Lysander Spooner
Encyclopedia
Lysander Spooner was an American individualist anarchist, political philosopher, Deist, abolitionist
, supporter of the labor movement, legal theorist, and entrepreneur
of the nineteenth century. He is also known for competing with the U.S. Post Office
with his American Letter Mail Company
, which was forced out of business by the United States government.
, Massachusetts
, on January 19, 1808, and died "at one o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, May 14, 1887, in his little room at 109 Myrtle Street, [Boston,] surrounded by trunks and chests bursting with the books, manuscripts, and pamphlets which he had gathered in his active pamphleteer's warfare over half a century long."
Spooner advocated what he called Natural Law
or the "Science of Justice" wherein acts of initiatory coercion
against individuals and their property were considered "illegal" but the so-called criminal acts that violated only man-made legislation were not.
, which itself violated Massachusetts law. Spooner had studied law under the prominent lawyers and politician
s John Davis
and Charles Allen
, but he had never attended college
. According to the laws of the state, college graduates were required to study with an attorney for three years, while non-graduates were required to do so for five years.
With the encouragement of his legal mentors, Spooner set up his practice in Worcester
after only three years, openly defying the courts. He saw the three-year privilege for college graduates as a state-sponsored discrimination against the poor and also providing a monopoly income to those who met the requirements. He argued that "no one has yet ever dared advocate, in direct terms, so monstrous a principle as that the rich ought to be protected by law from the competition of the poor." In 1836, the legislature abolished the restriction. He opposed all licensing requirements for lawyers, doctors or anyone else that was prevented from being employed by such requirements. To prevent a person from doing business with a person without a professional license he saw as a violation of the natural right to contract.
After a disappointing legal career - his radical writing seems to have kept away potential clients - and a failed career in real estate
speculation in Ohio
, Spooner returned to his father's farm in 1840.
which competed with the U.S. Post Office. Postal rates were notoriously high in the 1840s, and in 1844, Spooner founded the American Letter Mail Company
, which had offices in various cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Stamps could be purchased and then attached to letters which could be sent to any of its offices. From here agents were dispatched who traveled on railroads and steamboats, and carried the letters in hand bags. Letters were transferred to messengers in the cities along the routes who then delivered the letters to the addressees. This was a challenge to the United States Post Office's monopoly
. As he had done when challenging the rules of the Massachusetts bar, he published a pamphlet titled "The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails." Although Spooner had finally found commercial success with his mail company, legal challenges by the government eventually exhausted his financial resources. He closed up shop without ever having had the opportunity to fully litigate his constitutional claims. The lasting legacy of Spooner's challenge to the postal service was the 3-cent stamp, adopted in response to the competition his company provided.
movement. His most famous work, a book titled The Unconstitutionality of Slavery
, was published in 1845 to great acclaim among many abolitionists but criticism from others. Spooner's book contributed to a controversy within the abolitionist movement over whether the United States Constitution
supported the institution of slavery. The "disunionist" faction, led by William Lloyd Garrison
and Wendell Phillips
, argued the Constitution legally recognized and enforced the oppression of slaves (as, for example, in the provisions for the capture of fugitive slaves in Article IV, Section 2). They also cited the frequent appeals to Constitutional compromise by Southern politicians, who insisted that protection of the "peculiar institution" was part of the sectional compromise on which the Constitution was based. The disunionists thus argued that keeping the free states in a political union with the slave states made the citizens of the free states complicit in the slave system, and denounced the Constitution as "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell." More generally, Wendell Phillips disputed Spooner's notion that any unjust law should be held legally void by judges.
Spooner challenged the claim that the text of the Constitution supported slavery. Although he recognized that the Founders had probably not intended to outlaw slavery when writing the Constitution, he argued that only the meaning of the text, not the private intentions of its writers, was enforceable. Spooner used a complex system of legal and natural law arguments in order to show that the clauses usually interpreted as supporting slavery did not, in fact, support it, and that several clauses of the Constitution prohibited the states from establishing slavery under the law. Spooner's arguments were cited by other pro-Constitution abolitionists, such as Gerrit Smith
and the Liberty Party
, which adopted it as an official text in its 1848 platform. Frederick Douglass
, originally a Garrisonian disunionist, later came to accept the pro-Constitution position, and cited Spooner's arguments to explain his change of mind.
