Thoreau's Civil Disobedience

Resistance
ssw
to Civil
Government
by
Henry David Thoreau
Social Studies
FCAT Reading Activity
Advanced U.S. History – Grade 8

American History – Grade 11
Collier County School District
July 2003
THE STATE VERSUS THE INDIVIDUAL
HENRY DAVID THOREAU’S
Resistance to Civil Government
ONE OF THE STRANGEST paradoxes in history is the inspiration for revolutionary

movements furnished by a poet naturalist of mid-nineteenth-century New England.
Henry David Thoreau, who worshiped nature in almost pagan fashion, a recluse who
preferred his own company to that of others, who loved mankind but had little sympathy
for man, and who thoroughly distrusted all forms of government — including democracy
— was one of the great philosophical anarchists of all time. The influence of his writings
has gone around the world.
Thoreau, a true eccentric, was a native of Concord, Massachusetts, of French-Scottish ancestry. The Thoreaus were
simple artisans and the family existed barely above the poverty level. Henry graduated from Harvard at the age of twenty,
after which he supported himself for a while by teaching, then by surveying, and finally by occasional manual labor. For two
years he lived in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s home, where he participated to a limited degree in the discussions of the
transcendentalist circle. In the later years of his life, Thoreau was a general handyman in Concord, with few material needs
or wants.
A turning point in Thoreau’s life came in the summer of 1846. A war with Mexico was in progress — a war as unpopular
with liberal American opinion as Vietnam later became. Objective evidence now appears to support the view that American
troops were sent to the border on an expedition seeking trouble, preliminary to the annexation of Texas, though President
Polk asserted that the first bloodshed was caused by a Mexican attack “on our own territory.”
Even more unsettling was the chronic question of slavery, especially in New England, where the abolitionists kept the
discussions in a constant state of ferment. Thoreau’s sympathies were completely with the abolitionist cause, and he was
aroused further by the persecution by state and local government of his friends in the movement.
The crowning touch for Thoreau came with his own arrest for non-payment of poll taxes. For a year he had lived in a hut,
built by himself, on Walden Pond, near Concord. Absorbed in the contemplation of nature, cut off from human
companionship he felt increasingly isolated from his neighbors. For several years he had refused to pay the poll tax, as a
symbol of protest against a government that condoned slavery and waged war. The action emulated that of his fellow
townsman Bronson Alcott, father of “Little Women,” who had earlier announced his intention to pay no tax to support a
government that aided slavery and who had been arrested and jailed for his defiance of the law.
Collier County Social Studies Reading: Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government” 9/29/2010 pg. 2
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One afternoon when Thoreau came into Concord from Walden Pond to pick up a pair of shoes which he had left to be
repaired, an old friend, Samuel Staples, the local constable approached him. Staples reminded Thoreau that his poll taxes
were overdue and offered to lend him the money if he were short of cash. Thoreau explained that his refusal to pay was on
moral grounds, not financial, whereupon Staples concluded that it was his duty to arrest him and lock him up in the village
jail. Thoreau spent only one night in jail, for a heavily veiled woman called on Staples and paid the fine — much to
Thoreau’s displeasure. The identity of his liberator is unknown, but is believed to have been his Aunt Maria, who was
shocked to find her nephew incarcerated Thoreau was thus deprived of an opportunity to make a dramatic protest against
the iniquities of government.
Nevertheless, Thoreau used the episode of his jailing as a point of departure for a work destined to be the most widely
read and to have the greatest impact of anything that he ever wrote — his manifesto on civil disobedience. The original
account was delivered, probably in 1848, as a lecture entitled “The Relation of the Individual to the State,” and the following
year published under the title of “Resistance to Civil Government” in Elizabeth Peabody’s short-lived periodical Aesthetic
Papers. Later the essay was renamed Civil Disobedience in Thoreau’s collected works and under that title has been
reprinted innumerable times.
Thoreau’s neighbors were divided in their views on Thoreau’s action in choosing to go to jail rather than to pay the tax.
Bronson Alcott was immensely pleased, but Ralph Waldo Emerson thought that it was “mean, skulking, and in bad taste.”
