Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience"

Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience"

Introduction

American author Henry David Thoreau first introduced the idea of civil disobedience in his 1849 essay, "Civil Disobedience." Thoreau's refusal to pay taxes in protest against slavery and the U.S. war against Mexico resulted in his arrest and his acquiescence to punishment typical of a civilly disobedient act. Civil disobedience is an unlawful act, committed in public, based on nonviolence and performed in a conscientious manner with a willingness to accept punishment. This paper will discuss Civil Disobedience as explained by Henry David Thoreau.

Discussion

Thoreau was strongly opposed to slavery, and had even given shelter at his Walden cabin to runaway slaves on their way to Canada and freedom. For all these reasons, Thoreau would not pay his poll tax and support a war and an institution he felt was wrong. So, in protest, he spent the night in the Concord jail. Thoreau wrote about his night in jail and the reasons that brought him there in an essay that would later come to be called "Civil Disobedience." In this excerpt, he states why a person has a right, and duty, to disobey laws he believes wrongful:

If a law is wrong, claimed Thoreau, people have the right to break that law, in order, by their example, to draw attention to it and change it (Thoreau, 2007). This was a revolutionary idea in 1846. But "Civil Disobedience" would become required reading for such great social leaders of the 20th century as India's Mahatma Gandhi and America's Martin Luther King. Both men would follow Thoreau's example and win justice for their peoples through nonviolent, peaceful protest.

Thoreau unwillingly left jail the next morning, when one of his aunts paid his poll tax for him. But when he left his Walden retreat on September 6, 1847, it was ...