From the publication of this book until 1861, Spooner actively campaigned against slavery. He published subsequent pamphlets on Jury Nullification
and other legal defenses for escaped slaves and offered his legal services, often free of charge, to fugitives. In the late 1850s, copies of his book were distributed to members of Congress sparking some debate over their contents. Even Senator Albert Gallatin Brown of Mississippi
, a slavery proponent, praised the argument's intellectual rigor and conceded it was the most formidable legal challenge he had seen from the abolitionists to date. In 1858, Spooner circulated a "Plan for the Abolition of Slavery," calling for the use of guerrilla warfare
against slaveholders by black slaves and non-slaveholding free Southerners, with aid from Northern abolitionists. Spooner also "conspir[ed] with John Brown
to promote a servile insurrection in the South," and participated in an aborted plot to free Brown after his capture following the failed raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia
(Harper's Ferry is now part of the state of West Virginia
).
In 1860, Spooner was actively courted by William Seward
to support the fledgling Republican Party
. An admitted sympathizer with the Jeffersonian political philosophy, Spooner adamantly refused the request and soon became an outspoken abolitionist critic of the party. To Spooner, the Republicans were hypocrites for purporting to oppose slavery's expansion but refusing to take a strong, consistent moral stance against slavery itself. Although Spooner had advocated the use of violence to abolish slavery, he denounced the Republicans' use of violence to prevent the Southern states from seceding during the American Civil War
. He published several letters and pamphlets about the war, arguing that the Republican objective was not to eradicate slavery, but rather to preserve the Union by force. He blamed the bloodshed on Republican political leaders, such as Secretary of State
William H. Seward
and Senator Charles Sumner
, who often spoke out against slavery but would not attack it on a constitutional basis, and who pursued military policies seen as vengeful and abusive.
Although he denounced the institution of slavery, Spooner recognized the right of the Confederate States of America
to secede as the manifestation of government by consent, a constitutional and legal principle fundamental to Spooner's philosophy; the Northern states, in contrast, were trying to deny the Southerners
that right through military force. He "vociferously opposed the Civil War, arguing that it violated the right of the southern states to secede from a Union that no longer represented them." He believed they were attempting to restore the Southern states to the Union, against the wishes of Southerners. He argued that the right of the states to secede derives from the natural right of slaves to be free. This argument was unpopular in the North and in the South after the War began, as it conflicted with the official position of both governments.
As a means to end slavery without bloodshed, Spooner offered compensated emancipation
, a method tested and proven in those nations that had orchestrated the peaceful abolition of slavery.
Spooner also believed that government restrictions on issuance of private money made it inordinately difficult for individuals to obtain the capital on credit to start their own businesses, thereby putting them in a situation where "a very large portion of them, to save themselves from starvation, have no alternative but to sell their labor to others" and those who do employ others are only able to afford to pay "far below what the laborers could produce, [than] if they themselves had the necessary capital to work with." Spooner said that there was "a prohibitory tax --- a tax of ten per cent. --- on all notes issued for circulation as money, other than the notes of the United States and the national banks" which he argued caused an artificial shortage of credit, and that eliminating this tax would result in making plenty of money available for lending such that: "All the great establishments, of every kind, now in the hands of a few proprietors, but employing a great number of wage labourers, would be broken up; for few or no persons, who could hire capital and do business for themselves would consent to labour for wages for another." Economist Murray Rothbard
, in 1974, argued against Spooner's theory. Though agreeing that government should not have any regulations on money, he argued that "an increase in the supply of money does not confer any benefit whatever on society" but simply dilutes the purchasing power. Moreover, Rothbard said that in an anarchist society, the quantity of money would actually not increase as Spooner theorizes, but that supply would be even more limited than when governments and central banks manage the money supply, and fortunately so.
and the Reconstruction period that followed. Though he approved of the abolition of black slavery, he criticized the North for failing to make this the purpose of their cause. Instead of fighting to abolish slavery, they fought to "preserve the union" and, according to Spooner, to bolster business interests behind that union. Spooner believed a war of this type was hypocritical and dishonest, especially on the part of Radical Republicans like Sumner who were by then claiming to be abolitionist heroes for ending slavery. Spooner also argued that the war came at a great cost to liberty and proved that the rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence no longer held true - the people could not "dissolve the political bands" that tie them to a government that "becomes destructive" of the consent of the governed
because if they did so, as Spooner believed the South had attempted to do, they would be met by the bayonet to enforce their obedience to the former government.