According to a famous anecdote, possibly apocryphal, Emerson asked Thoreau what he was doing in jail. Thoreau, who
was critical of Emerson for his refusal to take a strong stand against slavery, replied, “Why are you NOT here?”
Two main themes run through Civil Disobedience: contempt for the existing government and the supreme importance of
the individual’s own moral values. Thus the higher moral law, as interpreted by the individual conscience, it was held, should
prevail against the dictates of government.
Thoreau begins by recalling Thomas Jefferson’s declaration, “That government is best which governs least,” and carries
the conclusion a step further with the assertion, “That government is best which governs not at all.” Thoreau continues:
Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are
sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they
are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing
government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself,
which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be
abused and perverted before the people can act through it.
The dead hand of the past was denounced by Thoreau In the actual administration of government. He saw the American
Government, like others, as a tradition, “endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some
of its integrity.” Under these circumstances, the government becomes inflexible, lacking in “the vitality and force of a single
living man,” incapable of stimulating fresh creative efforts, “a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves,” the silent rule of
the living by the dead.
The uselessness of government as it currently functioned was portrayed by Thoreau in these words:
This government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of the
way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character
inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done
somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.
Thoreau soon makes a distinction, however, between himself and “those who call themselves no-government men.”
Recognizing that society is as yet unprepared to dispense with all government, he demands “not at once no government, but
at once a better government.” Even as matters stood, Thoreau acknowledged that “the Constitution, with all its faults, is very
good, the law and the courts very respectable, even this State and this American government are, in many respects, very
admirable and rare things to be thankful for.” Furthermore, he differentiated between those functions of government of which
he approved and those which he rejected: “I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being
a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow
countrymen now.”
Obviously, Thoreau’s plea is for a distinction between bad government and good government, and for a corollary principle
that it is the citizen’s right and duty to resist evil in the state even to the point of open and deliberate disobedience to its laws.
The unbridled power of the majority is roundly condemned by Thoreau, thus repudiating a basic tenet of democracy.
When power is in the hands of the people, it is the custom for a majority to rule, “not because they are most likely to be in the
right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest . . . . Must the citizen ever
for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? I think that we should be men first, and
subjects afterward.
. . . .A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail, through the power of the
majority . . . . Moreover,” maintains Thoreau, “any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.”
Thoreau is especially critical of those citizens who “while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government,
yield to it their allegiance and support,” for those are “frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.” He adds:
Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform In Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians
at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in
commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and
to Mexico cost what it may . . . . There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the
war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them.
Thoreau’s stand was uncompromising: “I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government
which is the slave’s government also . . . when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of
liberty are slaves, and a whole country [Mexico) is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to
military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.”
Since the existence of unjust laws is undisputable, Thoreau states, the citizen has a choice among three types of action;
obey them, obey them until they can be amended, or “transgress them at once.” Some hold that resistance would be worse
than the evil. Under an ideal government, Thoreau believes, citizens would be encouraged to point out its faults as a
prelude to reforms. In practice, governments are hostile to reformers. “Why does its always crucify Christ, and
excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?”
Conceding that open obstruction of laws is likely to bring down the wrath of the state, Thoreau asserts, “Under a
government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison . . . . . If any think that their influence
would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls,
they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat
injustice who has experienced a little in his own person.” If enough of its citizens are willing to defy unjust laws, the state will
capitulate and change the laws. Referring to his own prison experience, Thoreau observes, “I saw that the state was half-
witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all
my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.”
Thoreau’s whole political philosophy unquestionably was based on the belief that the individual conscience is the only true
criterion by which to judge what is right or wrong. To use the individual conscience as the sole valid guide for political action,
on the other hand, is in direct conflict with the democratic principle of majority rules as Thoreau recognized. In any case, to
him, “There is but little virtue in the masses of men.” One has to have faith in man, letting each man determine for himself
what is right and just. In the final paragraph of Civil Disobedlence, Thoreau describes his concept of a utopian government,
where presumably no civil disobedience would be needed:
The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarch to a democracy, is a
progress toward a true respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to
regard the individual as the basis of the empire. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last
improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and
organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State
comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and
authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which
can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would
not think it inconsistent with its own repose, if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor
embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of
fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and
glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.
