Description
The first edition of a Review Of Lysander Spooner’s Essay on the Unconstitutionality of Slavery by the “Prophet of Liberty, Champion of the Slave,” Wendell Phillips, published in 1847.
Octavo, 95pp, [1]. Publisher’s original printed salmon wrappers, sewn spine. Light soiling and sunning to wraps, thumb marks to both. Solid binding, internally clean. Front cover with a closed tear along the spine hinge.
(Sabin 62524) (Drumond 93) (Afro-Americana, 8173)
A scarce work.
This work was first serialized in 1847 in the Anti-Slavery Standard, the newspaper of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Wendell Phillips’s Review of Lysander Spooner’s Essay on the Unconstitutionality of Slavery engages critically with Spooner’s central claim that slavery is unconstitutional under a proper reading of the U.S. Constitution. While Phillips commends Spooner’s legal acumen and unwavering commitment to abolition, he ultimately rejects the premise that the Constitution can be construed as an anti-slavery document.
Writing from a Garrisonian perspective, Phillips maintains that the Constitution is fundamentally complicit in the maintenance of slavery and thus unworthy of reinterpretation or reform. The review reflects a deeper philosophical divide within the antebellum abolitionist movement: Spooner’s appeal to legal and constitutional mechanisms versus Phillips’s insistence on moral suasion and disunionist principles.
