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.