‘The Unconstitutionality of Slavery’ is a book by American abolitionist Lysander Spooner advocating the view that the United States Constitution prohibited slavery. This view was advocated in contrast to that of William Lloyd Garrison who advocated opposing the constitution on the grounds that it supported slavery. In the pamphlet, Spooner shows that none of the state governments of the slave states specifically authorized slavery, that the U.S. Constitution contains several clauses that are contradictory with slavery, that slavery was a violation of natural law, and that the intentions of the Constitutional Convention have no legal bearing on the document they created.
About the author
Lysander Spooner (1808 – 1887) was an American political philosopher, essayist, pamphlet writer, Unitarian, abolitionist, legal theorist, and entrepreneur of the nineteenth century. He was a strong advocate of the labor movement and severely anti-authoritarian and individualist in his political views. Spooner’s most famous writing includes the seminal abolitionist book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, and No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority which opposed treason charges against secessionists.
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