The Union government's actions during the war caused Spooner to radicalize his views to an anarchistic
view. In response, Spooner published a series of political tracts, No Treason
. The most famous of these is No Treason No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority. In this lengthy essay, Spooner argued that the Constitution was a contract of government (see social contract
theory) which could not logically apply to anyone other than the individuals who signed it, and was thus void. Furthermore, since the government now existing under the Constitution pursued coercive policies that were contrary to the Natural Law and to the consent of the governed, it had been demonstrated that that document could not adequately stop many abuses against liberty or prevent tyranny from taking hold. Spooner bolstered his argument by noting that the federal government, as established by a legal contract, could not legally bind all persons living in the nation since none had ever signed their names or given their consent to it - that consent had always been assumed, which fails one of the most basic burdens of proof for a valid contract in the courtroom.
Spooner widely circulated the No Treason pamphlets, which also contained a legal defense against the crime of treason
itself intended for former Confederate soldiers (hence the name of the pamphlet, arguing that "no treason" had been committed in the war by the South). These excerpts were published in DeBow's Review
and in some other well-known southern periodicals of the time.
George Woodcock
describes Spooner's essays as an "eloquent elaboration" of Josiah Warren
and the early American development of Proudhon's ideas, and associates his works with that of Stephen Pearl Andrews
.
", which holds that in a free society a trial jury not only has the authority to rule on the facts of the case, but also on the legitimacy of the law under which the case is tried, and which would allow juries to refuse to convict if they regard the law they are asked to convict under as illegitimate. He became closely associated with Benjamin Tucker
's anarchist
journal Liberty
, which published all of his later works in serial format, and for which he wrote several editorial columns on current events. He argued that ". . . almost all fortunes are made out of the capital and labour of other men than those who realise them. Indeed, except by his sponging capital and labour from others."
Spooner died on May 14, 1887 at the age of 79 in his residence, 109 Myrtle Street, Boston. Benjamin Tucker
arranged his funeral service and wrote a "loving obituary," entitled "Our Nestor
Taken From Us," which appeared in Liberty on May 28, and predicted "that the name Lysander Spooner would be 'henceforth memorable among men.'"
economist Murray Rothbard
and right-libertarian law professor and legal theorist Randy Barnett
.
In January 2004, Laissez Faire Books
established the Lysander Spooner Award for advancing the literature of liberty. The honor is awarded monthly to the most important contributions to the literature of liberty, followed by an annual award to the author of the top book on liberty for the year. The annual "Spooner" earns $1,500 cash for the winning author. Conversely, proponents of libertarian socialism
, left-libertarianism
as a whole, and market socialism
cite Spooner for his opposition to wage labor.
Spooner's The Unconstitutionality of Slavery was cited in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller
Supreme Court case which struck down the federal district's ban on handguns. Justice Antonin Scalia
, writing for the court, quotes Spooner as saying the right to bear arms was necessary for those who wanted to take a stand against slavery. It was also cited by Justice Clarence Thomas
in his concurring opinion in McDonald v. Chicago
the following year.
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
, supporter of the labor movement, legal theorist, and entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
of the nineteenth century. He is also known for competing with the U.S. Post Office
United States Post Office Department
The Post Office Department was the name of the United States Postal Service when it was a Cabinet department. It was headed by the Postmaster General....
with his American Letter Mail Company
American Letter Mail Company
The American Letter Mail Company was started by Lysander Spooner in 1844, competing with the legal monopoly of the United States Post Office in violation of the Private Express Statutes. It succeeded in delivering mail for lower prices, but the U.S...
, which was forced out of business by the United States government.
Life overview
Spooner was born on a farm in AtholAthol, Massachusetts
Athol is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 11,584 at the 2010 census.-History:Originally called Pequoiag, the area was first settled by five families in September 1735. When the township was incorporated in 1762, the name was changed to Athol...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, on January 19, 1808, and died "at one o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, May 14, 1887, in his little room at 109 Myrtle Street, [Boston,] surrounded by trunks and chests bursting with the books, manuscripts, and pamphlets which he had gathered in his active pamphleteer's warfare over half a century long."
Spooner advocated what he called Natural Law
Natural law
Natural law, or the law of nature , is any system of law which is purportedly determined by nature, and thus universal. Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. Natural law is contrasted with the positive law Natural...
or the "Science of Justice" wherein acts of initiatory coercion
Coercion
Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner by use of threats or intimidation or some other form of pressure or force. In law, coercion is codified as the duress crime. Such actions are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in the desired way...
against individuals and their property were considered "illegal" but the so-called criminal acts that violated only man-made legislation were not.
