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In July 1846 Henry David Thoreau spent a night in the jail at Concord, Massachusetts, because for years he had refused to pay a poll tax to a government that…
In July 1846 Henry David Thoreau spent a night in the jail at Concord, Massachusetts, because for years he had refused to pay a poll tax to a government that allowed slavery and was waging war on Mexico. Someone, probably his aunt, paid the tax, and he was released the next morning against his will. In this essay he explains why: a just person must not lend support to injustice, laws deserve respect only when they are right, and 'under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison'.
Context and significance
First given as a lecture and printed in 1849 as Resistance to Civil Government, the essay later inspired Tolstoy, Gandhi in South Africa and India, and Martin Luther King Jr. It can be read in an hour. Thoreau's (1817–1862) great book is Walden; see his life.
About the author
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was born in Concord, Massachusetts, studied at Harvard and worked in his family's pencil business, as a surveyor and as a handyman in Emerson's house. From 1845 to 1847 he lived alone in a cabin by Walden Pond, the experience behind Walden.
In 1846 he spent a night in jail for refusing to pay a tax that supported slavery and the war with Mexico, and his essay Civil Disobedience, born from that night, inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King. He died of tuberculosis at forty-four, leaving journals that fill thousands of pages of observations of nature.