Posted on 04/16/2003 5:44:44 AM PDT by Lady Eileen
Washington, DC-area Freepers interested in Lincoln and/or the War Between the States should take note of a seminar held later today on the Fairfax campus of George Mason University:
The conventional wisdom in America is that Abraham Lincoln was a great emancipator who preserved American liberties. In recent years, new research has portrayed a less-flattering Lincoln that often behaved as a self-seeking politician who catered to special interest groups. So which is the real Lincoln?
On Wednesday, April 16, Thomas DiLorenzo, a former George Mason University professor of Economics, will host a seminar on that very topic. It will highlight his controversial but influential new book, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. In the Real Lincoln, DiLorenzo exposes the conventional wisdom of Lincoln as based on fallacies and myths propagated by our political leaders and public education system.
The seminar, which will be held in Rooms 3&4 of the GMU Student Union II, will start at 5:00 PM. Copies of the book will be available for sale during a brief autograph session after the seminar.
If the Senate repeatedly indicates its refusal to organize a court system or approve its appointments, which, like it or not, it may constitutionally do, how on earth can an exercise of that same appointment confirmation, which is specifically given in the constitution, simultaneously violate that constitution? You are in a logical contradiction where your conclusions are simply not supported or supportable - a non-sequitur.
And Jefferson Davis, as head of the regime, bears the responsibility.
Even though he publicly called on Congress to organize and approve a court?
Even if he was aided and abetted by the confederate congress.
Do you have proof of this conspiracy, because everything I have seen indicates that opposition in Congress, rather than collusion, was the cause of the blockage in appointing a court.
I do not understand how you can rail against President Lincoln for what you see as Constitutional violations and then take such a blasé attitude at a conspiracy to delete an entire branch of government.
As always, you jump to the tu quoque. That aside, you have yet to even delineate the nature of this "conspiracy" let alone offer evidence of its existence. For that reason, I have no reason to even accept what you are saying.
Why didn't he just dump the congress while he was at it and keep just the Senate?
Well, for starters...his most vocal opponents were in the Senate, so he probably wouldn't have wanted the entirity of lawmaking to fall into their hands. Now does that answer your questions, or are you going to simply continue spouting nonsense about this increasingly anonymous "conspiracy" in the CSA congress?
Conspiracies are hard to prove but intentions are easy to discern. A court held no interest for Davis regardless of constitutional requirements. He used the reluctance of the senate to approve appointments (assuming they were, in fact reluctant and if he did, in fact, submit any appointments) as as excuse for doing away with the whole court altogether. The intentions are clear. The confederate constitution allowed the president to make recess appointments. Davis did not make use of this power to staff a court. It's not that he was opposed to the idea of recess appointments, he made at least four cabinet appointments in that manner. So it must be that he was opposed to the idea of a supreme court looking over his shoulder. After all, congress sat for less than 6 months out of the year. A supreme court might be around longer than that.
"Mugged" is a reasonable description for the act of sneaking up on an unarmed man and beating him with a club.
No, items covered by a code of seeking recourse of honor in general bring along a section, be that course a duel, caning, sword fight, joust, beating or what have you.
And the second also comes in handy to keep other's at bay who might want to interfere while your beating a man as he lays on the floor. I assume that's part of your 'code of honor', too.
He conducted that caning under, and with the guidance of, traditional chivalric honor codes...
But not, it seems, under the Criminal Code which, I believe, outlawed dueling in D.C. and most Northern states, as well as assault and attempted homicide.
How can you "half kill" somebody, non-seq?
He beat Sumner so badly that he was unable to return to the senate for three years. That comes as close to 'half killed' as I would ever want to get. Brooks, by comparison, didn't lose a minute of time with his 'harlot' slavery.
Oh, and quit trying to pass Sumner off as a decrepit old senior citizen.
Sumner was eight years older than Brooks. Not decrepit, but he was older and unarmed. On the other hand, Sumner outlived Brooks by 17 years so I guess there is some justice in this world after all.
No, that doesn't answer the questions at all.
Did he also demand Sumner's wallet or show any intent to rob Sumner? If not, it wasn't a mugging. And for the record, Brooks used a walking cane that he required due to wounds incurred in his hip from another duel he fought, not a "club."
And the second also comes in handy to keep other's at bay who might want to interfere while your beating a man as he lays on the floor.
Actually, one of the roles of a second is indeed to keep the action of honor recourse free from outside interference.
I assume that's part of your 'code of honor', too.
I suppose it could be part of an honor code, though that code is not mine - it's an historical thing dating back to trials by combat and the sort in the middle ages.
