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.
Face it loser, you're just another intellectually dishonest bottom bitch for Lew Crockwell and his CSA zombies.
Really? I'm surprised that all those days in detention you have presumably gotten from doing the same thing in your schoolwork haven't conveyed that message to you.
Like it or not, mac, taking somebody else's writing, copying it verbatim, and pasteing it into something else that you present as your own is plagiarism. You plagiarized that website and got caught. Live with it.
Please tell me you have prepared a better defense than that.
Did you not read my post either? The facts that you plagiarized where wholly irrelevant to my argument - they pertained to the Free-Soilers, who were NOT by definition abolitionists. Abolitionists wanted to abolish slavery entirely, hence their name. Free-Soilers simply wanted to keep the soil of the territories free, hence their name as well. Some abolitionists were also Free-Soilers, but not all Free-Soilers were abolitionists.
Face it loser, you're just another intellectually dishonest bottom bitch for Lew Crockwell and his CSA zombies.
Just as I predicted. You got caught plagiarizing somebody else's work. You got caught peddling an ignorant argument that simply didn't fly under scrutiny. And you were embarrassed thoroughly by both. But rather than own up to your lies, dishonesty, and ignorance like a man, rather than apologize for the inappropriateness of your plagiarism and the error of your argument, you respond by calling names. Just like it was said...
mac_truck => as in hit by one.
Holding that the battle of Fort Sumter was the starting point of the war, the first shot fired immediately in the proximity of that battle can be traced not to the south but to the north. It was fired off the northern ship USS Harriet Lane on the night before the bombardment as a warning shot against a civilian vessle that was trying to enter Charleston harbor. The dispatch Harriet Lane along with a fleet containing other warships to Charleston was in fact the event that sparked the confederates to fire on the fort. They sought to preempt the fleet's arrival by taking the fort before it could act militarily against them.
and in every CSA's declaration of secession they cite the protection of African slavery as the prime reason for secession.
That is a half truth of history. Of all the confederate states and territories that seceded, there were four states and one Indian tribe that put out documents entitled Declarations of Causes. The four state documents did indeed cite slavery, as did the Indian tribe, though the latter was only in passing and cannot be called a prime reason in that document. The remainder either did not state causes, or stated causes other than slavery in their secession documents. There are 20 such documents that I have been able to identify, and they break down as follows:
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| South Carolina - SO |
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| South Carolina - DofC |
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| Mississippi - SO |
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| Mississippi - DofC |
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| Florida - SO |
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| Alabama - SO |
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| Georgia - SO |
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| Georgia - DofC |
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| Louisiana - SO |
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| Texas - SO |
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| Texas - DofC |
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| Virginia - SO |
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| Arkansas - SO |
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| North Carolina - SO |
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| Tennessee - SO |
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| Missouri - SO |
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| Kentucky - SO [r] |
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| Arizona - SO [t] |
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| Cherokee - DofC |
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| Choctaw et al - AofC |
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KEY:
Lincoln would have been content to merely limit the expansion of slavery into the terroritories.
That too is not so. Had Lincoln been fully contented by halting the expansion of slavery into the territories, he needed only to allow secession to procede. By leaving the union, the southern states gave up all affiliations with it including their common membership with and claim to the territories. If keeping slavery out of those territories was all that Lincoln wanted, he could have achieved it fully by not opposing secession and letting the south VOLUNTARILY end their claims to those same territories. But he did not and instead acted to halt secession, thereby indicating that his motive, whatever it may have been, was something other than the oft-stated desire to simply keep slavery out of the territories.
Mississippi's DofC is already on my list.
A non-sequitur, by definition, lacks a necessary connection to a said event. Yet the Harriet Lane's presence in Charleston was indeed necessarily connected to the bombardment - had that fleet not been sent there, the bombardment would not have occurred! Therefore its presence is necessarily connected, which makes it a part of the battle, and as a part of the battle, it fired the first shot in proximity to that battle.
Hitler could claim that Poles fired first by shooting off flairs on such evidence.
Not really, cause the Poles didn't mobilize at the entrance to Germany to incite a war with Germany.
And as for the territorties. The Civil War started in them long before the official Civil War.
So to you the war "started" with bloodshed in the territories. Does that mean Bleeding Kansas counts as shots fired, but not the Harriet Lane?
To think the Aristocrat slave holders of the South would have stopped the expansion of slavery in the terroritories is a total lie.
How could they have without being clearly invasive upon the territory of another? Sure, you can speculate that they may have been willing to do this, but little beyond that and loose speculation alone isn't enough for you to prove that anything of the sort would have happened.
One of them, the Secession Ordinance, was the official law that enacted secession. The other, the Declaration of Causes, was a legislative resolution adopted by the Mississippi convention's members as an expression of opinion.
I do not "belittle, diminish, and discard belittle, diminish, and discard Spooner's importance to the abolitionist movement." I just think it's wrong to ignore or condemn other leaders and activists in the movement to exaggerate Spooner's importance to the antebellum abolitionist movement because of his contributions to postbellum Confederate apologist mythology. If you want to make a hero out of Spooner, that's up to you, but exaggerating his importance at the expense of others is wrong.
The Shively "biography" is a long essay in the 1971 collected works that I mentioned. It is the biography found on the Spooner website and doesn't look to be very deep, thorough, or critical. It's more a celebratory introduction to Spooner, than a thorough analysis of his life or ideas.
You may have found the Littler book in one university catalogue, I tried several and it didn't show up. Littler's published thesis does count as one book and indicates the current interest in Spooner. That a century passed after Spooner's death and almost a century and a half after his brief period of fame before a scholarly book on him was published shows that this interest in Spooner is something new.
The Penguin Classics "Abolitionist Reader" is Mason Lowance's "Against Slavery: an Abolitionist Reader," which I mentioned. Spooner is one of three dozen abolitionists anthologized in the reader, as I mentioned. Lowance gives Spooner his due, but not, as you would like, more than that.
James Russell Lowell was not just a poet, but a prominent abolitionist journalist, as Lowance's anthology reveals. Whittier was similar. I did not "attempt to diminish Spooner's abolitionism ...on the grounds that he did other stuff on the side and after slavery was abolished, ... [while] asserting the dominant abolitionist qualities of people who were first and foremost poets and authors." I pointed out in their own day Lowell and Whittier were able to attain greater fame in both literature and social activism than Spooner was able to achieve in any of his varied activities. That's hardly inconsistent.
It's you who wants to discount some of the most famous and influential abolitionist names because they also had influence in other fields. A farmer in Vermont or a wheelwright in Michigan might know Russell's or Whittier's poetry and abolitionist prose from the journals they wrote for. He probably wouldn't know Spooner (If he did, would he attribute any more significance to him than to Goodell, Phillips, Bowditch or anyone else in the controversy over the constitutionality of slavery?). Why fault others for having greater name recognition in both fields? Your argument might apply to Emerson or Thoreau, who supported abolition but whose main concerns lay elsewhere, but not to Whittier or Lowell who were prominent abolitionist publicists and activists.
If Spooner was as skilled at law, finance, and constitutional theory as he claimed to be his achievements in one field wouldn't diminish his importance in another, but before the Civil War he wasn't especially distinguished in any of these fields, at least as far as his contemporaries could tell. He did outlive most of them, though, and achieved some recognition when he died as a last relic of great days and as an anarchist theorist.
