No Treason

Lysander Spooner was a failed lawyer and political philosopher who spent his career railing against the various systems society had set up around him, including education requirements, the Post Office, slavery, and capitalism. He attained his highest fame as an abolitionist after publishing The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, a book that influenced Frederick Douglass. Building on that train of thought is No Treason, a series of three essays he published in 1867 arguing that treason charges levied against Southern soldiers in the Civil War are spurious, because the Constitution itself is illegitimate.

Spooner originally planned the essays to be a six-part series, but only ever published the first, second, and sixth part. Despite their fragmentary nature, they became influential in the budding Anarchist movement.

Whether or not Spooner’s views had much influence on mainstream thinking remains an open question. Perhaps tellingly, Spooner himself registered the copyright for these essays—a right enumerated in the very U.S. Constitution he argues is “unfit to exist.”