But not, it seems, under the Criminal Code which, I believe, outlawed dueling in D.C. and most Northern states
You'll have to check the law books of the time. I do know that there was a duel on the Marlboro Pike just outside of Washington in Maryland between two congressmen in 1838.
Sumner was eight years older than Brooks. Not decrepit, but he was older and unarmed.
Well thanks for finally admitting it! 8 years is nothing, Non-Seq. Based on the repeated claims of your earlier posts, one could have easily been left with the impression that Brooks was a bombastic 25 year old beating up a fragile elderly and defenseless 75 year old Sumner. You referred to Sumner as an "old man" at least twice and repeatedly gave the impression that he was elderly. In fact, he was about 45 which is hardly old by any standard
Phillips, Garrison, Douglass, Parker, Weld, Smith, Birney, Mott, Beecher, Lovejoy, Stowe, Howe and others all have at least two biographies or monographs devoted to them. You may argue that some of these people are known for other reasons. That hardly matters, since Spooner was also active in banking, the law and religion and acquired no great prominence in his own day from any of his activities. Whatever their renown for other reasons, these people were known as abolitionists and were more prominent abolitionists than Spooner. Lysander Spooner may have been more theoretical than some of those I named, but sheer quantity of verbiage and degree of abstraction do not directly translate into fame or influence, if the quality, human appeal, practicality and relevance aren't there. You may contest some of these names, but not enough to make Spooner one of the top three abolitionists in the country.
It would take a long article or thesis to determine just how important or unimportant Spooner was in his day, and in the works of subsequent scholars. And it's hard to prove a negative. There's always another book to look at to see if Spooner, against expectations, plays a major role. And there's the question of just what "importance" is and what it takes for a person, a reputation, a book, or an article to be truly significant. Any list of books that anyone gives you will be suspect as unrepresentative. That's why I urged anyone interested in the question to go to sources themselves and make their own determination. Counting page numbers in the index is a pretty crude way of analyzing significance or prominence, but it does give a rough estimate of the comparative importance of various figures.
Spooner isn't mentioned in most histories of the United States. In most works devoted to the abolitionists or antebellum social reform and biographies of other abolitionists references to him could usually be counted on one hand in each book. Older works make little reference to Spooner. Louis Filler's standard work, "The Crusade Against Slavery" (1960) has one page number in the index for Spooner, while such forgotten fighures as Joshua Leavitt and Benjamin Lundy have more. Dwight Dumond's "Antislavery" (1961) and William and Jane Pease's "The Antislavery Argument" (1965) have no index entries for Spooner. Louis Ruchames's "The Abolitionists: a Collection of their Writings" (1963) has one mention in the index and no anthologized text by Spooner. Henry Meyer's 1998 biography of Garrison, "All on Fire" (1998) has one page number in the index. Communist Herbert Aptheker's "Abolitionism: a Revolutionary Movement" (1989) has three entries and makes a very favorable mention of Spooner and his allies. Mason Lowance's "Against Slavery: An Abolitionist Reader" has two excerpts of one text by Spooner, mixed in with excerpts from three dozen other writers. Spooner doesn't bulk large in the anthology. The heavyweights for Lowance are apparently Garrison and Lowell.
Spooner plays a slightly larger role in John Thomas's "Slavery Attacked: The Abolitionist Crusade" (1963) and Aileen Kraditor's "Means and Ends in American Abolitionism" (1970) but he's not one of the major heroes in the story there either. That's my random sample of books taken from a local library shelf. It's not exhaustive and may not be precisely representative but it does suggest that historians and contemporaries did not consider Lysander Spooner a major abolitionist. Try another sample if you don't believe me, so long as it is a more random sample and not weighted in favor of DiLorenzo, Hummell, Adams, the Kennedy's and other recent writers from your clique.
Two facts stand out though. First, Spooner's moment of fame was in 1845-7 and connected with his book, "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery." He didn't have the kind of sustained influence of other abolitionist thinkers, agitators or activists. He fades away and turns up again as angling for a role in the John Brown affair, but doesn't remain in the limelight. Second, Spooner's ideas did have some influence, but the degree to which they are "Spooner's ideas" and the predominant direction of the influence are unclear. Did Spooner really influence the more prominent Smith? From what scholars say, it could well have been the other way around, with Spooner fleshing out Smith's or James Birney's ideas. The year before Spooner's pamphlet William Goodell made the same argument in his "Views of the American Constitution" (1844). Historians were as apt to speak of the ideas of "Goodell, Spooner and Smith" taken together rather than treat them separately. Spooner is better known today than Smith or Birney because he wrote a long, repetitive book, rather than speeches or letters, but he's better known than his ally and precursor Goodell or his opponents Wendell Phillips or William Bowditch because of his later anarchist ideas, not because of the quality of his thought or extent of his influence as an abolitionist.
