Henry David Thoreau

Who was Henry David Thoreau?

Henry David Thoreau spent most of his life in and around Concord, Massachusetts, where he was born in 1817. He studied at Harvard, then joined the circle around Ralph Waldo Emerson. He built a small house at Walden Pond and lived there from 1845 to 1847, an experience that fed his book Walden (1854). A night in jail in 1846, after he would not pay a poll tax, led to the 1849 essay that people now call Civil Disobedience. He wrote against slavery's legal protections, including the Fugitive Slave Law, and spoke up for John Brown. Tuberculosis killed him in 1862.

Political views

• He held that a person should obey conscience before an unjust law, and should break that law instead of waiting for a majority to change it.Source: plato.stanford.edu
• For six years he would not pay his poll tax, objecting to slavery and to the war with Mexico. It got him one night behind bars.Source: en.wikipedia.org
• He did not side with those who wanted no government at all. His call was for a better government, and for it right away.Source: gutenberg.org
• He took part in the Underground Railroad, stood against the Fugitive Slave Law and said John Brown's actions were justified.Source: plato.stanford.edu
• He attacked greed for goods, stock speculation and technology used with no real purpose, and asked people to live more simply.Source: plato.stanford.edu
• He cared about animals and the natural world, and is often seen as an early voice for keeping wild land as public land.Source: en.wikipedia.org
• He spoke against the mistreatment of Native Americans.Source: plato.stanford.edu

Legacy

Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. all learned from Civil Disobedience. His nature writing, meanwhile, is often said to have foreshadowed ecology and conservation. Libertarians, environmentalists and pacifists each count him as an ancestor. Critics say his trust in private conscience lets individuals set themselves above democratic law. Some also point out that his praise of John Brown does not fit a purely nonviolent reading. Others think his time at Walden was less self-reliant than the book makes it sound. Few readers noticed him while he lived, yet he became one of America's most read authors.

In their own words