Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) · AuthorAuthor
Lysander Spooner
1808-1887 · American lawyer, abolitionist, legal theorist and founder of the American Letter Mail Company
About Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) was born on a farm near Athol, Massachusetts, studied law in local offices, and challenged the Massachusetts rule that lengthened legal training for men without a college degree. In 1844 he founded the American Letter Mail Company to compete with the federal Post Office until Congress shut such carriers down. His Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845) argued that the Constitution, rightly read, gave slavery no legal sanction, and his Essay on the Trial by Jury (1852) defended the jury's power to judge the law. He spent his last decades in Boston writing pamphlets on law, money and consent.
Notable works
- No Treason (1867-1870)
- The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845)
- An Essay on the Trial by Jury (1852)
- Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882)
- A Letter to Grover Cleveland (1886)
On this site
No TreasonLysander Spooner
1867-1870 · 19th Century · Political Theory
No Treason is a series of pamphlets that Lysander Spooner, a Boston lawyer and long-time abolitionist, published at his own expense after the Civil War. He planned a longer series but issued only three numbers, No. I and No. II in 1867 and No. VI, The Constitution of No Authority, in 1870; Nos.