Things changed a bit in the last thirty years. Libertarians and anarchists rediscovered Spooner and put his works on line, so he shows up more in recent books. But it would be a mistake to project this prominence backwards into history, the reasons for Spooner's current vogue lie in us, not in the past. Those approaching Spooner from an anarchist or libertarian perspective will doubtless overestimate his importance in his times. But those who approach him through the abolitionists and try to assess his significance in that movement will reach a very different estimation of Spooner's significance.
In his own day, Spooner wasn't considered a major abolitionist leader, activist or thinker. At least a half-dozen names and almost certainly more would come to mind before Spooner's own when his contemporaries thought about abolitionists. In their own day and afterwards, now obscure figures, like Theodore Parker, Theodore Weld or Orestes Brownson were far better known than Lysander Spooner. But today, Spooner has a lobby pushing his name into public view, and most of his contemporaries don't.
Does it matter that Lysander Spooner really doesn't matter -- that he wasn't one of the most prominent, respected or influential abolitionists? Probably not in the greater scheme of things, but a false estimation of Spooner's importance shouldn't be used to advance dubious arguments.
Murray Rothbard cheered the fall of Saigon in 1975 and advocated voting for socialist and Trotskyite candidates for tactical reasons. That was his prerogative, but if someone said, "Even archcapitalists like Rothbard support Communism and Socialism, therefore they must be right" I would object. Rothbard wasn't a typical capitalist or free marketeer. His libertarianism or anarchism were more important in these cases than his support for what most would take to be market capitalism.
If someone were to say "Noam Chomsky, an American, a Jew, and a Zionist of sorts from his youth, opposes the War with Iraq, therefore it must be wrong," I'd also object. Chomsky isn't a typical American or Jew and wasn't a typical Zionist (when he was one). Chomsky's radicalism or leftist anarchism are more important in determining his opinion of the war than his religion or nationality.
And so it is with Spooner. He's not a representative abolitionist. The anarchist tendencies that distinguished Spooner from his peers, identified by Phillips as early as 1846, play a greater role in determining his attitude towards secession than the abolitionist views he shared with them.
Someone who is so ill-informed as to claim that Spooner was one of the three greatest or best known or most prominent or most influential abolitionists, either in his lifetime, or subsequently by historians or today by experts and laymen has a serious credibility problem. After Garrison, there is Frederick Douglass. Alongside Stowe, there is Julia Ward Howe. Lowell and Whittier were more than just poets, and still have some name recognition. So even if one grants that Spooner is, thanks to libertarian and anarchist activism, better known today than other abolitionists who were more famous in their day, he's by no means one of the top three even now.
Those who rely on Rockwell's or DiLorenzo's history lite, rather than more serious fare, have been misled and mislead others. I'm not inclined to make too much of this. Interests, prejudices and passions govern people's opinions more than reason, facts or experiential knowledge. It's not a grave moral failing but part of the human condition. But if one does persist in such errors, and does so in a particularly self-righteous fashion it does cut into one's credibility.
Spooner is well known and popular today for the same reason that he was obscure and discounted in his own times: he found easy answers to the hard questions of the day. He cut through the knotty problems of political thought and practice because he didn't seriously confront them. People who struggled with slavery and secession in mid-19th century America found Spooner's ideas (to the degree that they were aware of them) simplistic wishful thinking. Spooner's belief that one could wave one's hand in front of problems, utter a few formulae and make them go away fooled no one. Those who faced civil war knew that things weren't so simple and that one couldn't "have it all," or have much without sacrifices and difficult choices. But Spooner's very shallowness is precisely what appeals to his fans today. Spooner's "feel good" ideology is the parent of today's Rockwellism, which yokes together opposing and incompatible ideas and tries to pretend that they form a cohesive ideology. Spooner's ability to convince himself that what he wanted to be true was true and that real and painful contradictions can be easily overcome makes him fit in very well at LewRockwell.com.
Does that mean you have abandoned your strategy of appealing to anonymous authorities and replaced it with appealing to anonymous card catalogue search engines? You truly are a strange one, x.
But let us suppose for a moment that such an argument argument were valid on its face and Spooner's importance could be determined by discovering whether or not there are books written on him in a card catelogue search engine from a major university library. Well guess what, x. I just searched one via the internet on the term "Lysander Spooner" and found listing for two biography-esque books on Spooner:
"The economics and political economy of Lysander Spooner" by Graeme Brooke Littler, George Mason University Press, 1986
"Biography of Lysander Spooner" by Charles Shively et al, from "The Collected Works of Lysander Spooner," M&S Press, 1971
It also turned up a lengthy list of books he has written, which apparently have been in reprint for most of this century.