It is easy to pick flaws in Thoreau’s arguments for an anarchic society. A basic fallacy is the contention that mankind has
no need for organized society or government and each man is able to provide for his own welfare in a complex world. A
second error is the failure to recognize the nature of American democracy, which has never granted absolute authority to
majority rule, but on the contrary contains numerous safeguards for minority opinion, no matter how small. In stating “the
only obligation I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think is right,” and no government had “a pure right over
my person or property but what I concede to it.” Thoreau would have every citizen act as judge of the state and of his own
behavior. The extreme liberalism personified by Thoreau glorifies individual free will, isolates the citizen from society, and
frees him from all social and civic duties.
But on a higher plane, Thoreau’s philosophy contains fundamental truth. It is the citizen’s duty to fight injustice in society,
to do his share to ensure that injustices are not perpetuated or created by the state. Under dictatorships, the problem
becomes particularly acute, though even under democracies, as the state reaches out for constantly increasing power, the
nature and extent of obedience to the state are matters of the most urgent concern to the individual. Perhaps there is little
scope for individualism in an increasingly collective society. In any event, Thoreau’s classic statement is an eloquent
defense of and justification for making a place for the individual conscience.
The theory of civil disobedience is not original with Thoreau. Examples may be found in both the Old and New
Testaments and in the writings of the third century B.C. Chinese philosopher Mencius and the fifth century A.D. Roman
philosopher Boethius. Civil disobedience in American history has been an almost constant factor. Notable instances
predating Thoreau are the actions of the Quakers in seventeenth-century New England, the Boston Tea Party, Shays’
Rebellion, and the Declaration of Independence itself, wherein it is stated that “whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends [that is, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the Right of the People to alter it or to abolish
it.”
A century before Thoreau, the famous English jurist Sir William Blackstone laid down the dictum, “No laws are binding on
the individual subject that assault his person or violate the conscience.
Nonetheless, the concept of civil disobedience was so effectively presented by Thoreau that he is now universally given
credit for originating the theory.
For the remainder of his short life (he died in 1862 at the age of forty-five), Thoreau continued his attacks on the institution
of slavery, supplementing Civil Disobedience with two fiery pamphlets entitled Slavery in Massachusetts and Plea for
Captain John Brown.
A remarkable insight into Thoreau’s character and personality comes from another great American, Walt Whitman,
Thoreau’s friend and contemporary:
Thoreau was a surprising fellow — he is not easily grasped — is elusive: yet he is one of the native
forces — stands for a fact, a movement, an upheaval: Thoreau belongs to America, to the
transcendental, to the protesters: then he is an outdoor man: all outdoor men, everything being equal,
appeal to me. Thoreau was not so precious, tender, a personality as Emerson: but he was a force — he
looms up bigger and bigger . . . : every year has added to his fame. One thing about Thoreau keeps him
very near to me: I refer to his lawlessness — his dissent — his going down his absolute road, let hell
blaze as it chooses.
Historians are agreed that Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience had little effect or influence during his own lifetime. Almost forty
years were to pass before the worldwide repercussions of the essay began to be felt. Around 1900 the Russian novelist and
philosopher Count Leo Tolstoy read the work and realized its implications for his own crusade to free the Russian serfs from
near slavery under czarist rule.
Far more significant, however, was the discovery about 1907 of Civil Disobedience by a young Hindu lawyer, Mohandas
Gandhi, then living in South Africa. In South Africa, Gandhi devoted himself mainly to violators of the discriminatory laws
passed against members of the Hindu colony there. As Gandhi tells the story:
My first introduction to Thoreau’s writings was, I think, in 1907, or later, when I was in the thick of the
passive resistance struggle. A friend sent me the essay on “Civil Disobedience.” It left a deep impres-
sion upon me. I translated a portion for the readers of “Indian Opinion in South Africa,” which I was then
editing, and I made copious extracts for the English part of that paper. The essay seemed to be so
convincing and truthful that I felt the need of knowing more of Thoreau, and I came across . . . his
Walden, and other shorter essays, all of which I read with great pleasure and equal profit.
