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