If Spooner were a truly noteworthy abolitionist or an important political thinker, or at least if others thought him so significant, there would at least have been at least one biography and some thorough studies of Spooner's thought published at some point over the years.
I found at least two with ease. In addition, it appears his collected works have been published in a multi-volume set which opens with one of those biographies.
There weren't, or at least they didn't make it into the nation's biggest libraries.
I got those two from a simple search in the database of one such library.
Phillips, Garrison, Douglass, Parker, Weld, Smith, Birney, Mott, Beecher, Lovejoy, Stowe, Howe and others all have at least two biographies or monographs devoted to them.
And guess what - So does Spooner! See above. And that goes without mentioning the fact that a multi-volume set of Spooner's collected works has been published. That can be said of only some of those on your list.
That hardly matters, since Spooner was also active in banking, the law and religion and acquired no great prominence in his own day from any of his activities.
That assertion has been made with great frequency by you. Not once have you specified or substantiated it, and in fact you have willfully ignored a number of facts that defy it. I have listed them for you previously, which leads me to conclude that an innocent form of ignorance is not the source of that comment. Needless to say, Since facts evidently do not phase you, I'll happily post them for any individual who wishes to judge for himself.
Fact 1: Lysander Spooner's book, "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery" (1845) recieved formal endorsement by the Liberty Party, arguably the most important early abolitionist party, in 1849 as their key philosophical text.
Fact 2: Gerrit Smith, one of the only true abolitionists to ever gain a seat in the U.S. Congress, personally embraced that same book and used it as the philosophical basis of his own abolitionist arguments.
Fact 3: Lysander Spooner was politically involved with several other well known and leading abolitionists including Smith and John Brown.
Fact 4: Spooner's book caused enough of a stir to become a topic of discussion on the floor of the United States Congress in the 1850's.
Fact 5: Spooner's book attracted enough attention from competing factions of abolitionists for them to attempt a rebuttal of its arguments.
Fact 6: Spooner's involvement in abolitionism was prominent and well known enough for leading political figures of the day to solicit his endorsement and support. This included a personal request from William Seward, one of the leading Republican Senators and Lincoln's Secretary of State.
Those are the facts for anyone who is interested in an honest discussion of them. They are also facts that x has, to date, REFUSED to even acknowledge, likely because they do not mesh with his efforts to belittle, diminish, and discard Spooner's importance to the abolitionist movement.
Lysander Spooner may have been more theoretical than some of those I named, but sheer quantity of verbiage and degree of abstraction do not directly translate into fame or influence, if the quality, human appeal, practicality and relevance aren't there.
Would you like me to use your own criteria to determine his importance, x? Fair enough.
Let's start with fame - Spooner's book was widely circulated, an indicator of fame. It made it into discussions on the floor of the United States Congress, thereby suggesting further fame. It was discussed in the newspapers and in speeches, again suggesting fame. It has also been in continuous print for over a century and may be easily found in any research library in the nation, thus suggesting that the fame was lasting.
Influence - Spooner's book was prominently embraced and circulated by one of the leading abolitionist organizations in the nation, the Liberty Party, thus suggesting a strong influence in that same movement. It also recieved the endorsement of the only true abolitionist to win a seat in Congress, Gerrit Smith, again suggesting influence with another major figure of that same movement. Spooner's theories were both pushed and attacked by politicians on the floor of Congress, suggesting influence beyond the abolitionist movement and in the nation's political arena in general. And Spooner was considered important enough by William Seward, one of the nation's leading politicians, for the latter to send him a personal request of endorsement for the Republican Party, again suggesting that his influence was recognized at the top levels of government.
Quality - Spooner's argument against slavery has been widely available in print for over 150 years, thus suggesting that its quality has been determined by the test of time. Its quality is also indicated by the fact that the main published attempt to rebut within the abolitionist movement it, Phillips' book, is almost universally considered to be a logically inferior argument.
Human appeal - Spooner's book recieved widespread circulation from the Liberty Party in his own day and it is still in print 150 years later, so it must appeal to somebody!
Practicality - This, I suppose, is the main weakness of Spooner's argument. It was brilliant, but not practical in the political sense. But that alone is no discredit to it, as the exact same thing could be said just as easily about the overwhelming majority of abolitionist theory and literature at the time.
