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American individualist anarchist (1808–1887) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 — May 14, 1887) was an American abolitionist, entrepreneur, lawyer, essayist, natural rights legal theorist, pamphletist, political philosopher, and writer often associated with the Boston anarchist tradition.
Lysander Spooner | |
|---|---|
| |
| Born | January 19, 1808 Athol, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | May 14, 1887 (aged 79) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, lawyer and writer |
| Nationality | American |
| Subject | Political philosophy |
| Notable works | The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845) No Treason (1867) |
Philosophy career | |
| Era | 19th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Iusnaturalism |
Main interests | |
Spooner was a strong advocate of the labor movement and is politically identified with individualist anarchism.[1][2] His writings contributed to the development of both left-libertarian and right-libertarian political theory.[3] 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.[4][5]
He is known for establishing the American Letter Mail Company, which competed with the United States Postal Service.
Spooner was born on a farm in Athol, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1808. Spooner's parents were Asa and Dolly Spooner. One of his ancestors, William Spooner, arrived in Plymouth in 1637. Lysander was the second of nine children. His father was a deist and it has been speculated that he purposely named his two older sons Leander and Lysander after pagan and Spartan heroes, respectively.[6]
Spooner's activism began with his career as a lawyer, which itself violated Massachusetts law.[7] Spooner had studied law under the prominent lawyers, politicians and abolitionists John Davis, later Governor of Massachusetts and Senator; and Charles Allen, state senator and Representative from the Free Soil Party.[6] However, he never attended college.[8] According to the laws of the state, college graduates were required to study with an attorney for three years while non-graduates like Lysander would be required to do so for five years.[8]
With the encouragement from his legal mentors, Spooner set up his practice in Worcester, Massachusetts, after only three years, defying the courts.[8] He regarded 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".[8] In 1836, the legislature abolished the restriction.[8] He opposed all licensing requirements for lawyers.[9]
After a disappointing legal career and a failed career in real estate speculation in Ohio, Spooner returned to his father's farm in 1840.[8]
Being an advocate of self-employment and opponent of government regulation of business, in 1844 Spooner started the American Letter Mail Company, which competed with the United States Post Office, whose rates were very high.[10] It had offices in various cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City.[11] 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.[10][12]
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.[13]
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.[5]
Spooner challenged the claim that the text of the Constitution permitted slavery.[14] 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.[14]
From the publication of this book until 1861, when the Civil War overtook society, Spooner actively campaigned against slavery.[14] Spooner viewed the Northern states as trying to deny the Southerners through military force.[15]
Spooner argued that "almost all fortunes are made out of the capital and labour of other men than those who realize them. Indeed, except by his sponging capital and labour from others".[16] Spooner defended the Millerites, who stopped working because they believed the world would soon end and were arrested for vagrancy.[6]
Spooner spent much time in the Boston Athenæum.[17] He died on May 14, 1887, at the age of 79 in his nearby residence at 109 Myrtle Street, Boston.[18] He never married and had no children.[19]
Spooner was an anti-capitalist individualist.[20] This association is wrapped in the definition of capitalism, whether viewed as a system of managerial domination and exploitation, or a simpler definition of free market with private property, since Spooner supported the latter.[20] According to Peter Marshall, "the egalitarian implications of traditional individualist anarchists" such as Spooner and Benjamin Tucker have been overlooked.[21]
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.[1] In addition to his extra-governmental post service and views on abolitionism, Spooner wrote No Treason in which he contends that the Constitution is based on voluntary consent and that citizens are not bound by involuntary allegiance.[22] Spooner argued that the national Congress should dissolve and let citizens rule themselves as he held that individuals should make their own fates.[23]
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.[24] It was also cited by Justice Clarence Thomas in his concurring opinion in McDonald v. Chicago, another firearms case, the following year.[25]
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.[17]
There are collections of letters written by Spooner in the Boston Public Library and the New York Historical Society.[26]
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