You've argued that Spooner was one of the most important abolitionists and mentioned his theoretical contributions. I've noted that these belong mostly to his 1845 tract on the unconstitutionality of slavery and don't amount to a whole career of effort. You've pointed to his practical activities later. Fair enough, take the man all in all, theorist and activist, but how much does it add up to?
There were other and better abolitionist lawyers. It's hard to see just what was unique about Spooner. And advocating and preparing armed insurrection doesn't look like much of a positive achievement. If it is, then John Brown far outweighs Lysander Spooner as a prominent abolitionist. Both as an activist and as a theoretician Spooner did make his contribution to the movement, but I'm not sure how significant it was in either field, in comparison to that of other figures who were better known at the time.
Gerrit Smith had good reason to endorse Spooner's 1845 book on "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery". It fleshed out at great length ideas that Smith had already expressed in 1839 and Salmon Chase in 1837. It followed the same line as William Goodell's "Views of American Constitutional Law" (1844), which Goodell further expounded in "Slavery and Anti-Slavery"(1852), not to mention G.W.F Mellen's 1841 work. And apparently, Spooner was on Smith's payroll.
The idea that slavery was unconstitutional had a long history. It's a comforting idea, but it wasn't shared by most abolitionists or opponents of slavery, perhaps because other Americans wouldn't let them fall into such happy complaceny about American history. Spooner made his contribution. He did service in codifying his faction's ideas and attracted more attention than Goodell, but this did not make him more famous or more respected in his day than Garrison, Phillips or Parker.
And just how large Spooner's faction was is another question. The Liberty Party was only one part of the abolitionist movement. Non-party activists like Garrison and Phillips probably carried more weight. After Birney's 1844 Presidential campaign, the Liberty Party was deeply divided. Most of the New Yorkers and New Englanders accepted the Goodell-Smith-Spooner thesis about the unconstitutionality of slavery and were members of Gerrit Smith's Liberty League. Activists from other states did not believe that slavery was unconsitutional and were more inclined to moderation, compromise and coalition-building. Many of their number joined Van Buren's Free Soil coalition in 1848. Free Soilers were of course not primarily abolitionists, but there were many abolitionists and opponents of slavery in their number, as was true of the later Republican party.
Theodore Clarke Smith's "The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest" (1897) says that the national convention of the Liberty Party met in Buffalo on October 20, 1847 and voted down a resolution not to nominate anyone who did not believe that slavery was unconstitutional That was a clear slap in the faces of Smith, Goodell and Spooner. Every motion Gerrit Smith made was rejected, and the convention nominated Senator John Hale of New Hampshire. In other words, the party repudiated Spooner's thesis.
The next year Hale withdrew in favor of the Free Soil ticket and the leaders of the majority faction of the Liberty Party endorsed Free Soilers Van Buren and Adams. Smith and Goodell bolted the party and their Liberty League nominated Smith for President as an alternative National Liberty Party candidate. Smith's supporters were only a small part of the anti-slavery movement, fewer than the Free Soilers or the Hale faction of the Liberty Party, and small too in comparison to the non-partisan social movement of Garrison and Phillips, who also largely rejected Gerrit Smith's views.
After the election of 1848, Gerrit Smith's supporters once again had control of the Liberty Party, but the party was only a shadow of what it had been when James Birney ran in 1844. If the Liberty Party endorsed Spooner's book in 1849 it was already on the way out, a rump party confined to Smith's followers. Basically Smith's followers voted for Smith's ideas, and Spooner had written the most thorough exposition of Smith's philosophy. In 1852 the party nominated Goodell and faded away after the election, but as Aileen Kraditor noted ("The History of American Political Parties," 1973) the party really expired in 1848, and in 1852 the corpse finally stopped twitching.
It's not surprising that Smith promoted a book that argued at length for the ideas that he had already stood up for years before, or that Smith's followers endorsed a book that he'd bought and paid for, but it's questionable how much importance should be attributed to the endorsement of a moribund party. It's a tribute to Smith's influence within his faction, but also a reflection of the bitter ideological disputes that prevented the party from wielding greater influence and eventually doomed it. How much admiration would the greater part of anti-slavery activists who felt Smith was wrong or a party-wrecker have for Spooner?
One could draw a parallel to today's party situation. Howard Phillips is a big man in the Constitution Party, but not a major figure in American Conservatism. David McReynolds is a leader in the rump Socialist party, but far from the most important American leftist or socialist. So it was with Gerrit Smith. His satellite, Lysander Spooner, didn't approach Smith's standing in the faction or outside of it. If you wanted to argue that Ayn Rand or Murray Rothbard was the most important libertarian in late 20th century America, some would agree and others would argue. You might make a good case for it. But it would be harder to convince people that Nathaniel Branden or another acolyte of Rand's or Rothbard's was so important, particularly in a movement so divided as libertarianism.
It's clear that Smith and Goodell would have been at least as well known as Spooner, but it's not clear how influential any of them were. The argument that the Liberty Party was important because it had elected one abolitionist to Congress is weak. There were several abolitionists in Congress as Whigs, Free Soilers, Republicans, "Know Nothings," or perhaps even Democrats. Those who eschewed the major parties or all political activity would condemn the others for compromising with evil, but that was only one, particularly purist and impractical point of view. But even granting that Smith was very important, it doesn't mean that Spooner was.
You may want to argue that Smith, Goodell and Spooner were the "true" abolitionists in contrast to the Free Soilers. I'm not so sure that one can make such a rigid determination. There were those who chose gradualism and moderation to achieve their ends and they should not be ignored. Just who was an abolitionist and who wasn't is unclear. Gerrit Smith himself was elected to Congress on the Free Soil ticket. If he was a true abolitionist, there must logically have been at least one true abolitionist in the Free Soil Party -- and the historical record shows that there were others. If Smith was the purest of the pure in his tiny party, he was one of several Free Soil Congressmen, and not necessarily any better an abolitionist than his peers.
Beyond these groups, though, there was the non-partisan social movement for abolition which had other leaders and no especial interest in or respect for Smith, or Goodell or the less known Spooner. And even the most radical non-partisan activists were on occasion impressed by efforts to win limited, but real victories. Garrison supported neither ticket in 1848 but wrote, "When Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams combine, the Revolution has at least begun." Smith's difficulty getting a running mate, even from among established radical activists, indicates the uninspiring nature of his candidacy, views or hopes in 1848.
You can rig or gerrymander a group so small that you get the answer that you want to, but I don't think it will work in this case. You can make Bob Avakian, Lyndon Larouche or Lew Rockwell the most important political intellectual in America if you define your terms in a particular way. But that would obviously be bias. In his own day, Spooner's deism and anarchist tendencies undercut any support he would have had among the more religious abolitionists, a group that was very important at the time. The self-taught and dogmatic Spooner probably sat very poorly among the Brahmins or mandarins of the movement. While he was too crude and wrongheaded for most of the gentry, Spooner's detailed hairsplitting wouldn't have pleased all the ordinary people in the movement either.
