The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress, Prohibiting Private Mails.

Publisher Marketing: Title: The unconstitutionality of the laws of Congress, prohibiting private mails. Author: Lysander SpoonerPublisher: Gale, Sabin Americana Description: Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana, Sabin Americana, 1500--1926 contains a collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Sabin Americana is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U. S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more. Sabin Americana offers an up-close perspective on life in the western hemisphere, encompassing the arrival of the Europeans on the shores of North America in the late 15th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Covering a span of over 400 years in North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, this collection highlights the society, politics, religious beliefs, culture, contemporary opinions and momentous events of the time. It provides access to documents from an assortment of genres, sermons, political tracts, newspapers, books, pamphlets, maps, legislation, literature and more. Now for the first time, these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++SourceLibrary: Huntington LibraryDocumentID: SABCP00674800CollectionID: CTRG10188980-BPublicationDate: 18440101SourceBibCitation: Selected Americana from Sabin's Dictionary of books relating to AmericaNotes: "Printed for the American Letter Mail Company."Collation: 24 p.; 23 cm Contributor Bio:  Spooner, Lysander Lysander Spooner was a 19th century entrepreneur, scholar, radical abolitionist, and principled believer in natural law and liberty. Lysander Spooner came form the flinty farmland of rural New England. He was born January 19, 1808, on his father's farm near Athol, Massachusetts, the second child and second son in a family of six sons and three daughters. Before opening the American Mail Company, he sent a personal letter informing the Postmaster General (January 11, 1844), that he proposed "soon to establish a letter mail [company] from Boston to Baltimore. I shall myself remain in this city, where I shall be ready at any time to answer to any suit..." Accompanying the letter was a copy of Spooner's pamphlet, The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails. When his company began business on January 23, Spooner openly advertised in all the major newspapers, soliciting business. The American Letter Mail Company printed its own stamps, hired agents, and was soon conducting a busy trade. Hoping to drive Spooner out of business without raising any constitutional questions, the Postmaster General resorted to some extra-legal measures. Under a barrage of harassing legal actions, the company could not survive; for all practical purposes it had ceased to exist by July 1844. After his post office venture failed, Lysander Spooner returned to the family farm in Athol. Spooner had a clear notion of "the principles of natural equity." Although lacking formal ties before 1870 with other American anarchists, Spooner knew many of them well. The key question for an anarchist is how to combine complete individual freedom with some form of effective social co-operation. Spooner answered that community service and other social action could be realized voluntarily. He argued that "under the principle of individual consent, the little government that mankind need, is not only practicable, but natural and easy..." Spooner died "at one o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, May 14, 1887... surrounded by trunks and chests bursting with the books, manuscripts, and pamphlets which he had gathered in his active pamphleteer's warfare over half a century long.