to apportion such taxes among the states, so a ruling on that basis would doom all federal income taxation. Jackson was ill, but the eight remaining justices heard the case. They struck down certain other provisions of the act but split 4–4 on the constitutionality of the income tax. When Jackson suggested he could return to Washington, the Court agreed to rehear the case to make a more conclusive ruling on the income tax's legality. Because the other eight justices had been evenly split, it was assumed that Jackson's vote would determine the case. Experts were uncertain how he would rule: his Southern background suggested he might support the tax, but his pro-business judicial views meant he might be inclined to strike it down. During the three days of arguments, lawyers aimed their contentions at the violently coughing Jackson, often ignoring other justices in their zeal to persuade the swing vote. But when the ruling finally came down on May 20, 1895, Jackson was in dissent. A five-justice majority led by Chief Justice Fuller ruled the tax to be unconstitutional, declaring it was an impermissible unapportioned direct tax. Jackson joined Brown and justices John Marshall Harlan and Edward Douglass White in dissenting from the Court's holding. In an impassioned opinion, he wrote "this decision is, in my judgment, the most disastrous blow ever struck at the constitutional power of Congress". Numerous coughing fits interrupted Jackson's ardent turns of phrase, stopping the seriously ill justice several times during his forty-five-minute delivery of the dissent. Many have attempted to determine how Jackson ended up in the minority. The apparent reason is that one justice switched his vote. Newspapers at the time identified George Shiras as the "vacillating Justice"; biographer Willard King notes that "great obloquy (verbal abuse) was heaped on him" by outlets that opposed the Court's decision. While this suggestion continues to have its adherents, three sources denied Shiras's vote changed. Others have argued that Horace Gray or David Brewer changed their votes, but those proposals are difficult to reconcile with primary sources. The remaining possibility is that no justice changed his vote. According to this theory, five justices were averse to the tax from the beginning, but they were unable to unite behind one legal theory initially. Jackson's dissent eventually won vindication from the court of history: the Sixteenth Amendment passed eighteen years after Pollock revised the Constitution to authorize