You've accused me of being vague. Sometimes one reads or hears something that is so much at odds with what one learned in school that it looks obviously false, or fishy or absurd that it can't be true. Of course it's not always false. It may be that what one learned in school was wrong, or inaccurate or superceded by subsequent findings or that one forgot or misunderstood or misremembered it. So looking up the facts and checking things out is necessary, even if something looks wrongheaded and ridiculous on its face. Now I have done that.
You've argued that Lysander Spooner was or was considered a very important abolitionist, one of the three most famous or significant. But you haven't provided any evidence for this, other than some imaginary and unspecified textbook and the Penguin anthology which includes excerpts from Spooner -- and at least thirty other abolitionists, surely no evidence for his unique importance. I've cited more than half a dozen books on abolitionism in which Spooner plays a minor or negligible role.
The ball is in your court. If you can name a book that demonstrates that Spooner was or was considered by his contemporaries or subsequent historians to be one of the three or so most important abolitionists I will reconsider my view. If you can't, you ought to reconsider yours. I doubt any earlier authors would dare make such an assertion of Spooner's importance, outside of die-hard anarchist circles. A few recent neo-confederate or libertarian books may make such claims, but do they prove them? Do they seriously consider other figures, perhaps forgotten now, but far more famous than Spooner in his day?
You've claimed that the endorsement of Spooner's views by the Liberty Party is a testament to his importance. I've shown that Spooner's views were similar to those which Smith and Goodell had already expressed and not unique to him, so it's no accident that Smith's supporters would pay him homage. Goodell and Smith may have honored Spooner's theoretical contributions, but their followers wouldn't have esteemed Spooner more than their leaders in practical matters. Those outside the faction had other heroes and intellectual and political leaders and didn't make much of Spooner.
I've further shown that the Liberty Party was only part of the anti-slavery spectrum of opinion, and that the Liberty Party was already on its way to extinction in 1849, when such an endorsement was supposedly made. A larger Liberty Party had repudiated the Spooner-Goodell-Smith thesis two years before. The 1849 endorsement would for the most part just have reflected Gerrit Smith's followers and would not have been worth much. The belief that Spooner was the great "idea man" for the whole abolitionist movement looks to be mistaken.
Your insistence that Spooner was or was regarded as one of the most important abolitionists either by his peers or the general public or most subsequent historians is of a piece with that Spoonerite-Rockwellite philosophy of having it all, something for nothing and the easy reconciliation of painful condradictions. It would support your other arguments if Spooner were more important in his day than he actually was. Therefore, you convince yourself, or someone convinces you that he was. The evidence suggests otherwise, so you ignore it.
Spooner's visiblity has risen in recent years because of his anarchist or radical libertarian views. There's nothing wrong with that. Orestes Brownson's reputation rose as the country became more Catholic. Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Martin Delany interest us more now, because they were Black. One could make a similar point about women abolitionists. Perhaps Douglass was finally given his due. But to project current significance due to the fashions of our own day back into history is a mistake or a distortion.
Your interlinear analyses of other people's arguments are unconvincing. You throw up something against each bit of another person's argument, but avoid the crux or central point of the controversy, often responding with little more than sarcasm.
You have asserted Spooner's importance with very little evidence and that evidence has been flawed. It's clear to me that you are simply persisting to avoid having to admit that you are wrong, so there's no point in my continuing this discussion. But if you would perform the experiment of going to a library and investigating just how little Spooner was on the mind of his contemporaries or the overwhelming majority of later historians perhaps you will see the light.
You have repeatedly said many things, x, including some that state directly in the face of factual history and contradict it. Yet you repeat them still then have the audacity to complain that I, rather than you, cannot be convinced of anything. Your behavior in this exchange is plagued by self-contradictory actions, arguments, and now complaints.
but I believe that those with no preconceptions or stake in the outcome will find, after examining the situation, that you have vastly overemphasized Lysander Spooner's influence.
Once again, I readily invite any who desires to examine the facts. They have been put forth in this thread and elsewhere for anyone who wishes to do so. I further believe that, even if one such observer were to conclude that I have "overemphasized" Spooner's influence, it would be difficult for them to make that assertion without also observing that any "overemphasis" I may have given is dwarfed tenfold by your attempts to underemphasize, belittle, and dismiss entirely Spooner's contribution to the same movement.
I do not "belittle, diminish, and discard belittle, diminish, and discard Spooner's importance to the abolitionist movement."
Yes you do, x. You refuse to give due credit to his book's prominent role in that movement, and you constantly try to negate what he said not on its merits or arguments, which you seemingly do not understand in the first place, but rather by dismissing them on anonymous appeals to authority and branding them with associative racism by attempting to forge a negative association with DeBow's Review. When historical facts attesting to Spooner's importance are pointed out to you, you either (a) ignore them entirely and continue spreading the same false line or (b) dismiss them as the result of some modern day libertarian conspiracy to inflate Spooner's importance. Those are tactics of diversion, x, and you've been caught using every one of them.
I just think it's wrong to ignore or condemn other leaders and activists in the movement
Nobody's condemning the other abolitionists per se, and the only one that is truly being ignored here, at least as far as his contributions go, is Spooner. You refuse to give him credit for any contribution he ever made to the movement - and there were many - as a result of the fact that you do not look favorably upon the implications of his other writings after the war.
to exaggerate Spooner's importance to the antebellum abolitionist movement because of his contributions to postbellum Confederate apologist mythology.
Once again, whatever exaggeration of Spooner, if any, I may be guilty of is dwarfed tenfold by your willful neglect of him and refusal to acknowledge his role in the face of historical facts delineating that role. Your charge as a motive for exaggeration is similarly telling, as I have given no indication that I believe his post-war writings to take prominence over the pre-war writings. I have always maintained and continue to maintain that Spooner's single most important and prominent book was "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery," his great abolitionist legal treatise, written in 1845. That was the book that recieved the highest notice, the most prominent and lengthy discussion, and the strongest endorsements. It heavily influenced a major faction of the abolitionists and was still being discussed on a nation scene in 1860 on the eve of the war. "No Treason" was a respectable and intelligent essay in its own right, but it never attained the prominence of the other book. So how you could maintain that I am trying to inflate the importance of his most prominent book, which was before the war, by appealing to a less prominent book, which was after the war, is beyond me.
On the other hand, I do think it could be safely said that you are practicing a reverse form of exactly what you have alleged against me. You have made no effort to hide the fact that you dislike what Spooner wrote after the war, and with that seems to come a dislike for the implications its author carries to the debate. Simply put, Spooner cannot reasonably be described as a "racist slaveocrat," or whatever your ilk regular terms it, meaning you cannot combat his arguments by labelling them such. Deprived of the diversion tactic of shouting "racism" at anything and everything that does not mesh with at "north=good, south=evil" view of the war, you are left to challenge Spooner's arguments on their merits, which you seem incapable of doing. Needless to say, you have opted not to take on those arguments and instead have made it your goal to attack, diminish, belittle, and discard the very thing that prevents you from branding Spooner with "racism" - his prominent role in the abolitionist movement. Diminish that role and discard his contribution, and, to you, Spooner becomes just another open target to paint with associative guilt from DeBow's. This deceptive, fraudulent, and intellectually dishonest tactic was written all over your earlier comments involving DeBow's and Spooner. When faced with Spooner's argument, you responded not by addressing that argument but by shouting "Lookie here - he published in DeBow's! DeBow's means racist slaveocracy, and those are the types he associated with!" The obvious associative implication is that Spooner was tolerable of racist slaveocracy, or whatever it is you call what DeBow's stood for before the war. Yet such an argument could not be more absurd considering how die-hard Spooner's abolitionism was. Simple knowledge of that fact alone discredits your attempted guilt-by-association. You may not admit this, but you know it as well as I do. So what's the obvious next step in pushing your dishonest argument? Diminish and belittle the facts that confound your attempt at associative guilt, and that means downplaying Spooner's contribution to abolitionism.
