salt; and should we go into that manufacture as we ought to do, he will pay not one cent."
[link|http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1330.htm| --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1811. ME 13:39 ]

Hmm...and without looking...I believe that tariffs (iirc, initially our principle source of taxes) are a progressive tax.