Relevance - Once again, this is attested to by the attention the book recieved. It was relevant enough to earn the endorsement of other leading individuals and organizations in the abolitionist movement. It was relevant enough to prompt an attempted rebuttal from a competing abolitionist faction. It was relevant enough to be discussed on the floor of Congress and recieve attention from the top officials of the U.S. government. And it remains relevant enough to still be in circulation over 150 years after its publication.
So there you have it, x. By YOUR OWN CRITERIA, Spooner's importance is established.
It would take a long article or thesis to determine just how important or unimportant Spooner was in his day, and in the works of subsequent scholars.
I recommend that you find either of those biographies then, as I suspect they will attest to it. I didn't find the political economy one on Amazon, but the collected works one is there and I suspect it also appears in many research liberaries, as tends to be the case with those "Collected Works of So and So" sets.
And it's hard to prove a negative.
Yes x, it is. And it is especially hard to do so when you do not make your case in anything but vague and anonymous appeals.
There's always another book to look at to see if Spooner, against expectations, plays a major role.
And speaking of other books, I just found another one. Though it is a little "loose" with who it considers to be "abolitionists" elsewhere, the Penguin Classics "Abolitionist Reader" complilation considered Spooner's book important enough to excerpt as a major abolitionist writing.
And there's the question of just what "importance" is and what it takes for a person, a reputation, a book, or an article to be truly significant.
That is indeed a question, and I just offered my argument of his "importance" as you just defined that term.
Spooner isn't mentioned in most histories of the United States.
In other words, you are back to citing anonymous authorities. For the record though, I do somewhat recall my own first encounter with his name many years ago. It was in a U.S. History textbook, probably junior high or high school, as I described previously. His name was listed as one of the important abolitionists on the same page that has that painting of a firey-eyed and bearded John Brown that they always use.
In most works devoted to the abolitionists or antebellum social reform and biographies of other abolitionists references to him could usually be counted on one hand in each book.
For what its worth, the ones I have seen normally outline his book's argument and make note of its role in history. It'll require a visit to the library to glance through them, but I'll happily keep an eye out the next time I'm there. For the time being I'll simply note again that he was evidently important enough to be excerpted in the Penguin collection of standard abolitionist essays.
If you desire to, as you said, "count index pages," give it a try. From the list you provided, you have found some that barely mention him. That's fine - not all histories of Texas devote entire chapters to Davy Crockett either. I must also caution especially against looking in books that focus on Garrison or Phillips - they were from a competing faction of abolitionism, so it is unlikely that you will find much said about Spooner's influence on them beyond the effort at rebuttal by Phillips.
Two facts stand out though. First, Spooner's moment of fame was in 1845-7 and connected with his book, "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery."
Actually, the book's rise to prominence achieved its greatest exceleration in 1849 - the year the Liberty Party endorsed it at their convention. This prompted its entrance into wider discussion outside of abolitionist circles and into the political mainstream. That included the floor of Congress and speeches by prominent government officials.
He didn't have the kind of sustained influence of other abolitionist thinkers, agitators or activists.
His book's been in publication for over 150 years, x. It was a frequent topic of discussion in either abolitionist circles, mainstream political circles, or both from 1845 through the election of Lincoln. There are few other abolitionist texts about which all of that may be said, with the only obvious ones to come to mind being works of literature such as Uncle Tom's Cabin and a couple of keynote speeches. Some have been republished, including Liberator excerpts and Frederick Douglass' collected speeches. Others have faded into obscurity. But walk into any substantial library in the nation, as well as many of your average bookstores, and you can find at least one copy of Spooner's book.
He fades away and turns up again as angling for a role in the John Brown affair, but doesn't remain in the limelight.
You are showing your ignorance again, x. Spooner's contribution rose most dramatically after 1847 with the events involving the Liberty Party in 1849. The speeches and debates on his writings by figures from the political mainstream such as Seward almost all occurred between 1850 and 1860 - in other words, the exact opposite of what you said.
Second, Spooner's ideas did have some influence, but the degree to which they are "Spooner's ideas" and the predominant direction of the influence are unclear.
Not really. Their main influence in abolitionism is directly identifiable because those who were influenced by them openly said so - namely the Liberty Party and Smith.
Did Spooner really influence the more prominent Smith?
In answer to your question, Smith himself said so and was a leading advocate of Spooner's work. As for your characterization of Smith as "more prominent," such a claim is very questionable. While Smith's importance and role cannot be denied, right now 150 years later, Spooner's name is more recognizabe than Smith's and his writings are more easily found than anything by or about Smith. From what scholars say, it could well have been the other way around, with Spooner fleshing out Smith's or James Birney's ideas.