Legal career
His activism began with his career as a lawyerLawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
, which itself violated Massachusetts law. Spooner had studied law under the prominent lawyers and politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
s John Davis
John Davis (Massachusetts Governor)
John Davis was an American lawyer, businessman and politician.-Early life:John Davis was born in Northborough, Massachusetts...
and Charles Allen
Charles Allen (Massachusetts politician)
Charles Allen , was a United States Representative from Massachusetts.He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on August 9, 1797; he attended the Leicester Academy and Yale College and studied law...
, but he had never attended college
College
A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...
. According to the laws of the state, college graduates were required to study with an attorney for three years, while non-graduates were required to do so for five years.
With the encouragement of his legal mentors, Spooner set up his practice in Worcester
Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester is a city and the county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, as of the 2010 Census the city's population is 181,045, making it the second largest city in New England after Boston....
after only three years, openly defying the courts. He saw the three-year privilege for college graduates as a state-sponsored discrimination against the poor and also providing a monopoly income to those who met the requirements. He argued that "no one has yet ever dared advocate, in direct terms, so monstrous a principle as that the rich ought to be protected by law from the competition of the poor." In 1836, the legislature abolished the restriction. He opposed all licensing requirements for lawyers, doctors or anyone else that was prevented from being employed by such requirements. To prevent a person from doing business with a person without a professional license he saw as a violation of the natural right to contract.
After a disappointing legal career - his radical writing seems to have kept away potential clients - and a failed career in real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
speculation in Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, Spooner returned to his father's farm in 1840.
American Letter Mail Company
Being an advocate of self-employment and opponent of government regulation of business, Spooner started his own business called American Letter Mail CompanyAmerican Letter Mail Company
The American Letter Mail Company was started by Lysander Spooner in 1844, competing with the legal monopoly of the United States Post Office in violation of the Private Express Statutes. It succeeded in delivering mail for lower prices, but the U.S...
which competed with the U.S. Post Office. Postal rates were notoriously high in the 1840s, and in 1844, Spooner founded the American Letter Mail Company
American Letter Mail Company
The American Letter Mail Company was started by Lysander Spooner in 1844, competing with the legal monopoly of the United States Post Office in violation of the Private Express Statutes. It succeeded in delivering mail for lower prices, but the U.S...
, which had offices in various cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Stamps could be purchased and then attached to letters which could be sent to any of its offices. From here agents were dispatched who traveled on railroads and steamboats, and carried the letters in hand bags. Letters were transferred to messengers in the cities along the routes who then delivered the letters to the addressees. This was a challenge to the United States Post Office's monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
. As he had done when challenging the rules of the Massachusetts bar, he published a pamphlet titled "The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails." Although Spooner had finally found commercial success with his mail company, legal challenges by the government eventually exhausted his financial resources. He closed up shop without ever having had the opportunity to fully litigate his constitutional claims. The lasting legacy of Spooner's challenge to the postal service was the 3-cent stamp, adopted in response to the competition his company provided.
Abolitionism
Spooner attained his greatest fame as a figure in the abolitionistAbolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
movement. His most famous work, a book titled The Unconstitutionality of Slavery
The Unconstitutionality of Slavery
The Unconstitutionality of Slavery was a pamphlet by American abolitionist Lysander Spooner advocating the view that the U.S. Constitution prohibited slavery. This view was advocated in contrast to that of William Lloyd Garrison who advocated opposing the constitution on the grounds that it...
, was published in 1845 to great acclaim among many abolitionists but criticism from others. Spooner's book contributed to a controversy within the abolitionist movement over whether the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
supported the institution of slavery. The "disunionist" faction, led by William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United...
and Wendell Phillips
Wendell Phillips
Wendell Phillips was an American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, and orator. He was an exceptional orator and agitator, advocate and lawyer, writer and debater.-Education:...
, argued the Constitution legally recognized and enforced the oppression of slaves (as, for example, in the provisions for the capture of fugitive slaves in Article IV, Section 2). They also cited the frequent appeals to Constitutional compromise by Southern politicians, who insisted that protection of the "peculiar institution" was part of the sectional compromise on which the Constitution was based. The disunionists thus argued that keeping the free states in a political union with the slave states made the citizens of the free states complicit in the slave system, and denounced the Constitution as "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell." More generally, Wendell Phillips disputed Spooner's notion that any unjust law should be held legally void by judges.