The Shively "biography" is a long essay in the 1971 collected works that I mentioned. It is the biography found on the Spooner website and doesn't look to be very deep, thorough, or critical.
I count several chapters in it. I'll have to check in the library to see how many pages it takes, but it seems to be a large part of what is a six-volume set.
You may have found the Littler book in one university catalogue, I tried several and it didn't show up. Littler's published thesis does count as one book and indicates the current interest in Spooner. That a century passed after Spooner's death and almost a century and a half after his brief period of fame before a scholarly book on him was published shows that this interest in Spooner is something new.
Not really, and as always you neglect pertinent facts on the matter. A century passed from Spooner's death before Littler's book. 15 years before it, Spooner's collected works were published. Prior to that, Spooner's most prominent books had been in regular circulation dating back to their initial publication. If indeed Littler's book were the only thing ever written on Spooner or published of Spooner's between roughly 1886 and 1986, then yes - renewed interest could probably be described as a modern thing. But since Spooner was prominent enough to remain in publication throughout that time, and since he already had his collected works published in 1971, that is simply not the case.
The Penguin Classics "Abolitionist Reader" is Mason Lowance's "Against Slavery: an Abolitionist Reader," which I mentioned. Spooner is one of three dozen abolitionists anthologized in the reader, as I mentioned. Lowance gives Spooner his due, but not, as you would like, more than that.
What do you think that I would like, x? That book excerpts from the main contribution Spooner made to abolitionism. It is the proper work to excerpt of his for a one-volume paperback of excerpts from prominent abolitionists. That he is one of 3 dozen excerpted is not unexpected either, as there were more than 3 dozen abolitionists who wrote something of some significance to abolitionism.
James Russell Lowell was not just a poet, but a prominent abolitionist journalist, as Lowance's anthology reveals. Whittier was similar.
Fine with me, but that says nothing of Spooner being only a "minor" abolitionist as you have said.
Just the same,
If Spooner was as skilled at law, finance, and constitutional theory as he claimed to be his achievements in one field wouldn't diminish his importance in another, but before the Civil War he wasn't especially distinguished in any of these fields, at least as far as his contemporaries could tell.
You are forwarding argumentum ad nauseum, x. All of that has been said previously by you, and none of it is any less false than the first time you said it. Spooner WAS distinguished before the war in the field of abolitionism - his book attained great prominence in that movement to the point that it was debated on the floor of Congress. And Spooner's distinction WAS recognized by his contemporaries - Gerrit Smith embraced Spooner's abolitionist philosophy and the Liberty Party endorsed his book as their central doctrine. Repeating assertions that conflict with these facts will not change any of them, x, yet that is what you insists, for some unknown reason, upon doing.
He did outlive most of them, though, and achieved some recognition when he died as a last relic of great days and as an anarchist theorist.
Actually, x, most of the obituaries at his death stated a message not unlike the following: Lysander Spooner isn't at the center of political debate today, but you may recognize his name because he achieved national prominence some 30 years ago in the anti-slavery movement. So in other words, you've got it backwards yet again, x.
You've argued that Spooner was one of the most important abolitionists and mentioned his theoretical contributions. I've noted that these belong mostly to his 1845 tract on the unconstitutionality of slavery and don't amount to a whole career of effort.
His letters also indicate that he was politically involved with Smith in abolitionism and did work as an attorney for Smith. To claim that Spooner's 1845 work was his only significant contribution to abolitionism simply because it is by far the most famous is akin to claiming that the second treatise was Locke's only contribution to the philosophy of government, since it too is the most famous one.
His career effort was in law, x, and he spent it offering legal defense of fugitive slaves free of charge. He was an abolitionist both in his theoretical contributions from the book and in practice.
You've pointed to his practical activities later. Fair enough, take the man all in all, theorist and activist, but how much does it add up to?
I count a major abolitionist treatise that was both widely read then and has remained consistently available to this day. I also count continuous practical application of abolitionism in his law practice from the 1840's till the war. And I count political involvement in abolitionism with Smith and later John Brown throughout that same period. In sum, you've got a consistently active abolitionist who authored one of the foremost treatises on abolitionism in the same period of his activism.
There were other and better abolitionist lawyers.
And as always, they're anonymous, right?
It's hard to see just what was unique about Spooner.
Try "He wrote a prominent and widely circulated legal treatise on the unconstitutionality of slavery that gained a significant following among other abolitionists and became the topic of national debate and discussion, including on the floor of the United States Congress." Does that answer it for ya?
And advocating and preparing armed insurrection doesn't look like much of a positive achievement.
But it gets you into the history books! Ask John Brown if you doubt me.
If it is, then John Brown far outweighs Lysander Spooner as a prominent abolitionist.
As far as common knowledge goes, John Brown outweighs just about everybody in prominence as an abolitionist. Take a name ID poll on abolitionism and I bet you that John Brown is the name you will hear more than any other. So in other words, dismissing Spooner because he isn't as well known as John Brown is akin to dismissing Patrick Henry, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton because they aren't as well known as George Washington.
Both as an activist and as a theoretician Spooner did make his contribution to the movement,
I'm glad to see you finally admit it then!
but I'm not sure how significant it was in either field, in comparison to that of other figures who were better known at the time.
I've already provided you with ample evidence to demonstrate that significance, x. Go back and reread my earlier posts.
Gerrit Smith had good reason to endorse Spooner's 1845 book on "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery". It fleshed out at great length ideas that Smith had already expressed in 1839 and Salmon Chase in 1837.
Which is all the more reason to attest to its importance! As I noted previously, others may have played around with similar ideas, but the argument reached its apex in Spooner's book. That is why Spooner's book, and not the lesser known similar yet less complete essays that predated it, is considered the standard presentation of that argument. Just the same, comparative advantage was looked at by some obscure writers in the first decade of the 1800's, but the credit goes to David Ricardo who penned the main work on the topic a decade later.
If that is how you assess it, you are missing the argument entirely. Try reading Spooner's book and return when you know what you are talking about.
And just how large Spooner's faction was is another question. The Liberty Party was only one part of the abolitionist movement.
That it was, but never have I asserted anything otherwise.
Non-party activists like Garrison and Phillips probably carried more weight.
You can speculate that much if you desire, but it was a leader of the Liberty Party faction, Smith, who won election to major political office, not Garrison.
Many of their number joined Van Buren's Free Soil coalition in 1848. Free Soilers were of course not primarily abolitionists, but there were many abolitionists and opponents of slavery in their number, as was true of the later Republican party.
Tell your buddy mac that. He implied that they were one in the same and plagiarized statements about it off a website a few posts back to "prove" this.