Not really. While it is an inescapable fact of life that one cannot avoid the earlier influences of similar thought development, it is not a legitimate argument to discard the apex of a particular thought on the presence of its predecessors. To use an analogy, a number of lesser known writers outlined primitive versions of the theory of comparative advantage in the first decade of the 19th century, but the main credit for that theory goes, and properly so, to David Ricardo, who developed it in its fullest form a decade later.
Spooner is better known today than Smith or Birney because he wrote a long, repetitive book, rather than speeches or letters
Not really. Returning to the comparative advantage analogy, would you also hold that Ricardo is better known today simply because he was more verbiose? Such would be nonsense. In reality, Ricardo and Spooner are better known because each developed their argument in its fullest form.
Things changed a bit in the last thirty years. Libertarians and anarchists rediscovered Spooner and put his works on line, so he shows up more in recent books. But it would be a mistake to project this prominence backwards into history, the reasons for Spooner's current vogue lie in us, not in the past.
First off, you simply have not demonstrated that to be so. Second, while Spooner has enjoyed a resurgence on the internet, the same could be said of practically any writer, as that is what the internet has done to scholarship - making texts easily available. Third, while libertarians have come to Spooner in recent times, this coincides not with a "rediscovery" of him but rather with the emergence of a certain approach and expansion of libertarian thought itself. Fourth, as I noted previously, Spooner's book on slavery has been printed and reprinted for the last 150 years and was thus available and existant in the time you claim that his relevance was ignored.
Those approaching Spooner from an anarchist or libertarian perspective will doubtless overestimate his importance in his times.
That may be so, but on the same note you are underestimating his importance, for whatever reason you may have, to a degree tenfold of that over which you complain and in the direct face of historical fact.
In his own day, Spooner wasn't considered a major abolitionist leader, activist or thinker.
You keep saying that, as if constant repetition will make it any less false. Yet you have been informed of the fact that he was "major" enough to have his book prominently endorsed by a "major" abolitionist (Smith) and a "major" abolitionist organization (the Liberty Party). He was also "major" enough to prompt discussion in a "major" public forum (The United States Congress) and draw personal solicitations for support from "major" politicians of the day (William Seward).
Your oft-repeated but wholly unsubstantiated claim is made in direct conflict with these and other facts that have been brought to your attention. Yet you wonder why I question your honesty on this issue...
At least a half-dozen names and almost certainly more would come to mind before Spooner's own when his contemporaries thought about abolitionists.
Then why did the Liberty Party officially adopt Spooner's argument and not one of these "half dozen" other names of which it is "certain" that abolitionists would go to before Spooner? Yet again, x, your claim contradicts reality.
In their own day and afterwards, now obscure figures, like Theodore Parker, Theodore Weld or Orestes Brownson were far better known than Lysander Spooner.
...yet the Liberty Party chose Spooner. Wonder why that is, especially since you said they would "certainly" think of a "half dozen" more important abolitionists before even considering Spooner. Are you seeing this, x? Cause somewhere between something you said and what actually happened an inconsistency is occuring.
But today, Spooner has a lobby pushing his name into public view, and most of his contemporaries don't.
In other words, when you can't make your case on historical facts, appeal instead to the conspiracy that is pushing Spooner over "more important" figures who were nevertheless not chosen for the role that Spooner's book was by a major abolitionist organization that would "certainly" have a "half dozen" people ahead of Spooner in importance. Go figure.
Does it matter that Lysander Spooner really doesn't matter -- that he wasn't one of the most prominent, respected or influential abolitionists?
What matters, x, is that you are repeating a lie when you make that claim on this forum. The facts are there as plain as day. You know them because you've seen them. Yet you continue to make vague assertions that are wholly inconsistent with them. Based upon that, I can only reasonably conclude that you are lying and that you do not wish to concede either that you were wrong in your first claim or that you are lying about that claim right now in an effort to escape having to concede that first error.
Complain to your heart's content if you do not like me stating that, but as I have said previously - if you say something incorrect, I will correct it. If you say something ignorant, I will make note of the ignorance in what you say. And if you lie, I will point out that you are lying. Murray Rothbard cheered the fall of Saigon in 1975 and advocated voting for socialist and Trotskyite candidates for tactical reasons. That was his prerogative, but if someone said, "Even archcapitalists like Rothbard support Communism and Socialism, therefore they must be right" I would object.
And so you would be correct to object. But nobody is saying "Even abolitionists like Spooner supported the confederacy, therefore the it must have been right." Not only would that be a fallacy of appealing to authority, but Spooner did NOT support the confederacy per se - he outright condemned what he considered to be its flaws in some of the harshest of his language. What Spooner DID do though was to call out the northern claims of moral superiority, "justice," "right" as illegitimate frauds. His status as an abolitionist does not make what he says inherently correct (though it does give greater credibility to his case since he has no motive whatsoever tied to the defense of slavery). To the contrary, whether or not what he says is correct rests ultimately upon the validity of the arguments he made.
