How does a radical libertarian abolitionist attorney from the North go from passionately defending the United States Constitution–arguing that the document prohibited slavery from its ratification–to declaring the United States Constitution “unfit to exist” two decades later?Lysander Spooner wrote The Unconstitutionality of Slavery in 1845 as a response to William Lloyd Garrison, who opposed the Constitution due to its apparent preservation of slavery. Garrison was a Northern disunionist who advocated separation from the South after the Dred Scott decision.Conversely, Spooner argued that, according to a textualist interpretation, the United States Constitution outlawed slavery. He argued that the original meaning of the document’s text at the founding, and not the founders’ original intent

Read More »