Last updated: November 3, 2026
Person
Lysander Spooner
Quick Facts
Significance:
Lawyer, legal theorist, writer, abolitionist, Boston Vigilance Committee
Place of Birth:
Athol, Massachusetts
Date of Birth:
January 19, 1808
Place of Death:
Boston, Massachusetts
Date of Death:
May 14, 1887
Place of Burial:
Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts
Cemetery Name:
Forest Hills Cemetery
Boston lawyer and abolitionist Lysander Spooner served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.
Born in 1808, Lysander Spooner grew up on his family's farm in Athol, Massachusetts. By 1835, he moved to Worchester, Massachusetts, where he began to practice law. He then moved to Ohio for several years to engage in land speculation. Spooner later moved to New York City where he set up a postal delivery service to rival the United State Post Office. That business ultimately failed, and he returned to Massachusetts where he began writing on slavery and abolition.1
Funded in part by wealthy abolitionist Gerrit Smith, Spooner moved to Boston to research and write his influential work, The Unconstitutionality of Slavery. In this writing, Spooner argued that the United States Constitution did not allow for slavery. This belief put him at odds with fellow abolitionists including Williiam Lloyd Garrison who viewed the Constitution as a pro-slavery document. These divergent views split the abolitionists into the Garrisonian wing, which looked to end slavery through moral suasion, and those who believed slavery could be abolished through the political process. Although providing a legal theory embraced by the political abolitionists, Spooner opted not to engage in political activity himself.2
Despite their differences, abolitionists and other reformers joined together to form the Boston Vigilance Committee following the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. This organization assisted freedom seekers coming to and through Boston on the Underground Railroad. Spooner, along with Garrison and others, joined the committee.3
Though his specific contributions to the organization remain unknown, Spooner offered legal advice and no doubt influenced the conversation around the issue of the Fugitive Slave Law with two of his writings. First, in his A Defence for Fugitive Slaves against the Act of Congress of February 12, 1783 and September 18, 1850, he argued the Fugitive Slave Law violated the Constitution and that:
The rescue of a person, who is assaulted, or restrained of his liberty, without authority of law, is not only morally, but legally, a meritorious act.4
Second, in his Trial by Jury, Spooner argued that juries "should judge not only a person’s guilt or innocence, but also the guilt or innocence of the laws under which a man is charged."5
The arguments in both works resonated in several high-profile Fugitive Slave Law cases in Boston, including those of Shadrach Minkins and Anthony Burns. Abolitionists, led by fellow committee member Lewis Hayden, successfully rescued Minkins in 1851 and attempted to rescue Burns in 1854. Both cases involved legal action and trials in their aftermath.
Never financially successful, Spooner lived in a boardinghouse run by fellow Vigilance Committee member John Spear. He continued his involvement in the abolition movement throughout the 1850s and advocated for the overthrow of slavery by force if necessary. He even devised a plan to rescue abolitionist John Brown from custody. Although it never materialized, this scheme involved kidnapping and ransoming the governor of Virginia.6
In his last decades, Spooner spent most of his time researching at the Boston Athenaeum and writing legal tracts on a variety of topics including currency, banking, treason, and other subjects.7
He passed away in 1887 in Boston, and his remains are buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.8
Footnotes:
- "Lysandar Spooner, One of the Old Guard of Abolition Heroes," Boston Globe, May 15, 1887.
- Charles Shively, The Collected Works of Lysander Spooner (Weston, MA: M&S Press, 1971, Chapter 5; Lysander Spooner, The Lysander Spooner Reader (San Franscico, Fox and Wilkes, 1992), XIV.
- "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society; Austin Bearse, Remininscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 4; "Records of the Vigilance Committee of Boston" (Ms B.17), Garrison Collection, Boston Public Library (BPL).
- Lysander Spooner, A Defense for Fugitive Slaves against the Act of Congress of February 12, 1783 and September 18, 1850,(Boston: Bela Marsh, 1850), 27.
- Shively, Chapter 7.
- The Lysander Spooner Reader (San Franscico, Fox and Wilkes, 1992), Xi, XV.
- Shively, Chapter 9.
- "Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)," Find a Grave Memorial.