Sunday, October 4, 2015

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau



            Henry David Thoreau grew to have strong feelings towards the government and his contemporaries, especially after his incarceration for refusing to a pay a poll tax in July 1846, “probably the 23rd or 24th” (Harding 199). Thoreau’s refusal to pay the poll tax—“a composite tax” that included “state tax, county tax, and town tax” (Cain 163)—has been said by many to have been because of his protests against the Mexican War and slavery (topics he addressed in his essay, Civil Disobedience); however, Thoreau also explained that his motives were based on the higher purpose of conscience: “Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?—in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right” (Thoreau 290).


            The Mexican War had started in April of 1846; and slavery had existed in colonies before the Revolutionary War, even being legalized in Thoreau’s state of Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. As Thoreau grew older and more aware of the world around him, he began to question the laws of the State and those who abided by them. Like the patriots of old before him, he began to take a stand against dictates of society that he felt were unjust, even if the majority in his day supported them, oft times begrudgingly. This however, was not Thoreau’s first refusal to pay a tax.
            In 1840, the First Parish Church in Concord, Massachusetts, included Thoreau on their church tax bill to financially support the congregation, which was enforced and collected by the town treasurers (Harding 199). The church included him on the tax rolls “assuming that Thoreau was a member both because he had been brought up in the church and because his family owned a pew there” (Harding 199). Unwilling to pay the church tax, he took this matter to the town office and was ordered to “pay or be locked up in jail” (Harding 200). Before being thrown into jail for refusing to pay the tax, someone in the town paid the bill for Thoreau. Upset with the whole ordeal, he declared: “Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined” (Henry 200). The outcome six years later with the poll tax was very similar, except Thoreau had spent one night in jail, before the tax was paid in his behalf.   
Over time and with his short-lived imprisonment, Thoreau began to question the actions of others in regard to the State, contrary to their own conscience. Regarding the tax-collector, Sam Staples—who confronted Thoreau over his unpaid taxes and offered, “I’ll pay your tax, Henry, if you’re hard up” (Harding 199)—Thoreau had hoped that Staple’s conscience would have prompted him to make an equally bold stance as Thoreau, when he suggested: “If you really wish to do anything, resign your office” (Thoreau 297). Rather than see Americans follow the law when they felt that it was abusive to the rights of man, Thoreau supported the principle thought that the People should stand for what they felt was right. Thoreau was disappointed in how people feared the State more than they supported what was right according to their conscience. The purpose then of Thoreau’s essay, Civil Disobedience, was meant to inspire Americans to take a stand and truly sustain a government that supported the voice of the People.

This principle of civil disobedience is not unlike what Thomas Jefferson meant in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote that governments were meant to protect American’s unalienable rights; and “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government...as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness” (Jefferson). However, the citizens should be patient with the government and not get up in arms over “light and transient causes” either (Jefferson). If societal expectations, conventions, or behaviors illustrate a history of “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism,” then Americans have a right to rebel against them just as the Founding generation did against the oppressive acts of Great Britain (Jefferson).


Works Cited

Cain, William E., ed. A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.

Harding, Walter. The Days of Henry Thoreau. New York: Dover Publications, 2011. Print.

Jefferson, Thomas. "Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776." The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy. 2008. Web. 7 May 2015.

Thoreau, Henry David. “From Civil Disobedience.” The American Tradition in Literature. Vol. 2, 12th ed. Eds. George Perkins and Barbara Perkins. Boston: McGraw Hill. 289-304. Create eText.  http://create.mcgraw-hill.com.

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