Spooner challenged the claim that the text of the Constitution supported slavery. Although he recognized that the Founders had probably not intended to outlaw slavery when writing the Constitution, he argued that only the meaning of the text, not the private intentions of its writers, was enforceable. Spooner used a complex system of legal and natural law arguments in order to show that the clauses usually interpreted as supporting slavery did not, in fact, support it, and that several clauses of the Constitution prohibited the states from establishing slavery under the law. Spooner's arguments were cited by other pro-Constitution abolitionists, such as Gerrit Smith
Gerrit Smith
Gerrit Smith was a leading United States social reformer, abolitionist, politician, and philanthropist...
and the Liberty Party
Liberty Party (1840s)
The Liberty Party was a minor political party in the United States in the 1840s . The party was an early advocate of the abolitionist cause...
, which adopted it as an official text in its 1848 platform. Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing...
, originally a Garrisonian disunionist, later came to accept the pro-Constitution position, and cited Spooner's arguments to explain his change of mind.
From the publication of this book until 1861, Spooner actively campaigned against slavery. He published subsequent pamphlets on Jury Nullification
Jury nullification
Jury nullification occurs in a trial when a jury reaches a verdict contrary to the judge's instructions as to the law.A jury verdict contrary to the letter of the law pertains only to the particular case before it; however, if a pattern of acquittals develops in response to repeated attempts to...
and other legal defenses for escaped slaves and offered his legal services, often free of charge, to fugitives. In the late 1850s, copies of his book were distributed to members of Congress sparking some debate over their contents. Even Senator Albert Gallatin Brown of Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
, a slavery proponent, praised the argument's intellectual rigor and conceded it was the most formidable legal challenge he had seen from the abolitionists to date. In 1858, Spooner circulated a "Plan for the Abolition of Slavery," calling for the use of guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
against slaveholders by black slaves and non-slaveholding free Southerners, with aid from Northern abolitionists. Spooner also "conspir[ed] with John Brown
John Brown (abolitionist)
John Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...
to promote a servile insurrection in the South," and participated in an aborted plot to free Brown after his capture following the failed raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
(Harper's Ferry is now part of the state of West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
).
In 1860, Spooner was actively courted by William Seward
William H. Seward
William Henry Seward, Sr. was the 12th Governor of New York, United States Senator and the United States Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson...
to support the fledgling Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
. An admitted sympathizer with the Jeffersonian political philosophy, Spooner adamantly refused the request and soon became an outspoken abolitionist critic of the party. To Spooner, the Republicans were hypocrites for purporting to oppose slavery's expansion but refusing to take a strong, consistent moral stance against slavery itself. Although Spooner had advocated the use of violence to abolish slavery, he denounced the Republicans' use of violence to prevent the Southern states from seceding during the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. He published several letters and pamphlets about the war, arguing that the Republican objective was not to eradicate slavery, but rather to preserve the Union by force. He blamed the bloodshed on Republican political leaders, such as Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
William H. Seward
William H. Seward
William Henry Seward, Sr. was the 12th Governor of New York, United States Senator and the United States Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson...
and Senator Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner was an American politician and senator from Massachusetts. An academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War and Reconstruction,...
, who often spoke out against slavery but would not attack it on a constitutional basis, and who pursued military policies seen as vengeful and abusive.
Although he denounced the institution of slavery, Spooner recognized the right of the Confederate States of America
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
to secede as the manifestation of government by consent, a constitutional and legal principle fundamental to Spooner's philosophy; the Northern states, in contrast, were trying to deny the Southerners
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
that right through military force. He "vociferously opposed the Civil War, arguing that it violated the right of the southern states to secede from a Union that no longer represented them." He believed they were attempting to restore the Southern states to the Union, against the wishes of Southerners. He argued that the right of the states to secede derives from the natural right of slaves to be free. This argument was unpopular in the North and in the South after the War began, as it conflicted with the official position of both governments.
As a means to end slavery without bloodshed, Spooner offered compensated emancipation
Compensated Emancipation
Compensated emancipation was a method of ending slavery in countries where slavery was legal. This involved the person who was recognized as the owner of a slave being compensated monetarily or by a period of labor for releasing the slave...
, a method tested and proven in those nations that had orchestrated the peaceful abolition of slavery.
