Editing Lysander Spooner (section)

==Biography==
===Early life===
Spooner was born on a farm in [[Athol, Massachusetts]], on January 19, 1808. Spooner's parents were Asa and Dolly Spooner. One of his ancestors, William Spooner, arrived in [[Plymouth Colony|Plymouth]] in 1637. Lysander was the second of nine children. His father was a [[deist]] and it has been speculated that he purposely named his two older sons [[Hero and Leander|Leander]] and [[Lysander]] after Greek mythological and [[Sparta|Spartan]] heroes, respectively.{{Sfn|Shone|2010|p=viii}}

===Legal career===
Spooner's activism began with his career as a lawyer, which itself violated Massachusetts law.{{Sfn|Smith|1992|p=viii}} Spooner had studied law under the prominent lawyers, politicians and abolitionists [[John Davis (Massachusetts governor)|John Davis]], later [[Governor of Massachusetts]] and Senator; and [[Charles Allen (Massachusetts politician)|Charles Allen]], state senator and Representative from the [[Free Soil Party]].{{Sfn|Shone|2010|p=viii}} However, he never attended college.{{Sfn|Barnett|1999|pp=66-67}} According to the laws of the state, college graduates were required to study with an attorney for three years while non-graduates like Lysander would be required to do so for five years.{{Sfn|Barnett|1999|pp=66-67}}

With the encouragement from his legal mentors, Spooner set up his practice in [[Worcester, Massachusetts]], after only three years, defying the courts.{{Sfn|Barnett|1999|pp=66-67}} He regarded three-year privilege for college graduates as a state-sponsored discrimination against the poor and also providing a monopoly income to those who met the requirements. He argued that "no one has yet ever dared advocate, in direct terms, so monstrous a principle as that the rich ought to be protected by law from the competition of the poor".{{Sfn|Barnett|1999|pp=66-67}} In 1836, the legislature abolished the restriction.{{Sfn|Barnett|1999|pp=66-67}} He opposed all licensing requirements for lawyers.{{Sfn|Shively|1971|loc=Chapter 4}}

After a disappointing legal career and a failed career in real estate speculation in [[Ohio]], Spooner returned to his father's farm in 1840.{{Sfn|Barnett|1999|pp=66-67}}

===American Letter Mail Company===
Being an advocate of [[self-employment]] and opponent of government regulation of business, in 1844 Spooner started the [[American Letter Mail Company]], which competed with the [[United States Post Office]], whose rates were very high.<ref name=Cato>{{cite journal|last=Olds|first=Kelly B.|year=1995|url=https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1995/5/cj15n1-1.pdf|title=The Challenge To The U.S. Postal Monopoly, 1839–1851|journal=[[Cato Journal]]|volume=15|issue=1|pages=1–24|issn=0273-3072}}</ref> It had offices in various cities, including [[Baltimore]], [[Philadelphia]] and New York City.<ref>{{cite book |last=McMaster |first=John Bach |author1-link=John_Bach_McMaster |date=1910 |title=A History of the People of the United States, from the Revolution to the Civil War |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofpeopleo0000john_s1h0/page/116/mode/1up |location=New York |publisher=[[D. Appleton and Company]] |volume=VII 1841-1850|chapter=LXXIII: The East in the Forties |page=116 |isbn= |access-date=2025-05-16}}</ref> Stamps could be purchased and then attached to letters, which could be brought to any of its offices. From here, agents were dispatched who traveled on railroads and steamboats and carried the letters in handbags. Letters were transferred to messengers in the cities along the routes, who then delivered the letters to the addressees. This was a challenge to the Post Office's [[legal monopoly]].<ref name="Cato"/><ref>Adie, Douglas (1989). [https://archive.org/details/monopolymailpriv00adie/page/27 <!-- quote="lysander spooner" "post office" monopoly. --> ''Monopoly Mail: The Privatizing United States Postal Service'']. p. 27.</ref>