Theodore Clarke Smith's "The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest" (1897) says that the national convention of the Liberty Party met in Buffalo on October 20, 1847 and voted down a resolution not to nominate anyone who did not believe that slavery was unconstitutional That was a clear slap in the faces of Smith, Goodell and Spooner.
Yet only two years later, they did the exact opposite and formally endorsed Spooner's book.
Smith and Goodell bolted the party and their Liberty League nominated Smith for President as an alternative National Liberty Party candidate. Smith's supporters were only a small part of the anti-slavery movement
You are blurring the lines now between abolitionism and simple "anti-slavery."
After the election of 1848, Gerrit Smith's supporters once again had control of the Liberty Party, but the party was only a shadow of what it had been when James Birney ran in 1844. If the Liberty Party endorsed Spooner's book in 1849 it was already on the way out, a rump party confined to Smith's followers.
Your buddy mac asserted the same thing, yet Smith won election to Congress three years later in 1852 and Spooner's book became a topic of discussion there at many points over the next decade. The party organization, as it formerly existed, alterred and realigned, but the figures themselves, Spooner and Smith, rose in prominence in the 1850's.
It's not surprising that Smith promoted a book that argued at length for the ideas that he had already stood up for years before, or that Smith's followers endorsed a book that he'd bought and paid for
So in other words, you are (a) attacking the book's significance because Smith agreed with it, though in a less complete and less articulated form, prior to that book and because (b) Smith funded it. In other words, you are using the classic diversion tactic of appealing to its circumstances rather than its arguments. Your new line of argument is emerging in a very bizarre manner, x. No longer does it seem to be the line that Spooner did next to nothing. Now you see that he did indeed do something, so your response is to diminish that something, which in turn diminishes Spooner's accomplishment of something, thereby achieving the same result of claiming that Spooner did next to nothing. You first claimed that Spooner was a minor figure of no significant influence on any major abolitionist or anything in the political scene. At that point, you yourself had admitted that Smith was a major abolitionist. But now that you have finally discovered that Smith heavily embraced and forwarded Spooner's abolitionist treatise, you respond by in turn diminishing Smith's contribution to abolitionism as but a small faction in itself. So now we hear that Smith wasn't very important compared to others, that Smith's faction was "controlled" by him, that the faction he "controlled" was of no significance, and that from 1848 on out it was downhill for that faction (even though Smith attained the height of his political career in 1852 when he was elected to Congress!). Since you could not discard Spooner as a man of no influence due to his heavy influence on Smith, now you are trying to diminish Smith, thereby casting the man who was heavily influenced by Spooner as minor himself - even though only a few days ago you were calling him major - since that is evidently what it takes to discard Spooner. The word is "convenient," x, and you seem to have a convenient excuse for ignoring or discarding irrefutable historical facts that conflict with what you say. I ask, x, what is next? Are you going to claim next that the floor of the United States Congress is not an important place of debate, since Spooner's work was discussed there, and since admitting that it was discussed there conflicts with your desired point that Spooner was not important? "Spooner was discussed in Congress, so Congress must not have been an important place of discussion" - is that the line, x? Where does it end?
One could draw a parallel to today's party situation. Howard Phillips is a big man in the Constitution Party, but not a major figure in American Conservatism. David McReynolds is a leader in the rump Socialist party, but far from the most important American leftist or socialist. So it was with Gerrit Smith.
But neither McReynolds nor Phillips has won a seat in Congress, x, and especially not after the point that most would claim they left the mainstream of their respective movements. Yet again, x, it all comes down to what is in fact driving your argument. It is not historical fact that drives your argument, but rather a desire to diminish Spooner. If somebody who you said was of great prominence only a few days ago is now found by you to have supported Spooner, your line changes and he is no longer of prominence but a limb of the fringe himself. What brings about this change for you, x? I think we both know - his association with Lysander Spooner, who you have already decided, all ammount of fact suggesting otherwise be damned, is of "minor" importance to abolitionism. Where does it end, x? Are you next going to call Smith's election to Congress in 1852 (AFTER the point you pronounced him unimportant to the "mainstream" of the abolitionist movement) a minor act in itself?
The argument that the Liberty Party was important because it had elected one abolitionist to Congress is weak.
...here we go again. Just as I expected - "winning a seat in Congress isn't so important either."
There were several abolitionists in Congress as Whigs, Free Soilers, Republicans, "Know Nothings," or perhaps even Democrats.
Not really. Perhaps what could be called "country club" abolitionists of the Charles Sumner type, but they were not true abolitionists any more than Ken Lay was a true Republican. But the true dyed in the wool abolitionists, be they of Garrison or Smith or another, were seldom elected to anything at that time. Gerrit Smith's election to Congress stands out as one of the only cases where a true hard-line abolitionist was ever elected to a major office.
In your cutting and pasting you lose sight of the big picture and get caught up in your own words. You miss the point about Garrison: he didn't want to be elected to Congress. He had more influence as an independent editor and agitator. What Smith could have done in Congress was but little, compared to what Garrison did, and what Smith could have achieved as an abolitionist in Congress was so limited that it would have been achieved by any other Free Soiler. And you didn't even bother to look up which party ticket got Smith elected to Congress!
Your tune is changing, x. You stated exactly that a couple weeks ago when the issue of Spooner first came up. But as with everything else involving your argument here, those standards change to ensure that no ammount of fact will ever convince you of anything about Spooner other than that which you have already decided. I could prove that Spooner invented a time machine and travelled back to ancient Rome to spark the famed slave rebellion, and you still would not accept his significance as an abolitionist. That is because you realize the implications his abolitionism has on your ability to dismiss his post-war arguments, like you do so many others, with the label of "racism." Accordingly, you have already decided that under no circumstances and in the face of no ammount of fact will you ever acknowledge his prominent role as an abolitionist.
If that is what you want, so be it. I need only turn to the facts and let others decide for themselves. You say that Spooner was a minor figure and had little influence in abolitionism.
