Civil Disobedience

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Civil Disobedience

• by
• Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau  
                                                            
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Background

• Born July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts
• Educated at Harvard University
• In the late 1830s and early 1840s, he
• was a schoolteacher in Concord.
• He quit teaching to become a writer full-time.

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Inspiration

• From 1841 to 1843, he lived with American
  essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson.
• Emerson introduced Thoreau to the ideas of
  transcendentalism.
• Transcendentalists encouraged free attitude
  towards authority and tradition.
• This philosophy would be central in Thoreaus
  thinking and writing.

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Major Works

• Only two of Thoreaus books were published in his
  life time A Week on the Concord and Merrimack
  Rivers (1849) and Walden (1854).
• Walden was Thoreaus most famous work
• In 1849 Thoreau wrote his famous essay Civil
  Disobedience or Resistance to Civil
  Government.

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Historical Context

• Throughout Thoreaus life he emphasized the
  importance of individuality and self-reliance.
• Thoreau practiced civil disobedience in his own
  life by not paying his poll tax.
• He did this to protest the Mexican-American War,
  and because he did not want to support a nation
  that supported slavery.

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Historical Context (cont.)

• He spent one night in jail because he did not pay
  his poll tax.
• This night in jail inspired him to write Civil
  Disobedience or originally titled Resistance to
  Civil Government.

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Main Points

• 1. People should think for themselves and not
  conform to the majority.
• If I devote myself to other pursuits and
  contemplations, I must first see, at least, that
  I do not pursue them sitting on another mans
  shoulders
• Men generally, under such a government as this,
  think that they ought to wait until they have
  persuaded the majority to alter them
• A minority is powerless when it conforms to the
  majority

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Main Points (cont.)

• 2. People do not have to follow their government
  if they feel that the government is unjust.
• Let every man make known what kind of government
  would command his respect, and that will be one
  step toward obtaining it.

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Main Points (cont.)

• 3. You should always retain the strength and
  freedom to not partake in a wrongful enterprise
  that they know is wrong.
• If a thousand man were not to pay their
  tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent
  bloody measure
• A peaceable revolution

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Historical Significance

• Gained very little attention at that time.
• Sixty years later Mahatma Gandhi credited the
  essay for inspiring his theory of nonresistance.
• Later would give force to the American Civil
  Rights Movement.

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