...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.
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.