OBITUARIES OF SPOONER:
"One of the Old Guard of Abolition Heroes, Dies in His Eightieth Year After a Fortnight's Illness...Mr. Spooner was a veteran [of abolitionism], and in connection with it he produced the work which won greater fame than any other he ever wrote, his remarkable essay on "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery." His conclusions were bitterly opposed by the Garrisonians, who held that the Constitution was "an agreement with death and a covenant with hell," but Mr. Spooner, though denying the authority of the Constitution even more fundamentally than Garrison, maintained - and successful, it is now generally believed - that is contained no sanction of the institution of slavery. His book became the text-book of the Liberty party, and was warmly supported by Gerrit Smith, Elizur Wright, and all the anti-Garrisonians...Upon almost every subject, this large-hearted man was at adds with his day and generation. He was intensely in earnest and far in advance of the average sentiment. While he was possessed of many lovable qualities, his personality was so pronounced and his convictions of duty so strong that he had few lasting affiliations with friends. But such as he had were of the strongest. Like John the Baptist, he performed his chosen mission alone and by his own peculiar methods accomplished his work and liver to rejoice with the friends of freedom over the total abolition of the accursed and hated system of human slavery. His contemporaries one and all bear glad testimony to his uncompromising honesty and integrity of purpose and tot he trascendendent nobility of his manhood." - Obituary of Lysander Spooner, Boston Globe, May 18, 1887
"Mr. Spooner was...an active abolitionist, and the publication of his work demonstrating the unconstitutionality of slavery marked an epoch in the anti-slavery agitation" - Obituary of Lysander Spooner, New York Times, May 15, 1887
NEWSPAPER PRAISE OF SPOONER'S BOOK:
Here's what the newspapers said of it at the time, many of them abolitionist publications:
"An able and certainly original work, form the pen of Lysander Spooner, Esq. - author of that powerful book which demonstrates the unconstitutionality of American Slavery. There is no writer of the age, of logical acumen more searching than Spooner" - Bangor Gazette, 1848
"It is indeed a masterly argument. No one, unprejudiced, who has supposed that that instrument (the Constitution) contained guarantees of slavery, or who has had doubts upon the point, can rise from the perusal without feeling relieved from the supposition that our great national charter is one of slavery, and not of freedom. And no lawyer can read it without admiring, besides its other great excellences, the clearness of its style and its logical precision." - Bangor Gazette, 1848
"It is worthy the most gifted intellect in the country." - Hampshire Herald, 1848
"This effort of Mr. Spooner is a remarkable one in many respects. It is unrivalled in the simplicity, clearness, and force of style with which it is executed. The argument is original, steel ribbed, and triumphant. It bears down all opposition. Pettifogging, black-letter dullness and pedantry, special pleading and demagogism, all retire before it. If every lawyer in the country could have it put into his hands, and be induced to study it as he does his brief, it would alone overthrow slavery. There is moral firmness enough in it for that purpose." - Albany Gazette, 1848
"This work cannot be too highly praised or too extensively circulated. Its reasoning is conclusive; and no one can read it without being convinced that the Constitution, instead of being the friend and protector of slavery, is a purely anti-slavery document." - Burlington Liberty Gazette, 1848
"Every Abolitionist should have this admirable work, and keep it in constant circulation among his neighbors." - Indiana Freeman, 1848
FREDERICK DOUGLASS' NEWSPAPER REMARKS ON SPOONER:
It also appears that the abolitionist newsletter of Frederick Douglass thought quite highly of Spooner's contributions to the movement:
" An Essay on the trial by jury, by Lysander Spooner, Published by Bela Marsh, 24 Cornhill, Boston, Massachusetts. Here is another able work on an important and vital subject - one in which every American citizen ought to feel a very deep interest. The manner in which the great right of trial by jury has been frittered away of late, by pliant judges, to uphold unjust legislation and popular oppression in this country, makes it necessary for the people to look well to the security of those safeguards of their liberties embraced in the Constitution, and on the preservation of which, in all their completeness, depends essentially the establishment of their just rights. Mr. Spooner undertakes to prove, and we think does prove "the right of a jury to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws unvalid that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating or resisting the execution of such laws." Let this right be admitted, and the practice of the country conform to it, and the abolition of slavery will follow, as "the night the day."" - Frederick Douglass' Paper, December 17, 1852
"We have devoted the entire first page to the publication of the speech of Hon. S. E. Sewall. That speech is worthy to take its place among the powerful arguments of LYSANDER SPOONER, WM. GOODELL and GERRIT SMITH, in favor of the unconstitutionality of slavery." - Frederick Douglass' Paper, June 24, 1852
" This remarkable book, by Lysander Spooner, will richly repay perusal on the part of all who feel the least interest in the theory of government, that is to say, all the thinking men of the United States, and indeed of all the world over. - The charming case and lucidity of Mr. Spooner's style - in which, among all the writers of the English language, he has very few competitors - the close coherence of his ideas, and the sharp dexterity of his logic, give to his book, what we seldom find now-a-days, the interest of a well-communicated drama with all the Aristotelian unites complete, and a regular beginning, middle and end. Having begun to read it, we found it impossible to lay it down till we got to the end of it, though obliged to sit up long past midnight, and though we were already informed of the general tenor of the argument, from having seen the greater part of the proof-sheets. - The book indeed has this further resemblance to a poem of the first-class, that it will not only bear re-perusal, but gain by it - which we take to be the great distinction between the true poem, whether in verse or prose, and the mere novel or romance - There are, however, some citations and notes, which may be skipped on the second perusal, and indeed on the first, by those inveterately given to that practice, as not essential to the argument, only corroborative of it. But if any reader intends to take issue - as the lawyers say - with Mr. Spooner, he had better read the whole at least twice over." - Frederick Douglass' Paper, book review of Spooner's essay on jury nullification in slavery cases, December 31, 1852
And from another abolitionist paper commenting on Douglass' organization:
"THE NORTH STAR, Liberty Party paper, and the IMPARTIAL CITIZEN, are to be fused into one paper, to be called "the Frederick Douglass Paper," to be issued in an enlarged form, under the supervision of Mr. Douglass. It will advocate the views of the Federal Constitution promulgated by Gerrit Smith, William Goodell, and Lysander Spooner." - The National Era, June 26, 1851
The Chicago Tribune reprinted the following resolution adopted by a conference of Black abolitionists on Dec. 26, 1853. Among it's tenets were:
"Whereas, at the anniversary meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, held at Syracuse 1851, at which meeting our esteemed friend and brother, Frederick Douglass, whom we are free to acknowledge as a bold, faithful and manly advocate of most, if not all of the reformatory movements of the tires. And whereas, we especially regard him as the prominent leader, advocate and exponent of the wrongs and demands of the colored people of the United States. And whereas at said meeting referred to Frederick Douglass boldly and frankly announced his change of views and opinions, harmonizing with those of Lysander Spooner, Gerrit Smith, Rev. S. R. Ward, and William Goodell, in regarding the Constitution of the United States, as an Anti-Slavery document....Resolved. That the sentiment put forth by Mr. Garrison, that the Anti-Slavery cause, both religiously and politically, has transcended the ability of American slavery and prejudice as a class, to keep pace with it, or to perceive what are its demands, or to understand the philosophy of colored men, and we are thus forced to stamp it with a unanimous disapproval."
AND FINALLY, what Spooner's fellow abolitionists said about his book:
"It is unanswerable. There will never be an honest attempt to answer it. Neither priest nor politician, lawyer nor judge, will ever dare undertake to sunder that iron-linked chain of argument which runs straight through the book, from beginning to end." - Joshua Levitt, abolitionist publisher and organizer of the Amistad Committee in 1839
"It is admirable, I warmly commend it to you and your readers. High as were my opinions of his ability, they are higher now that I have read his argument in favor of his position that there is no legal or constitutional slavery in this nation." - Gerrit Smith, abolitionist politician and future U.S. Congressman
"It evinces a depth of legal erudition which would do honor to the first jurist of the age" - Elihu Burritt, abolitionist writer
"No one cane deny to the present work the merit of great ability and great learning. If any one wishes to see this argument handled in a masterly manner, with great clearness and plainness, and an array of constitutional learning, which, in the hands of most lawyers, would have expanded into at least three royal octavos, we commend them to Mr. Spooner's modest pamphlet of one hundred and fifty-six pages." - Richard Hildreth, author of "The Slave," the one of the first major anti-slavery literary works
"It merits general attention, not merely from the importance of the subject, but from the masterly manner in which it is handled. It every where overflows with thought. We regard it as a general arsenal of legal weapons, to be used in the great contest between Liberty and Slavery. I hope it will receive the widest circulation." - Samuel E. Sewall, co-founder of Massachusetts Anti-Slavery society and descendant of Samuel Sewall
"But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length — nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq., by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerritt Smith, Esq. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour." - Frederick Douglass, "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July," 1852
Even one critic took great notice of it:
"His logic may be faultless, as a merely logical effort. We admit Mr. Spooner's reasoning to be ingenious - perhaps, as an effort of logic, unanswerable. It impresses us as the production of a mind equally honest and acute. Its ability, and the importance of the subject on which it treats, will doubtless secure for it a wide circulation and a careful perusal." - William Lloyd Garrison
Oh really? You're challenging the anti-slavery pedigree of the Free Soil party and its direct antecedent roots to the defunct Liberty party? Well lets follow the political path of one John Parker Hale.