...yet his book was prominently embraced by a major abolitionist faction, leader, and organization. Curious. It seems we have yet another case where what you claim and what historically happened do not match. But since we know that your claim is "correct" based upon the anonymous authorities who allegedly back it, the historical events must be wrong, right?
The anarchist tendencies that distinguished Spooner from his peers, identified by Phillips as early as 1846, play a greater role in determining his attitude towards secession than the abolitionist views he shared with them.
I ask again, what is your point?
Someone who is so ill-informed as to claim that Spooner was one of the three greatest or best known or most prominent or most influential abolitionists, either in his lifetime, or subsequently by historians or today by experts and laymen has a serious credibility problem.
Surely such an alleged problem could not be so great as the one possessed by an individual who stares baldly in the face of indisputable historical facts and makes a summary statement on his own or other anonymous historical authorities that directly conflicts with those very same facts. It also happens to be the case that such a credibility problem in itself undermines the efforts of that same person to accuse another of ignorance for no other reason than that he disputes the validity of the very same assertion by that very same person, which has been made in direct conflict with those same historical facts.
In other words, x, your attack on my credibility rests upon my refusal to agree with the very same assertion that undermines your own credibility to the point that you cannot credibly question the credibility of others.
After Garrison, there is Frederick Douglass.
Add Spooner and that makes three.
Alongside Stowe, there is Julia Ward Howe. Lowell and Whittier were more than just poets, and still have some name recognition.
That they do, but it is first and foremost literary recognition. Funny how that works, is it not? You attempt to diminish Spooner's abolitionism, which was actively practiced as the central feature of his career in law, on the grounds that he did other stuff on the side and after slavery was abolished, yet here you are asserting the dominant abolitionist qualities of people who were first and foremost poets and authors, though they also happened to be abolitionists and often wrote on that theme in their literature. Even your arguments are inconsistent, x.
So even if one grants that Spooner is, thanks to libertarian and anarchist activism, better known today than other abolitionists who were more famous in their day, he's by no means one of the top three even now.
...and like so many others you have made, that entire statement is built upon a false premise and historically ignorant understanding of who was and was not prominent in the day or today. One therefore cannot accept its conclusion as having been demonstrated.
Those who rely on Rockwell's or DiLorenzo's history lite, rather than more serious fare, have been misled and mislead others.
How about those who rely not on history at all, but rather stare it directly in the face and contradict it upon the "authority" of the self and anonymous others? You have engaged in that exercise all over this thread, x, so how you hope to even credibly judge DiLorenzo's concept of history is beyond me.
Interests, prejudices and passions govern people's opinions more than reason, facts or experiential knowledge.
Finally! The one thing that you HAVE demonstrated on this thread!
Spooner is well known and popular today for the same reason that he was obscure and discounted in his own times: he found easy answers to the hard questions of the day.
Your ignorance is showing yet again, x. No person who has seriously read or understood Spooner's writings could honestly call it an "easy answer." Practically everything he wrote had a deep underlying logical rigor to it. Much of it may not have been practical or politically viable, but to characterize it as you do is to miss its point entirely. That would not be your first time. You have yet to demonstrate any depth to your reading of Spooner, if indeed you have read any at all. But then again, the purpose of philosophy is not to inform those who cannot scratch through its cover.
He cut through the knotty problems of political thought and practice because he didn't seriously confront them. People who struggled with slavery and secession in mid-19th century America found Spooner's ideas (to the degree that they were aware of them) simplistic wishful thinking.
Again, I'll readily consent that they were impractical, as many extremely complex things are. But simplistic? Such an assertion is downright bizarre when one considers the rigorously logical procession underlying practically all of Spooner's thought.
Spooner's belief that one could wave one's hand in front of problems, utter a few formulae and make them go away fooled no one.
Well, x. What I had suspected and believed is now readily evident: Spooner's argument flew over your head entirely. That statement confirms it outright, and also lends me cause to wonder how you can even hope to participate in this debate further. You do not know the language of the field or the methods of the trade, and just as a surgeon cannot successfully procede without an understanding of the surgery he performs, you cannot hope to successfully analyze Spooner without an understanding of what he argues.
In other words, x, give it up while you're behind. You have demonstrated elsewhere on other subject matter that you have a reasonably respectable intellect. There's no point in embarrassing yourself further by missapplying it to concepts that are out of your league.
Especially when the victim is unarmed and laying on the floor and those who might choose to interfere were also unarmed.
