Lysander Spooner was born on this date - January 19 - in 1808, 205 years ago. On this anniversary, I post this transcription of a short but nevertheless significant advertisement-cum-article that appeared in the Boston Commonwealth on January 22, 1851. It refers to copies of another Boston newspaper, the Chronotype...
"CHRONOTYPES of Dec. 12 [1850], containing one chapter of Mr. Spooner’s “Defence for Fugitive Slaves,” the same chapter that has been sent to the Lawyers and Editors generally throughout the country, and of which an Alabama paper, just received, says, “This Defence is the boldest and most incendiary publication the Northern Press has ever issued,” and “This Defence is, in our opinion, the ablest effort ever put forth by the Abolitionists.” For sale at the office of the Commonwealth, and also at the book store of BELA MARSH, 25 Cornhill. Price, $1 per hundred."
I discuss Spooner's Defence for Fugitive Slaves (1850), and the important role that it plays in understanding his antislavery constitutionalism, in the article linked to in my previous post.
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