As he had done when challenging the rules of the [[Massachusetts Bar Association]], Spooner published a [[pamphlet]] titled "The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails". Although Spooner had finally found commercial success with his mail company, legal challenges by the government eventually exhausted his financial resources. A law enacted in 1851 that strengthened the federal government's monopoly finally put him out of business. The legacy of Spooner's challenge to the postal service was the reduction in letter postage from 5¢ to 3¢, in response to the competition his company provided.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lysanderspooner.org/STAMP3.htm|title=Spooner vs. U.S. Postal System|first=Lucille J.|last=Goodyear|magazine=[[American Legion Magazine]]|date=January 1981|access-date=October 25, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121019155313/http://www.lysanderspooner.org/STAMP3.htm|archive-date=October 19, 2012}}</ref>

===Abolitionism===
Spooner attained his highest profile as a figure in the [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist movement]]. His book ''[[The Unconstitutionality of Slavery]]'', published in 1845, contributed to a controversy among abolitionists over whether the [[United States Constitution|Constitution]] supported the institution of [[Slavery in the United States|slavery]]. The disunionist faction led by [[William Lloyd Garrison]] and [[Wendell Phillips]] argued that the Constitution legally recognized and enforced the oppression of slaves as in the provisions for the capture of fugitive slaves in [[Article Four of the United States Constitution#Clause 2: Extradition of fugitives|Article IV, Section 2]].<ref name="Barnett 2011">{{cite journal|last=Barnett|first=Randy E.|author-link=Randy Barnett|title=Whence Comes Section One? The Abolitionist Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment|url=https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1475&context=facpub|date=2011|journal=Journal of Legal Analysis|volume=3|issue=1|issn=1946-5319|doi=10.1093/jla/3.1.165|oclc=8092556588|pages=165–263|doi-access=free}}</ref>

Spooner challenged the claim that the text of the Constitution permitted slavery.{{Sfn|Shively|1971|loc=Chapter 5}} He used a complex system of legal and natural law arguments to show that the Constitutional clauses usually interpreted as adopting or at least accepting implicitly the practice of slavery did not in fact support it, despite the open tolerance of human servitude under the original Constitution of 1789; even though those interpretations would only be superseded by the amendments to the Constitution passed after the [[American Civil War]], viz. Amendments XIII-XV, prohibiting the states from enabling or enforcing slavery.{{Sfn|Shively|1971|loc=Chapter 5}}

From the publication of this book until 1861, when the Civil War overtook society, Spooner actively campaigned against slavery.{{Sfn|Shively|1971|loc=Chapter 5}} Spooner viewed the [[Northern United States|Northern states]] as trying to deny the [[Southern United States|Southerners]] through military force.{{Sfn|Smith|1992|p=xvii}}

===Later life and death===
[[File:Lysander Spooner Grave.JPG|thumb|250px|Spooner is interred in the historic [[Forest Hills Cemetery]] in Boston, Massachusetts.]]

Spooner argued that "almost all fortunes are made out of the capital and labour of other men than those who realize them. Indeed, except by his sponging capital and labour from others".{{Sfn|Martin|1970|p=173}} Spooner defended the [[Millerism|Millerites]], who stopped working because they believed the world would soon end and were arrested for [[vagrancy]].{{Sfn|Shone|2010|p=viii}}

Spooner spent much time in the [[Boston Athenæum]].{{Sfn|Shone|2010|p=xv}} He died on May 14, 1887, at the age of 79 in his nearby residence at 109 Myrtle Street, Boston.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/77666634/ |title=Lysander Spooner, One of the Old Guard of Abolition Heroes, Dies in his Eightieth Year After a Fortnight's Illness. |first=John Boyle |last=O'Reilly |author-link=John Boyle O'Reilly |date=May 15, 1887 |page=8 |work=[[The Boston Globe]] |access-date=May 13, 2021 |via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref> He never married and had no children.{{Sfn|Shively|1971|loc=Chapter 9}}