You'll have to check the law books of the time. I do know that there was a duel on the Marlboro Pike just outside of Washington in Maryland between two congressmen in 1838.
I did. Dueling was a state issue and by 1857 had been outlawed in every Northern state but was still legal in almost every southern one. However, D.C. was under federal law and it had been it had been outlawed, some say because George Washington had been so opposed to the practice.
Merriam-Webster defines mugging as an assault usually with the intent to rob. Usually, but not always. Describing the actions of Brooks and Keitt as a mugging is accurate.
Well guess what, x. I just searched one via the internet on the term "Lysander Spooner" and found listing for two biography-esque books on Spooner:
"Biography of Lysander Spooner" by Charles Shively et al, from "The Collected Works of Lysander Spooner," M&S Press, 1971
Also from the i-net:
M & S Press, Inc. was established in 1969 to publish important books in early American intellectual and social history long out-of-print and very difficult to find in the antiquarian book market.
Lol! Not exactly Little Brown is it?
...as always, Merriam-Webster - that great legal dictionary of case law definitions.
May I ask you for a source?
Well I doubt that you will find 'mugging' in a legal dictionary since it is not a legal term. It's a slang term for an assault usually involving robbery.
On the D.C. dueling laws? I read it somewhere and I'll try to find it and let you know. However, as you pointed out, the people involved in that 1838 duel had to go to Maryland to fight it out so I believe that supports what I said.
Added Fact 1: In August 1848 at Buffalo, New York, a meeting of anti-slavery members of the Whig Party and the Liberty Party established the Free-Soil Party. The new party opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories. The main slogan of the party was "free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men".
In the 1848 presidential election, Martin Van Buren, the party's candidate, polled 10 per cent of the vote. He split the traditional Democratic support and enabled the Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor, to win.
By 1852 the Free-Soil Party had 12 congressmen but in presidential election, John P. Hale won over 5 per cent of the vote. Two years later, remaining members joined the Republican Party.
Fact 2: Gerritt Smith, one of the only true abolitionists to ever gain a seat in the U.S. Congress, personally embraced that same book and used it as the philosophical basis of his own abolitionist arguments.
Added Fact 2: Wealthy New York philanthropist Gerritt Smith financed Lysander Spooner to write "The Unconsitutionality of Slavery" and other abolitionist tracts.
Added Fact 3: Gerrit Smith was the unsuccessful presidential candidate for what was left of the Liberty Party in 1848 and 1852.
Sounds to me like the abolitionist movement in general and the original Liberty party membership in particular, weren't too impressed with Lysander Spooner or Gerritt Smith. While the Free-soilers went on to play a spoilers role in the presidential election in 1848 and eventually send a dozen men to Congress, the Liberty party with Garritt and Spooner went..nowhere.
More concrete evidence that Spooner and his cohorts were fringe players on the American abolitionist movement's stage.
But then that would depend on your definition of a 'true' abolitionist, wouldn't it?
Though you have demonstrated your ability to utilize the internet in finding and plagiarizing a website, your "facts" simply do not support that conclusion. You are confusing the Free-Soilers (who were by definition what their name said - those who wanted free soil in the territories) with the abolitionists (who also wanted what their name said - the abolition of slavery). An abolitionist could be a Free-Soiler and some of them were, but not all Free-Soilers were abolitionists and far from it. In fact, the most successful Free-Soilers - as in the ones who won election to office and later became the Republicans - were NOT abolitionists.
While the Free-soilers went on to play a spoilers role in the presidential election in 1848 and eventually send a dozen men to Congress, the Liberty party with Garritt and Spooner went..nowhere.
I'm sure that would come as news to Smith, Spooner and any competant historian. Smith won election to Congress in 1852, which, the last time I checked, occurred 4 years after 1848. As for Spooner, his book became the subject of discussions on the floor of Congress at many points in the 1850's, which, the last time I checked, also occurred after 1848.
More concrete evidence that Spooner and his cohorts were fringe players on the American abolitionist movement's stage.
Not really. All you offered, mac, was a small list of only loosely relevant facts that you stole off of a website then misinterpreted and mistook for evidence of something that it was not. About the only thing you "evidenced" with that little charade was your willingness to engage in plagiarism and your inability to make even the most basic dinstinctions between free-soilers and abolitionists.
Well, mac, it seems you have thoroughly embarrassed yourself yet again, so I suppose that, rather than respond like a reasonable person and apologize for your errors, you will bombard me with the usual barrage of inane name calling with not a word of substance. It's par for the course though...
mac_truck => as in hit by one.
They fought in Maryland because it was, at the time, a stretch of rural road where a duel could be fought.
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