Lysander Spooner

Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 – May 14, 1887) was an American abolitionist, entrepreneur, lawyer, essayist, natural rights legal theorist, pamphleteer, political philosopher, and writer often associated with the Boston anarchist tradition.

Spooner was a strong advocate of the labor movement and is politically identified with individualist anarchism. His writings contributed to the development of both left-libertarian and right-libertarian political theory.

Spooner's writings include the abolitionist book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery and No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, which opposed treason charges against secessionists. It had offices in various cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City. Stamps could be purchased and then attached to letters, which could be brought to any of its offices. From here, agents were dispatched who traveled on railroads and steamboats and carried the letters in handbags. 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 Post Office's legal monopoly.

As he had done when challenging the rules of the Massachusetts Bar Association, Spooner 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. A law enacted in 1851 that strengthened the federal government's monopoly finally put him out of business. The legacy of Spooner's challenge to the postal service was the reduction in letter postage from 5¢ to 3¢, in response to the competition his company provided.

Abolitionism

Spooner attained his highest profile as a figure in the abolitionist movement. His book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, published in 1845, contributed to a controversy among abolitionists over whether the Constitution supported the institution of slavery. The disunionist faction led by William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips argued that the Constitution legally recognized and enforced the oppression of slaves as in the provisions for the capture of fugitive slaves in Article IV, Section 2.

Spooner challenged the claim that the text of the Constitution permitted slavery. He used a complex system of legal and natural law arguments to show that the Constitutional clauses usually interpreted as adopting or at least accepting implicitly the practice of slavery did not in fact support it, despite the open tolerance of human servitude under the original Constitution of 1789; even though those interpretations would only be superseded by the amendments to the Constitution passed after the American Civil War, viz. Amendments XIII–XV, prohibiting the states from enabling or enforcing slavery.

From the publication of this book until 1861, when the Civil War overtook society, Spooner actively campaigned against slavery. Spooner viewed the Northern states as trying to deny the Southerners through military force.

Later life and death

thumb|250px|Spooner is interred in the historic [[Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.]]

Spooner argued that "almost all fortunes are made out of the capital and labour of other men than those who realize them. Indeed, large fortunes could rarely be made at all by one individual, except by his sponging capital and labor from others. And the usury laws are the means by which he does it." Spooner defended the Millerites, who stopped working because they believed the world would soon end and were arrested for vagrancy.

Spooner spent much time in the Boston Athenæum. He died on May 14, 1887, at the age of 79 in his nearby residence at 109 Myrtle Street, Boston. He never married and had no children.

Political views

As an individualist anarchist, Spooner advocated for pre-industrial living in communities of small property holders so that they could pursue life, liberty, happiness, and property in mutual honesty without ceding responsibility to a central government. The rights of members of the "political corporation" would be determined "only by the unanimous verdict of a tribunal fairly representing the whole people,—that is, a tribunal of twelve men, taken, at random from the whole body, and ascertained to be as impartial as the nature of the case will admit, and sworn to the observance of justice".

Spooner also believed in the inalienability of liberty, which makes every contract giving dominion over anyone criminal.<blockquote>No man can delegate, or give to another, any right of arbitrary dominion over himself; for that would be giving himself away as a slave. And this no one can do.</blockquote>

Property

Spooner believed that every person "has an absolute dominion, as against all other men, over the products and acquisitions of his own labour, whether he retains them in his actual possession or not" and that "There is no limit, fixed by the law of nature, to the amount of property one may acquire, simply by taking possession of natural wealth, not already possessed, except the limit fixed by power or ability to take such possession, without doing violence to the person or property of others".

Wage labor

Spooner was opposed to wage labor on grounds of right of every laborer to own fruits of their labor, and desired that "as a general rule... each man should be his own employer, or work directly for himself". Spooner saw wage laborers as servants "coerce[d] by the alternative of starvation", and the wage system an extension of slavery.<blockquote>In process of time, the robber, or slaveholding, class—who had seized all the lands, and held all the means of creating wealth—began to discover that the easiest mode of managing their slaves, and making them profitable, was not for each slaveholder to hold his specified number of slaves, as he had done before, and as he would hold so many cattle, but to give them so much liberty as would throw upon themselves (the slaves) the responsibility of their own subsistence, and yet compel them to sell their labor to the land-holding class—their former owners—for just what the latter might choose to give them</blockquote>