Elected to the Senate as a Democrat from New Hampshire, Hale was an early leader in the New England anti-slavery movement. He joined the Liberty party and was their nominee for US president in 1848, but withdrew and joined the newly formed Free Soil party with Martin Van Buren. Four years later (1852), John P. Hale was the nominee for US President of the Free Soil party.
It seems pretty clear to me that the Liberty party merged with radical Democrats and conscience Whigs in 1848 to form the Free Soil party. That John P. Hale could go from US presidential nominee of the Liberty party in 1848 to US presidential nominee of the Free Soil party in 1852, informs me that abolitionist viewpoint predominated in the Free Soil party.
Your attempt to raise Spooner and Smith to eminence using the Liberty party of 1849 is a canard. Most contemporary references to the Liberty party do not extend past 1848 . Thats about when Smith and Spooner took over, isn't it?
-btw is it true that the one 'true' abolitionist Gerritt Smith did evenutally make it to US congress in 1852, as a...Free Soiler!?
You expressed disdain for the Free Soilers as not being real abolitionists, yet did not mention that Gerrit Smith himself was elected to Congress on the Free Soil ticket. The lines between real abolitionists and free soilers were much blurrier than you let on.
You elevated Smith above Garrison because he had been elected to Congress, but did not mention that Smith, resigned his seat, in part because he missed the freedom from compromise that Garrison had as an outside agitator. Apparently Smith ranked Garrison's position outside Congress as preferable to his own position inside.
Now you come up with positive reviews of Spooner's book. A scrapbook of positive reviews is hardly enough to establish a reputation. What about the negative ones? Or reviews of other abolitionists' works? Say, of Phillips's and Bowditch's refutations of Spooner? Surely you know that every newly published political book attracts positive reviews because it contributes to a common cause, rather than because of its true merits. What did the bigger circulation newspapers in New York, rather than in Bangor, have to say about Spooner's book. And what, if anything, was said about Spooner 5 or 10 years later by less biased judges?
Douglass accepted the Goodell-Smith-Spooner hypothesis, and naturally raved about Spooner's books when they first came out. He wasn't the most unbiased observer. And apparently, once the initial reaction subsided, he didn't see any reason to elevate Spooner above Goodell or Smith. Garrison's comments are the kindly exchange of civilities which precede a more critical dissection of a book, that is why he speaks of "a merely logical effort."
There's much to be said for Spooner's view that slavery contradicted the principles Declaration of Independence, though many disagree with it. He wasn't the first or the last to say that. Garrison, Lincoln and Jaffa said the same. If I read a book saying that I'd applaud it as well. All the more reason to praise it at a time when it was a controversial proposition that would earn its supporters persecution in many parts of the country.
The idea that slavery was a violation of the Constitution is more dubious and appears to go against the accepted sense of words. That argument runs so contrary to what one would expect that it has to be very carefully examined. The idea does have its attractions, but it wasn't original to Spooner. His version may have been the most thorough and developed, but it wasn't the first or most defensible.
Spooner was one of many abolitionist writers. He wasn't a nobody or without influence. Someone active in the movement would have heard of him. But he was by no means one of the most important, most influential, or best known abolitionists. There was no reason to find him any more important than a dozen or so other abolitionist writers, thinkers and activists.
It's distasteful to have so many equally worthy or worthier abolitionists passed over simply because of Spooner's later anarchist or pro-secessionist writings. You know perfectly well that Spooner would not have a website today if not for his anarchist writings. And you probably wouldn't have much of anything to say in his favor if he hadn't defended the "right of secession."
It may have been so that you only knew his name at the time, but I do seem to recall you posting his name in a list of about a dozen abolitionists who you called important, as opposed to your characterization of Spooner. Your list, in which you included Smith, may be found here:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/849212/posts#70
That being said, your comment itself prompts another question. You now say that a few weeks ago when you posted that list including Smith that all you knew about him was his name. Exactly how, then, did you know enough about Smith to declare him more important than Spooner by way of that list if you knew nothing of him but his name? If all you knew was his name, then you had no basis on which to weigh him against Spooner, which indicates very clearly that you are not making an honest commentary on Spooner, but rather trying to find any and every reason, valid or not and no matter how ill-informed, on which you can discount his relevance to abolitionism.
I might have said, after finding out more about him that he was more important in his faction than Spooner, but there wouldn't have been any point in going further out on the line for someone I'd scarcely heard of and had no strong opinions about either way.
No. You made a list of names who you declared more important than Spooner. Smith was among them, and now you admit that at the time you posted it, you did not know a thing about the guy other than his name.
You expressed disdain for the Free Soilers as not being real abolitionists
Not necessarily. I simply note that it is wrong to confuse the two, as has been done by your buddy mac_truck. As I told him, it was perfectly possible for an abolitionist to be a Free-Soiler, and some were, but not all Free-Soilers were abolitionists and in fact most probably weren't. yet did not mention that Gerrit Smith himself was elected to Congress on the Free Soil ticket.
An abolitionist can be a Free-Soiler, but not all Free-Soilers were abolitionists. See above.
You elevated Smith above Garrison because he had been elected to Congress
Simply noting that Smith obtained greater political success than Garrison is not "elevating" him above Garrison with finality, x. You belittled the role that Smith played in abolitionism by portraying him as virtually inconsequential compared to Garrison and Wendell Phillips. I simply noted the fact that Smith won a seat to Congress, which is hardly inconsequential by any standards.
Now you come up with positive reviews of Spooner's book.
Yeah, from a number of abolitionists - as in the same crowd that you have repeatedly claimed to have been under no significant influence of Spooner's work.
A scrapbook of positive reviews is hardly enough to establish a reputation.
But it is enough to disprove your repeatedly asserted claim that Spooner had virtually no significant impact on abolitionism. Those quotes and newspaper reviews indicate that he did in fact have a strong impact on many abolitionists, including a very prominent one named Frederick Douglass (or are you going to start belittling his contribution as well?).
What about the negative ones?
I quoted one of them, Garrison's, and even it acknowledged that Spooner's argument was nevertheless logically sound and intelligent.
Or reviews of other abolitionists' works? Say, of Phillips's and Bowditch's refutations of Spooner?