Views on economics and self-employment
Spooner believed that it is beneficial if people are self-employed so that they could enjoy the full fruits of their labor rather than having to share them with an employer. He argued that various forms of government intervention in the free market made it difficult for people to start their own businesses. For one, he believed that laws against high interest rates, or "usury" prevented those with capital from extending credit because they could not be compensated for high risks of not being repaid: "If a man have not capital of his own, upon which to bestow his labor, it is necessary that he be allowed to obtain it on credit. And in order that he may be able to obtain it on credit, it is necessary that he be allowed to contract for such a rate of interest as will induce a man, having surplus capital, to loan it to him; for the capitalist cannot, consistently with natural law, be compelled to loan his capital against his will. All legislative restraints upon the rate of interest, are, therefore, nothing less than arbitrary and tyrannical restraints upon a man’s natural capacity amid natural right to hire capital, upon which to bestow his labor....The effect of usury laws, then, is to give a monopoly of the right of borrowing money, to those few, who can offer the most approved security."Spooner also believed that government restrictions on issuance of private money made it inordinately difficult for individuals to obtain the capital on credit to start their own businesses, thereby putting them in a situation where "a very large portion of them, to save themselves from starvation, have no alternative but to sell their labor to others" and those who do employ others are only able to afford to pay "far below what the laborers could produce, [than] if they themselves had the necessary capital to work with." Spooner said that there was "a prohibitory tax --- a tax of ten per cent. --- on all notes issued for circulation as money, other than the notes of the United States and the national banks" which he argued caused an artificial shortage of credit, and that eliminating this tax would result in making plenty of money available for lending such that: "All the great establishments, of every kind, now in the hands of a few proprietors, but employing a great number of wage labourers, would be broken up; for few or no persons, who could hire capital and do business for themselves would consent to labour for wages for another." Economist Murray Rothbard
Murray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define capitalist libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the...
, in 1974, argued against Spooner's theory. Though agreeing that government should not have any regulations on money, he argued that "an increase in the supply of money does not confer any benefit whatever on society" but simply dilutes the purchasing power. Moreover, Rothbard said that in an anarchist society, the quantity of money would actually not increase as Spooner theorizes, but that supply would be even more limited than when governments and central banks manage the money supply, and fortunately so.
Reconstruction
Spooner harshly condemned the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
and the Reconstruction period that followed. Though he approved of the abolition of black slavery, he criticized the North for failing to make this the purpose of their cause. Instead of fighting to abolish slavery, they fought to "preserve the union" and, according to Spooner, to bolster business interests behind that union. Spooner believed a war of this type was hypocritical and dishonest, especially on the part of Radical Republicans like Sumner who were by then claiming to be abolitionist heroes for ending slavery. Spooner also argued that the war came at a great cost to liberty and proved that the rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence no longer held true - the people could not "dissolve the political bands" that tie them to a government that "becomes destructive" of the consent of the governed
Consent of the governed
"Consent of the governed" is a phrase synonymous with a political theory wherein a government's legitimacy and moral right to use state power is only justified and legal when derived from the people or society over which that political power is exercised...
because if they did so, as Spooner believed the South had attempted to do, they would be met by the bayonet to enforce their obedience to the former government.
The Union government's actions during the war caused Spooner to radicalize his views to an anarchistic
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
view. In response, Spooner published a series of political tracts, No Treason
No Treason
No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority is an 1867 essay by American individualist anarchist, political philosopher and legal theorist Lysander Spooner...
. The most famous of these is No Treason No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority. In this lengthy essay, Spooner argued that the Constitution was a contract of government (see social contract
Social contract
The social contract is an intellectual device intended to explain the appropriate relationship between individuals and their governments. Social contract arguments assert that individuals unite into political societies by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept...
theory) which could not logically apply to anyone other than the individuals who signed it, and was thus void. Furthermore, since the government now existing under the Constitution pursued coercive policies that were contrary to the Natural Law and to the consent of the governed, it had been demonstrated that that document could not adequately stop many abuses against liberty or prevent tyranny from taking hold. Spooner bolstered his argument by noting that the federal government, as established by a legal contract, could not legally bind all persons living in the nation since none had ever signed their names or given their consent to it - that consent had always been assumed, which fails one of the most basic burdens of proof for a valid contract in the courtroom.
Spooner widely circulated the No Treason pamphlets, which also contained a legal defense against the crime of treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
itself intended for former Confederate soldiers (hence the name of the pamphlet, arguing that "no treason" had been committed in the war by the South). These excerpts were published in DeBow's Review
DeBow's Review
DeBow's Review was a widely circulated magazine of "agricultural, commercial, and industrial progress and resource" in the American South during the upper middle of the 19th century, from 1846 until 1884. It bore the name of its first editor, James Dunwoody Brownson DeBow DeBow's Review was a...
and in some other well-known southern periodicals of the time.