Vices vs. Crimes

Spooner defined vices as "acts by which a man harms himself or his property" and crimes as "those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another". To him vices are simply errors and don't intend malice, and punishing people for them is an absurdity, not only it would prevent people from learning what is good or bad, but also impossible, because no person has universal knowledge on what is a virtue and what is a vice, to him each person has an ability and right to be his own judge of what is a virtue and what is a vice.<blockquote>If, then, it became so difficult, so nearly impossible, in most cases, to determine what is, and what is not, vice; and especially if it be so difficult, in nearly all cases, to determine where virtue ends, and vice begins; and if these questions, which no one can really and truly determine for anybody but himself, are not to be left free and open for experiment by all, each person is deprived of the highest of all his rights as a human being, to wit: his right to inquire, investigate, reason, try experiments, judge, and ascertain for himself, what is, to him, virtue, and what is, to him, vice; in other words: what, on the whole, conduces to his happiness, and what, on the whole, tends to his unhappiness. If this great right is not to be left free and open to all, then each man’s whole right, as a reasoning human being, to” liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” is denied him.</blockquote>

Banking

Spooner was a supporter of free banking and proposed his new form of banking system with the value of money attached to specie and real estate, which he believed would prevent inflation.

Militancy

Unlike Benjamin Tucker, Spooner was not opposed to violent uprisings against unjust systems. In 1880 Spooner advocated for Irish to rise up and kill their British landlords, since be believed the landlords were denying them their natural rights.

In A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery, and To the Non-Slaveholders of the South, Spooner argued that slaves have natural right to liberty, compensation and use of force against their opressors, and it is duty of all to help them in their fight. He advocated for forming "Vigilance Committees, or Leagues of Freedom, in every neighborhood or township, whose duty it shall be to stand in the stead of the government, and do that justice for the slaves,... especially to arrest, try, and chastise (with their own whips) all Slaveholders who shall beat their slaves, or restrain them of their liberty; and compel them to give deeds of emancipation, and conveyances of their property, to their slaves." and to "teach the negroes to treat, all active abettors of the Slaveholders, as you and they treat the Slaveholders themselves, both in person and property."<blockquote>Our plan then is—

1. To make war (openly or secretly as circumstances may dictate) upon the property of the Slaveholders and their abettors—not for its destruction, if that can easily be avoided, but to convert it to the use of the Slaves. If it cannot be thus converted, then we advise its destruction. Teach the Slaves to burn their masters’ buildings, to kill their cattle and horses, to conceal or destroy farming utensils, to abandon labor in seed time and harvest, and let crops perish. Make Slavery unprofitable, in this way, if it can be done in no other.

2. To make Slaveholders objects of derision and contempt, by flogging them, whenever they shall be guilty of flogging their slaves.

3. To risk no general insurrection, until we of the North go to your assistance, or you are sure of success without our aid.

4. To cultivate the friendship and confidence of the Slaves; to consult with them as to their rights and interests, and the means of promoting them; to show your interest in their welfare, and your readiness to assist them. Let them know that they have your sympathy, and it will give them courage, self-respect, and ambition, and make men of them; infinitely better men to live by, as neighbors and friends, than the indolent, arrogant, selfish, heartless, domineering robbers and tyrants, who now keep both yourselves and the Slaves in subjection, and look with contempt upon all who live by honest labor.

5. To change your political institutions soon as possible. And in the meantime give never a vote to a Slaveholder; pay no taxes to their government, if you can either resist or evade them; as witnesses and jurors, give no testimony, and no verdicts, in support of any Slaveholding claims; perform no military, patrol, or police service; mob Slaveholding courts, gaols, and sheriffs; do nothing, in short, for sustaining Slavery, but every thing you safely and rightfully can, publicly and privately, for its overthrow.</blockquote>Spooner supported prominient abolitionist militant John Brown and his raid on Harpers Ferry. Spooner even went as far as to propose a plan for abolitionists to kidnap the governor of Virginia, in order to facilitate a prisoner exchange for Brown.

Influence

Spooner's The Unconstitutionality of Slavery was cited in the 2008 Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller 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, another firearms case, the following year.

Publications

Virtually everything written by Spooner is contained in the six-volume compilation The Collected Works of Lysander Spooner (1971). The most notable exception is Vices Are Not Crimes, not widely known until its republication in 1977.

"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)
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 No. I (1870)
No Treason No. II: The Constitution (1870)
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)
"Two Treatises on Competitive Currency and Banking" (2018)

Archival material

There are collections of letters written by Spooner in the Boston Public Library and the New York Historical Society.

References

Bibliography

External links

LysanderSpooner.org, dedicated website