A brief search of the Douglass' Newspaper records as well as some other abolitionist papers pulled up many hits on Spooner's book itself, but next to nothing of the Garrisonian factions or Phillips attempting to rebut it. So it would seem that Spooner's book is the one that made all the waves, whereas the attempted rebuttals, which have almost universally been judged as logically inferior to Spooner's, recieved barely any praise or notice. In fact, the main and only substantial criticism of Spooner that I found was a paragraph or so from around 1847 that Douglass wrote, initially rejecting the thesis. He changed his mind though and came to embrace it, as the July 4th speech from a few years later indicates.
Surely you know that every newly published political book attracts positive reviews because it contributes to a common cause, rather than because of its true merits.
In part that is indeed true. But such a book must also first be recognized as a significant contribution to a cause before anyone will pay enough attention to it to give a positive review. You have stated that Spooner's book contributed extremely minimally to the cause of abolitionism, which defies the implications of your statement above - that books attract positive reviews for their contributions to a cause. If Spooner's book did not contribute much to the cause, as you have suggested, it would not have attracted the reviews it did. Nor would praise of it linger for years after its publication and well into the 1850's.
What did the bigger circulation newspapers in New York, rather than in Bangor, have to say about Spooner's book.
I'll have to check the microfiche room to determine that. The only New York paper that has been fully indexed electronically is the New York Times, which did not come into existence until after Spooner's book was published (The NY Times was around when he died though, and they called his book then, as I quoted, an "epoch in the anti-slavery agitation."
And what, if anything, was said about Spooner 5 or 10 years later by less biased judges?
Well, 5 years later Frederick Douglass was publicly espousing Spooner's book. 10 years later William Seward was speaking favorably of it, while some of the more radical slave owners were denouncing it as one of the greatest abolitionist threats. And 40 years later, major city newspapers like the Boston Globe and NY Times were calling it "remarkable" and "epoch in the anti-slavery agitation," respectively.
Douglass accepted the Goodell-Smith-Spooner hypothesis, and naturally raved about Spooner's books when they first came out.
Actually, no he didn't. In 1847 or so, he wrote an article that briefly mentioned it and expressed great skepticism of it. He changed his mind upon further reading sometime around 1850 and began publicly promoting it, the most prominent being the 1852 speech 7 years after Spooner's book was published. He did publish stuff that was favorable to Spooner's subsequent abolitionist writings on fugitive slaves and jury nullification in the 1850's.
He wasn't the most unbiased observer.
Oh, so what do we have now? Why, it's another excuse! You truly are a piece of work, x.
A few days ago it was 'Spooner had no significant influence on other, "more-prominent" abolitionists,' as you called it. I pointed out that he did indeed with Gerrit Smith, who, upon your discovery of that truth, magically went from being a prominent abolitionist to a little known fringer. So I pointed out that he also had a strong influence shaping Frederick Douglass, but now that doesn't count either because Douglass was "biased." Does it ever end with you, x? Or do you simply keep making up new excuses every time somebody comes along and demonstrates you to have been in error? As I said previously, it could be shown that Lysander Spooner secretly invented a time machine and travelled back to Rome to incite Spartacus into action and you still wouldn't concede that he was a prominent abolitionist. You wouldn't concede it because your judgment of him is not based on fact, but rather a personal desire to discredit his abolitionist credentials since they confound any effort to dismiss his post-war criticisms of the Lincoln government with the broad brush of "racism."
And apparently, once the initial reaction subsided, he didn't see any reason to elevate Spooner above Goodell or Smith.
Douglass' most famous public endorsement of Spooner was on July 5, 1852, x. That's a full seven years after Spooner's book was published - hardly within the time frame of the "initial reaction." Most of those other quotes were made in the late 1840's around 1847 and 1848 - 2 and 3 years after publication, respectively, and again hardly within the "initial reaction" timeframe.
Garrison's comments are the kindly exchange of civilities which precede a more critical dissection of a book, that is why he speaks of "a merely logical effort."
That may be so, but that is not something I ever contended. My point is that Garrison paid attention to Spooner's book and, even though he disagreed with it, he took it seriously. And that's yet another of the many facts that does not coincide with your oft repeated yet never proven claim that Spooner was a "minor" figure with no significant influence.
There's much to be said for Spooner's view that slavery contradicted the principles Declaration of Independence, though many disagree with it.
Though a significant part, that was not the entirity of Spooner's thesis. As I said, read the book if you want to pretend to make serious commentary about it.
The idea that slavery was a violation of the Constitution is more dubious and appears to go against the accepted sense of words.
Yet again, read the book. You are offering a simplistic version of its argument that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. What was that old saying about the classics though...something about centuries of ignorance before a wise man's understanding?
The idea does have its attractions, but it wasn't original to Spooner. His version may have been the most thorough and developed, but it wasn't the first or most defensible.
You keep saying that, yet do so to no consequence. Just the same, David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage wasn't the first or the original. But he duly gets the credit because his was the greatest refinement and articulation of the theory. Same goes for Spooner's book.
Spooner was one of many abolitionist writers. He wasn't a nobody or without influence.
So you admit that now? Cause the other day you essentially were calling him a nobody and claimed that his influence among abolitionists was next to nothing.
Someone active in the movement would have heard of him. But he was by no means one of the most important, most influential, or best known abolitionists.
His scope apparently went well beyond simply the abolitionist movement. It came up on the floor of Congress repeatedly in the 1850's and was apparently commented on in several newspapers. Spooner's obituaries all state that he attained widespread fame as an "agitator" during that decade as well, so it sounds to me as if he attained much more prominence than you give him credit for, and yes - arguably enough to have made him one of the most recognizable abolitionists of the period.
There was no reason to find him any more important than a dozen or so other abolitionist writers, thinkers and activists.
There is in that he, more than anyone else, defined and spread the abolitionist legal philosophy found in his books. Others were better speech makers or literary authors and the sort, but Spooner defined the legal-philosophical basis of abolitionism.
It's distasteful to have so many equally worthy or worthier abolitionists passed over simply because of Spooner's later anarchist or pro-secessionist writings.
Like who? Oh yes, people that you know nothing of beyond their names but list anyway in order to pad the ranks of those you purport to have been "worthier." As for his other post-war writings, Spooner attained national prominence as an abolitionist before a single one of them was even penned.
You know perfectly well that Spooner would not have a website today if not for his anarchist writings.
You mean lysanderspooner.org or whatever it is? Probably not that one. He would probably have others though, including the text of his Unconstitutionality of Slavery.
And you probably wouldn't have much of anything to say in his favor if he hadn't defended the "right of secession."
My, my, how little you know of me. Anyhow, I think it would be a safer assertion to make that you would have no problem whatsoever with giving Spooner due credit for his abolitionism had he not penned "No Treason" or any of his letters that were critical of the Lincoln government. Whereas your claim against me is blind speculation, my claim is supportable on the evidence of this thread, which shows repeatedly that your motive in belittling Spooner's abolitionism has to do not with that abolitionism but rather with the fact that he criticized The Lincoln's tyranny.
No. Just the abolitionist pedigree you incorrectly ascribe to all members of the Free Soil Party.
Well lets follow the political path of one John Parker Hale.
Follow whatever path you like. As I said previously, some abolitionists were Free Soilers. But not all Free Soilers were abolitionists. See the distinction?
"But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length — nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq., by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerritt Smith, Esq. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour." - Frederick Douglass, "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July," 1852
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