George Woodcock
George Woodcock
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...
describes Spooner's essays as an "eloquent elaboration" of Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
and the early American development of Proudhon's ideas, and associates his works with that of Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews was an American individualist anarchist and author of several books on Individualist anarchism.-Early life and work:...
.
Later life
Spooner became a member of the socialist First International. Spooner continued to write and publish extensively in the decades following Reconstruction, producing works such as "Natural Law or The Science of Justice" and "Trial By Jury." In "Trial By Jury" he defended the doctrine of "Jury NullificationJury nullification
Jury nullification occurs in a trial when a jury reaches a verdict contrary to the judge's instructions as to the law.A jury verdict contrary to the letter of the law pertains only to the particular case before it; however, if a pattern of acquittals develops in response to repeated attempts to...
", which holds that in a free society a trial jury not only has the authority to rule on the facts of the case, but also on the legitimacy of the law under which the case is tried, and which would allow juries to refuse to convict if they regard the law they are asked to convict under as illegitimate. He became closely associated with Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
's anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
journal Liberty
Liberty (1881-1908)
Liberty was a nineteenth century anarchist periodical published in the United States by Benjamin Tucker, from August 1881 to April 1908. The periodical was instrumental in developing and formalizing the individualist anarchist philosophy through publishing essays and serving as a format for...
, which published all of his later works in serial format, and for which he wrote several editorial columns on current events. He argued that ". . . almost all fortunes are made out of the capital and labour of other men than those who realise them. Indeed, except by his sponging capital and labour from others."
Spooner died on May 14, 1887 at the age of 79 in his residence, 109 Myrtle Street, Boston. Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
arranged his funeral service and wrote a "loving obituary," entitled "Our Nestor
Nestor (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Nestor of Gerenia was the son of Neleus and Chloris and the King of Pylos. He became king after Heracles killed Neleus and all of Nestor's siblings...
Taken From Us," which appeared in Liberty on May 28, and predicted "that the name Lysander Spooner would be 'henceforth memorable among men.'"
Influence
Spooner's influence extends to the wide range of topics he addressed during his lifetime. He is remembered today primarily for his abolitionist activities and for his challenge to the post office monopoly, which had a lasting influence of significantly reducing postal rates. Spooner's writings contributed to the development of both left-libertarian and right-libertarian political theory in the United States, and were often reprinted in early right-libertarian journals such as the Rampart Journal and Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought. His writings were also a major influence on Austrian SchoolAustrian School
The Austrian School of economics is a heterodox school of economic thought. It advocates methodological individualism in interpreting economic developments , the theory that money is non-neutral, the theory that the capital structure of economies consists of heterogeneous goods that have...
economist Murray Rothbard
Murray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define capitalist libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the...
and right-libertarian law professor and legal theorist Randy Barnett
Randy Barnett
Randy E. Barnett is a lawyer, a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and contracts, and a legal theorist in the United States...
.
In January 2004, Laissez Faire Books
Laissez Faire Books
Laissez Faire Books is an online bookseller that was originally based in New York City when it first opened in 1972. The bookstore's ownership was transferred to the International Society for Individual Liberty in November 2007...
established the Lysander Spooner Award for advancing the literature of liberty. The honor is awarded monthly to the most important contributions to the literature of liberty, followed by an annual award to the author of the top book on liberty for the year. The annual "Spooner" earns $1,500 cash for the winning author. Conversely, proponents of libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production...
, left-libertarianism
Left-libertarianism
Left-libertarianism names several related but distinct approaches to politics, society, culture, and political and social theory, which stress equally both individual freedom and social justice.-Schools of thought:...
as a whole, and market socialism
Market socialism
Market socialism refers to various economic systems where the means of production are either publicly owned or cooperatively owned and operated for a profit in a market economy. The profit generated by the firms system would be used to directly remunerate employees or would be the source of public...
cite Spooner for his opposition to wage labor.
Spooner's The Unconstitutionality of Slavery was cited in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller
District of Columbia v. Heller
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 , was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual's right to possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes in federal enclaves, such as...
Supreme Court case which struck down the federal district's ban on handguns. Justice Antonin Scalia
Antonin Scalia
Antonin Gregory Scalia is an American jurist who serves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. As the longest-serving justice on the Court, Scalia is the Senior Associate Justice...