Gandhi, who had been dissatisfied with the term first used to describe his movement, “passive resistance,” but had found
no acceptable substitute, at once adopted “civil disobedience” as his motto. Here was a statement of principle, he decided,
that meant firmness without violence, and a devotion to truth and justice — a political policy completely in accord with
Gandhi’s philosophy. Civil Disobedience in the hands of Mahatma Gandhi became a bible of non-resistance. For his Hindu
followers, Gandhi coined an equivalent, Satyagraha, a combination of two Sanskrit words, translated as “soul force” or ”the
force which is born of truth and love or non-violence.”
Gandhi remained in South Africa through 1914, carrying on a running battle with government officials and gaining a
number of important concessions for his race. Early in 1915 he returned to India. From then until ‘his death at the hands of
a Hindu assassin in 1948, Gandhi led the forces that eventually won independence for India and Pakistan. Civil
disobedience was frequently used during those years and was sharpened by Gandhi into a weapon of remarkable
effectiveness.
A leading authority on Thoreau’s writings, Walter Harding, has traced editions of Civil Disobedience abroad, noting that
“his works have been translated into virtually every major foreign language,” including Czech, Danish, French, German,
Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Italian, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Japanese. The Fabians and early Labour Party members
popularized Thoreau in England, distributing inexpensive paperbound editions of Walden and Civil Disobedience, with the
Party’s blessing. In Denmark, Harding reports, “Civil Disobedience was used as a manual of arms by the resistance
movement against the Nazi invasion during World War II. It was circulated surreptitiously throughout the war years among
the Danes as a means of encouraging them to further acts of resistance.”
Back in the United States, Civil Disobedience has been an object of attack by conservative censors on a number of
occasions. Upton Sinclair, Norman Thomas, and Emma Goldman were each arrested for reading Thoreau’s essay from a
public platform. In the 1950s during Senator Joseph McCarthy’s purge of U.S. Information Libraries a copy of a standard
text was removed from the shelves of each of the libraries because it contained Civil Disobedience.
The most striking application of Thoreau’s ideas in America in recent years has been in the anti-segregation movement,
especially in the Southern states. Examples are the refusal of Negroes to ride segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama;
the boycotting by Negroes of segregated stores in Albany, Georgia; the kneel-ins of Negroes in the white churches of
Nashville, Tennessee; and the Freedom Riders in Alabama and Mississippi. As much as a generation ago, one of the Negro
leaders, James Robinson, in addressing a group which later became the Committee on Racial Equality (CORE), stated:
Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience was not much used by the Abolitionists for whom it was written; probably
no one before Gandhi realized its significance for a new type of social movement based upon group
discipline and personal conscience. As one reads this essay, it is impossible not to notice that almost
every sentence is loaded with meaning for us . . . . . . . Substitute the economic, political, and social
persecution of American Negroes today where Thoreau condemns Negro slavery — and you will scarcely
find hail a dozen sentences in the entire essay which you cannot apply to your own actions in the
present crisis.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who achieved even greater fame in the civil rights movement, writes in his autobiography,
Stride Toward Freedom:
When I went to Atlanta’s Morehouse College as a freshman in 1944 my concern for racial and economic
justice was already substantial. During my student days at Morehouse I read Thoreau’s “Essay on Civil
Disobedience” for the first time. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I
was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times. This was my first intellectual contact with
the theory of nonviolent resistance.
Subsequently, discussing the boycott which he organized against segregated buses in Montgomery, King added:
At this point I began to think about Thoreau’s “Essay on Civil Disobedience.” I remembered how, as a
college student, I had been moved when I first read this work. I became convinced that what we were
preparing to do in Montgomery was related to what Thoreau had expressed. We were simply saying to
the white community, “We can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system.”
Something began to say to me, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps
to perpetuate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” When
oppressed people willingly accept their oppression they only serve to give the oppressor a convenient
justification for his acts. Often the oppressor goes along unaware of the evil involved in his oppression
so long as the oppressed accepts it. So in order to be true to one’s conscience and true to God, a
righteous man has no alternative but to refuse to cooperate with an evil system. This I felt was the
nature of our action. From this moment on I conceived of our movement as an act of massive non-
cooperation.
