[Editor’s note: In this 1835 essay, the great anti-slavery Jacksonian—and enemy of central bankers—William Leggett provides an early example of “secessionist abolitionism” in his call for embracing both secession and disunion. Leggett here makes two key claims. First, Leggett rejects claims by defenders of slavery that the US Constitution endorses the institution. He writes: “What a mysterious thing this federal compact must be, which enjoins so much by its spirit that is wholly omitted in its language.” (For more on this, see Lysander Spooner.) Leggett’s second key point is that secession (i.e., abolition of the union) is preferable to abandoning the cause of abolition. He writes: “if we can hope to maintain our fraternal connexion with our brothers of the south only by dismissing all

A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett, selected and arranged, with a preface, by Theodore Sedgwick, in two volumes. (1839)
This collection provides important example of populist laissez-faire opinion from the Jacksonian Era in the United States. In terms of economic policy, the Jacksonians favored low taxes, decentralization, and hard-money while opposing central banks and regulation of private business.
William Leggett was born on April 30, 1801 in New York City and died at age thirty-eight, on May 29, 1839 in New Rochelle, New York. He was a Jacksonian era journalist and the intellectual leader of the laissez-faire wing of Jacksonian democracy. He wrote editorials in support of individual liberties and private property rights while working with William Cullen Bryant

[In this 1836 editorial, William Leggett laments how Wall Street and the "privileged" orders of the American upper class employ the power of the state to protect their own financial interests at the expense of ordinary taxpayers. In the nineteenth century, Leggett was an important spokesman for the laissez-faire, populist wing of the Democratic Party which supported hard money.]
There is, in the city of Genoa, a very elegant street, commonly called, The Street of the Palaces. It is broad and regular, and is flanked, on each side, with rows of spacious and superb palaces, whose marble fronts, of the most costly and imposing architecture, give an air of exceeding grandeur to the place. Here reside the principal aristocracy of Genoa; the families of Balbi, Doria, and many others of those who