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No Treason
No Treason is a composition of three essays by Lysander Spooner, an American individualist anarchist, all written in 1867: No. 1, No. 2: "The Constitution", and No. 6: "The Constitution of No Authority". No essays between No. 2 and No. 6 were ever published under the authorship of Spooner.
A lawyer by training, a strong abolitionist, radical thinker, and individualist anarchist, Spooner wrote these specific pamphlets to express his discontent with the state and its legitimizing documents in the United States, the U.S. Constitution. He strongly believed in the idea of natural law, which he also described as "the science of justice" and called "the science of all human rights; of all man's rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".
As Spooner saw it, natural law was to be part of everyone's life, including the rights given at birth: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Framers of the U.S. government also saw natural law as a sound basis for creating the Constitution. Its preamble implies that the powers of the U.S. government come from "the People". Spooner believed that "if there be such a principle as justice, or natural law, it is the principle, or law, that tells us what rights were given to every human being at his birth". This means that Spooner believed that everyone has the same rights from birth, regardless of color or sex or state decree.[citation needed]
Being against the American Civil War as being about conquest when it should have been about slavery in the United States and witnessing the hardships brought along by the Reconstruction Era, Spooner felt the Constitution completely violated natural law, and thus was voided. By allowing for the institution of slavery to take place, the United States was taking away the fundamental rights of the many enslaved people who were born on American soil. According to Spooner, an enslaved person's rights were to be the same as everyone else's due to their birth qualifications. As an outspoken abolitionist, Spooner did not believe that any American should be treated differently under the natural law.[citation needed]
In the years before writing No Treason, Lysander Spooner had already expressed his disapproval of slavery in his essay The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845, 1860), considered by many American abolitionists of his time a "comprehensive, libertarian theory of constitutional interpretation". His main argument fell under the idea that the Constitution did not mention slavery. He wrote:[citation needed]
"The constitution itself contains no designation, description, or necessary admission of the existence of such a thing as slavery, servitude, or the right of property in man. We are obliged to go out of the instrument and grope among the records of oppression, lawlessness and crime – records unmentioned, and of course unsanctioned by the constitution – to find the thing, to which it is said that the words of the constitution apply. And when we have found this thing, which the constitution dare not name, we find that the constitution has sanctioned it (if at all) only by enigmatical words, by unnecessary implication and inference, by innuendo and double entendre, and under a name that entirely fails of describing the thing."
While each of Spooner's three essays claims voidance of the Constitution, each focuses on specific aspects.[citation needed]
"The question of treason is distinct from that of slavery; and is the same that it would have been, if free States, instead of slave States, had seceded. On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate the slaves, but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could thereby [be] induced to stay in the Union. The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals."
No Treason
No Treason is a composition of three essays by Lysander Spooner, an American individualist anarchist, all written in 1867: No. 1, No. 2: "The Constitution", and No. 6: "The Constitution of No Authority". No essays between No. 2 and No. 6 were ever published under the authorship of Spooner.
A lawyer by training, a strong abolitionist, radical thinker, and individualist anarchist, Spooner wrote these specific pamphlets to express his discontent with the state and its legitimizing documents in the United States, the U.S. Constitution. He strongly believed in the idea of natural law, which he also described as "the science of justice" and called "the science of all human rights; of all man's rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".
As Spooner saw it, natural law was to be part of everyone's life, including the rights given at birth: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Framers of the U.S. government also saw natural law as a sound basis for creating the Constitution. Its preamble implies that the powers of the U.S. government come from "the People". Spooner believed that "if there be such a principle as justice, or natural law, it is the principle, or law, that tells us what rights were given to every human being at his birth". This means that Spooner believed that everyone has the same rights from birth, regardless of color or sex or state decree.[citation needed]
Being against the American Civil War as being about conquest when it should have been about slavery in the United States and witnessing the hardships brought along by the Reconstruction Era, Spooner felt the Constitution completely violated natural law, and thus was voided. By allowing for the institution of slavery to take place, the United States was taking away the fundamental rights of the many enslaved people who were born on American soil. According to Spooner, an enslaved person's rights were to be the same as everyone else's due to their birth qualifications. As an outspoken abolitionist, Spooner did not believe that any American should be treated differently under the natural law.[citation needed]
In the years before writing No Treason, Lysander Spooner had already expressed his disapproval of slavery in his essay The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845, 1860), considered by many American abolitionists of his time a "comprehensive, libertarian theory of constitutional interpretation". His main argument fell under the idea that the Constitution did not mention slavery. He wrote:[citation needed]
"The constitution itself contains no designation, description, or necessary admission of the existence of such a thing as slavery, servitude, or the right of property in man. We are obliged to go out of the instrument and grope among the records of oppression, lawlessness and crime – records unmentioned, and of course unsanctioned by the constitution – to find the thing, to which it is said that the words of the constitution apply. And when we have found this thing, which the constitution dare not name, we find that the constitution has sanctioned it (if at all) only by enigmatical words, by unnecessary implication and inference, by innuendo and double entendre, and under a name that entirely fails of describing the thing."
While each of Spooner's three essays claims voidance of the Constitution, each focuses on specific aspects.[citation needed]
"The question of treason is distinct from that of slavery; and is the same that it would have been, if free States, instead of slave States, had seceded. On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate the slaves, but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could thereby [be] induced to stay in the Union. The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals."
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