The extreme hazards even of movements founded on principles of passive resistance and non-violence were tragically
demonstrated in the assassinations of both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Legal sanction for the doctrine of civil disobedience was given in a U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1945: “The victory for
freedom of thought recorded in our Bill of Rights recognizes that in the domain of conscience there is a moral power higher
than the State. Throughout the ages, men have suffered death rather than subordinate their allegiance to God to the
authority of the State.” This forthright statement reaffirmed William Blackstone’s conclusion in his Commentaries on the
Laws of England, nearly two centuries earlier.
The future will doubtless witness further use of the principles of civil disobedience, as conceived by Thoreau and
perfected by Gandhi. The power of oppressed peoples everywhere, even in the ruthless dictatorships of modern times, can
make itself felt through these devices. “Even the most despotic government,” said Gandhi, “cannot stand except for the
consent of the governed, which consent is often forcibly procured by the despot. Immediately the subject ceases to fear the
despotic force, his power Is gone.” It must be conceded, nevertheless, that trends of government in the twentieth century
show Thoreau’s ideas and ideals fighting a losing baffle.
severe “In Thoreau,” wrote Vernon L. Parrington, American literary critic and historian, “the eighteenth-century
philosophy of individualism, the potent liberalisms let loose on the world by Jean Jacques Rousseau, came to
the fullest expression in New England. He was the completest embodiment of the laissez-faire reaction against a
regimented social order, the st critic of the lower economics that frustrate the dreams of human freedom. He was fortunate in
dying before the age of exploitation had choked his river with its weeds; fortunate in not foreseeing how remote is that future
of free men on which his hopes were fixed.”
Taken from: Downs, Rober. Books That Changed America, Mentor Books (1971), pp.
Word Count: 4128 Flesch-Kincaid Score: 12.0
Vocabulary Terms to Know: Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’
1. recluse (pp.2) – hermit, loner, outsider 32.. embodiment (pp.8) – personification, incarnation,
2. anarchists (pp.2) – rebel, revolutionary, radical picture
3. eccentric (pp.2) – odd, peculiar, unusual 33.. severe(st) (pp.8) – harshest, stern, most brutal
4. chronic (pp.2) – continual, persistent, constant
5. ferment (pp.2) – uproar, excitement, commotion
6. contemplation (pp.2) – thought, meditation, deliberation
7. condoned (pp.2) – overlook, disregard, ignore
8. emulated (pp.2) – imitate, follow, copy
9. aesthetic (pp.3) – artistic, visual
10. apocryphal (pp.3) – fictional, untrue, dubious
11. prevail (pp.3) – triumph, succeed, overcome
12. dictates (pp.3) – say aloud, speak, read aloud
13. expedient (pp.3) – measure, maneuver, method
14. perverted (pp.3) – distorted, changed, altered
15. posterity (pp.3) – future generations, all of person’s descendants
16. alacrity (pp.4) – eagerness, enthusiasm, readiness
17. unbridled (pp.4) – unrestrained, uncontrolled, uninhabited
18. repudiating (pp.4) – reject, disclaim, deny
19. undisputable (pp.5) – unquestionable, guaranteed, assured
20. transgress (pp.5) – misbehave, disobey, break the law
21. conceding (pp.5) – yielding, surrendering, compromise
22. capitulate (pp.5) – surrender, submit, relent
23. timid (pp.5) – nervous, hesitant, shy
24. anarchic (pp.6) – lawless, chaotic, disordered
25. fallacy (pp.6) – misleading notion, erroneous, belief myth
26. perpetuated (pp.6) – effect, enable, achieve
27. acute (pp.6) – sharp, sensitive, delicate
28. copious (pp.7) – abundant, plentiful, profuse
29. surreptitiously (pp.8) – secretly, sneakily, clandestinely
30. conceived (pp.9) – imagine, visualize, picture
31. despotic (pp.9) – tyrannical, dictatorial, cruel

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Resistance

Advanced U.S. History – Grade 8

ONE OF THE STRANGEST paradoxes in history is the inspiration for revolutionary

Vocabulary Terms to Know: Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’

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