, writing for the court, quotes Spooner as saying the right to bear arms was necessary for those who wanted to take a stand against slavery. It was also cited by Justice Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Succeeding Thurgood Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court....
in his concurring opinion in McDonald v. Chicago
McDonald v. Chicago
McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 3025, 130 S.Ct. 3020 , was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that determined whether the Second Amendment applies to the individual states...
the following year.
Publications
- The Deist's Immortality, and An Essay On Man's Accountability For His Belief (1834)
- The Deist's Reply to the Alleged Supernatural Evidences of Christianity (1836)
- Constitutional Law, Relative to Credit, Currency, and Banking (1843)
- The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress, Prohibiting Private Mails (1844)
- The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845)
- Poverty: Its Illegal Causes, and Legal Cure (1846)
- Illegality of the Trial of John W. Webster (1850)
- An Essay on Trial by Jury (1852)
- The Law of Intellectual Property (1855)
- A Plan For The Abolition Of Slavery (and) To The Non-Slaveholders of the South (1858)
- Address of the Free Constitutionalists to the People of the United States (1860)
- A New System of Paper Currency (1861)
- A Letter to Charles Sumner (1864)
- Considerations for Bankers, and Holders of United States Bonds (1864)
- No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)
- Forced Consent (1873)
- Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty (1875)
- Our Financiers: Their Ignorance, Usurpations and Frauds (1877)
- Gold and Silver as Standards of Value: The Flagrant Cheat in Regard to Them (1878)
- Natural Law, or the Science of Justice (1882)
- A Letter to Thomas F. Bayard (1882)
- A Letter to Scientists and Inventors, on the Science of Justice (1884)
- A Letter to Grover Cleveland, on His False Inaugural Address, The Usurpations and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges, and the Consequent Poverty, Ignorance, and Servitude of the People (1886)
See also
- Individualist anarchismIndividualist anarchismIndividualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
- MutualismMutualismMutualism is the way two organisms of different species biologically interact in a relationship in which each individual derives a fitness benefit . Similar interactions within a species are known as co-operation...
- Market socialismMarket socialismMarket socialism refers to various economic systems where the means of production are either publicly owned or cooperatively owned and operated for a profit in a market economy. The profit generated by the firms system would be used to directly remunerate employees or would be the source of public...
- VoluntaryismVoluntaryismVoluntarism, or voluntaryism, is a philosophy according to which all forms of human association should be voluntary. This moral principle is called the non-aggression principle, which prohibits the initiation of aggressive force or coercion...
- Natural rightsNatural rightsNatural and legal rights are two types of rights theoretically distinct according to philosophers and political scientists. Natural rights are rights not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable...
- American philosophyAmerican philosophyAmerican philosophy is the philosophical activity or output of Americans, both within the United States and abroad. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that while American philosophy lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and...
- List of American philosophers
Works online
- Essay On The Trial By Jury
- "To the Non-Slaveholders of the South: A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery" (1858)
- Vices Are Not Crimes: A vindication of Moral Liberty (1875)
- No Treason (1867 1870 text)
- Natural Law, or the Science of Justice (1882)
- "A Letter to Thomas F. Bayard: Challenging His Right - And that of All the Other So-Called Senators and Representative in Congress - To Exercise Any Legislative Power Whatever Over the People of the United States" (1882)
- The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1860)
- The Law of Intellectual Property: or an essay on the right of authors and inventors to a perpetual property in their ideas (1855)
- Let's Abolish Government (1972); three collected essays
- Address of the Free Constitutionalists to the People of the United States (1860).
Audio books
- 'No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority' read by Marc StevensMarc Stevens (radio host)Marc Stevens is a voluntaryist essayist and talk radio host from Phoenix, Arizona. He is the host of The No State Project. Stevens is also the author of the 2002 book, Adventures In Legal Land, an examination of the legal and political systems of the United States.-Adventures In Legal Land:In 2002,...
Secondary sources
- Lysander Spooner Quotes at Liberty-Tree.ca.
- Spooner Memorial Resolutions, offered by Benjamin TuckerBenjamin TuckerBenjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
at the Lysander Spooner Memorial Services held in Wells Memorial Hall, Boston, on Sunday, May 29, 1887. - Lysander Spooner's Bibliography via The Wayback Machine.
- LysanderSpooner.org.
- The Ideas of Lysander Spooner — Libertarian or libertarian socialist? by Iain MacSaorsa
- Lysander Spooner: Libertarian Pietist by Murray Rothbard.