Civil Disobedience

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

 

Directions: The following information will help your group prepare for the talkshow in which one of you has been assigned to play Henry David Thoreau and the rest of you have other roles to play. To prepare for the talkshow, each group member reads a section of the handout and leads a discussion of the questions following that section.

 

Henry David Thoreau is considered one of America’s most important figures in the transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Stimulated by English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schliermacher, and the skepticism of Hume, the transcendentalists operated with the sense that a new era was at hand. They were critics of their contemporary society for its unthinking conformity, and urged that each individual find, in Emerson's words, "an original relation to the universe"

One such book written by Thoreau that exhibited the transcendentalist thought is Civil Disobedience which he advocated breaking a law for the sake of that law. Thoreau spoke out firmly in favor of individuals acting freely, according to the dictates of their own ideas of right and wrong, without governmental interference.

            In the late 1830’s, Abraham Lincoln observed that, “whenever vicious persons were permitted…to burn churches…shoot editors, and hang unpleasant or obnoxious persons…with impunity, the…government can not last.” Thoreau was no doubt aware of these words, but he nonetheless made his own words known, and was briefly jailed for his beliefs. The author believed that any control by the government was objectionable, no matter the issue on which that control was exercised.

 

Many early life experiences events shaped Thoreau’s attitude and beliefs. Henry grew up very close to his older brother John, who taught school to help pay for Henry's tuition at Harvard. While there, Henry read a small book by his Concord neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, and in a sense he never finished exploring its ideas -- although always definitely on his own terms, just as he explored everything! He and his brother taught school for a while but in 1842, John cut himself while shaving and died of lockjaw in his brother's arms, an untimely death which traumatized the 25 year old Henry. He worked for several years as a surveyor with his father, but at the age of 28 in 1845, wanting to write his first book, he went to Walden Pond and built his cabin on land owned by Emerson

                Thoreau political beliefs started to be transferred through his writing. He opposed the Mexican-American War and slavery. Thoreau, in his famous 1848 essay On Civil Disobedience, began his discourse with the motto, “That government is best which governs not at all.” He cited inexpedience, on imprudence, as a flaw of governments, and warned against any need of a standing army, which is “only an arm of the standing government…Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively few individuals using the standing government as its tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.” Thoreau observed the American government and reported, “what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity?” Governments in general, he said,

            “…show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage…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 the way. For government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is more expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. “

            “But,” Thoreau adds, “to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.”

            Thoreau described “a better government” as one that freely answered to no one, not even the majority. He asked: “Can there be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right or wrong, but conscience? – in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable?” Thoreau asked, “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.”

 

            Those who are state soldiers Thoreau termed “wooden men,” who serve the state “not as men…but as machines, with their bodies.” Still others are subjects of the mind: “…most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers and officeholders…serve the state chiefly with their heads; and as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God.” The exceptions are the very few heroes, patriots, martyrs, and reformers who “serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.” Therefore, “he who gives himself entirely to his fellowmen appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.” With this notion in mind, Thoreau asked:

            “How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also…All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.”

            Thoreau recognized that most people of his day did not recognize this problem.

            …when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading country.

            Thoreau went on to remind citizens of their duty:

            “There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the [Mexican] war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them…They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil…At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and God-speed, to the right, as it goes by them.”

            Thoreau concludes that “all voting is a sort of gaming…It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail…A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.”

 

            On the subject of obedience to law, Thoreau makes it clear that people should refuse to submit to any law they believe is unjust:

            Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse.

            This then, is a cause for civil disobedience. “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government,” Thoreau says, “let it go, …perchance it will wear smooth – certainly the machine will wear out…but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be an injustice to another, then I say break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.” This passive resistance theory is at the heart of Civil Disobedience.

            Having defined his theory of when a law should rightly be disobeyed, Thoreau focuses his attention on tax-gatherers; “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.”

            For six years, Thoreau paid no poll taxes, although he admitted: “I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am desirous of being 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.”

            For failing to pay his taxes, Thoreau was jailed for one night. This led to his rejoinder, “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

            Finally, Thoreau is prompted to proclaim: “I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually…In fact, I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases.”

 

 

 

Source: http://womenshistory.about.com/bltranscend.htm