No Treason No 1 The Constitution Of No Authority

No Treason No 1 The Constitution Of No Authority

Author: Lysander Spooner

Year: 1867

INTRODUCTORY THE question of treason is distinct from that of slavery and is the same that it would have been, if free States, instead of slave States, had seceded. On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate the slaves, but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage j and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could be thereby induced to stay in the Union. The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals. No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self. evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it be really established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased j for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle - but only in degree - between political and cha