Section 1: A Biography of Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau was born into a working class family in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts. In 1823, the family began a pencil making business, which Thoreau would later improve dramatically. The business provided the family with a minimal income, so he was enrolled in public schools until he was eleven.
Educated at the Concord Academy (1828-1833) and Harvard University (1833-1837) he earned a Bachelor's degree. In those days Harvard awarded a Master's of Arts degree to all alumni who lived for three years after graduation and had five dollars to pay the college. Although he earned the M.A. degree, he never paid for or received it. His morals prevented him from taking part in such a scam.

While at Harvard, he joined a group of Transcendentalists known as the Hedge Club, where he began to see life in different terms. The Transcendentalists view people as born with an internal sense of right and wrong (the voice of God or conscience) that transcends all that is learned with the five senses. Thus, it is only through responding to the world (instead of responding to natural internal callings) that we produce evil and do wrong. If our internal laws are in conflict with societal laws, one must follow the higher law of God or conscience.

After Harvard, he taught for two weeks at the Concord School he had attended ten years earlier. He quit when they insisted he use the usual corporal punishment on the pupils. Finding another teaching position was so difficult he returned to the family pencil business. When he set out to improve the product, he invented a grinding machine, which pulverized the plumbago (i.e. graphite) for the pencil leads. He also came across a mixture of the plumbago and clay that yielded a smooth, regular line from the pencil. A new saw, for stripping the graphite, and a drill, for producing round holes in cedar sticks, were among the inventions he created to improve the pencils. They were the first American made pencils to rival the German made Faber pencils.

In June of 1838, he opened a private school with his brother, John Jr., in the family home. Soon afterward, the headmaster of Concord Academy resigned. Thoreau quickly arranged with the trustees to take over the building rental and the school's name. Thus, his private school adopted the reputation, character and goodwill associated with the Concord Academy. Two years later, in 1840, he bought surveying tools and taught himself the skill. He began teaching surveying as an application project for his math students. The school did very well and had waiting lists for admission. Thoreau closed the school after his brother, John Jr., died in 1842.

One of Thoreau's first known essays, "The Seasons," was completed in1827 when he was just ten years old. His fame as an author began when he published an essay and a poem in the first edition of The Dial, a quarterly journal which the Hedge Club began publishing. While living with Ralph Waldo Emerson from 1841 to 1843 he published numerous items in The Dial, and began lecturing at the Concord Lyceum. In 1848, in response to being jailed for doing what he believed was the right thing, Thoreau created the influential essay On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience. It was his most powerful political essay. Thoreau continued to write and lecture on slavery, among other topics, throughout his lifetime.
Thoreau had suffered from Tuberculosis (TB), on and off, since his college years. He died of TB on Tuesday May 6, 1862 at the age of forty-four.
 

The incident, which inspired On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, happened in July of 1846. At the time, living at Walden Pond, Thoreau went into town on an errand. The tax collector/jailer ran into, arrested, and jailed him for not paying his poll tax. Thoreau's protest was primarily against the arrest of Negro Anthony Burns in Boston and his return to slavery in Virginia. The tax collector, Sam Staples, knew Thoreau and actually offered to loan him money for the tax, but he refused the loan. His attitude was that if he paid taxes to a government that supported slavery and the Mexican War, he was also supporting those activities. A friend paid the tax and he was released the next day. Thoreau was not the first or the last man to be jailed for not paying taxes. That the tax was paid did not alter his principles. That he was jailed for the act is not as significant as what he did with the experience. He wrote and presented Civil Disobedience to the Concord Lyceum in 1848. First published in 1849, the essay was generally ignored until it was republished in 1866.

The essay changed how people thought and became one of his most read works. In the 1880's English Labor Parties printed and distributed paperbound editions of  Civil Disobedience in England. In 1893, the first ten-volume edition of his collected works was printed. In 1899, the first college dissertation on Thoreau appeared. Today several college dissertations on Thoreau are presented annually. Ghandi read the essay, Civil Disobedience, while jailed in South Africa in 1907. He embraced Thoreau as a brother and fellow thinker. Gandhi took the name of his movement in India from Civil Disobedience and kept a copy of the essay with him at all times.

Around the turn of the century Houghton Mifflin issued a new twenty-one volume collection of Thoreau's works. In 1910, the first textbook editions of his work, aimed at schools and colleges, were printed. The roaring 20's were not favorable to the growth of Thoreau's popularity. The depression of 30's gave Americans a more favorable and insightful view of Thoreau's work. The Thoreau Society was formed in 1941 and began holding annual meetings and printing quarterly newsletters. Today, The Thoreau Society has thousands of members on five continents. Due to the McCarthyism of the 50's most people shunned the liberal thinking of Thoreau. McCarthy actually had an anthology of American Literature removed from the nationwide U.S. Information Libraries because it contained Civil Disobedience. Martin Luther King, Jr., discovered the essay while in college. In the 60's, King cited Thoreau's Civil Disobedience as a major source of inspiration. While President, J.F.K. paid tribute to Thoreau's "pervasive and universal influence on social thinking and political action." During the 60's and 70's progressive writers of the "beat generation" like Jack Kerouac, who wrote On the Road, praised Thoreau.

To summarize Civil Disobedience let us say that individuals are expected to follow their own moral laws above and beyond any other laws and the State should respect that. This idea was not new. Although other essays conveying the same message had been printed, none had the appeal and beauty only Thoreau can put in prose.
The essay can be divided into three parts. The first part tells of the basic problems of American politics and provides a solution. "Action from principle" The second part of the essay is a biographical account of the night he spent in jail, as he saw it, not as it actually happened. This account is also rich with Thoreau's metaphorically beautiful prose. The last part of the essay explains his elevated point of view after passing from jail into the light of freedom. "There shall 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."

Thoreau's riveting and convincing political essay continues to fuel revolutions in how people think and behave. Civil Disobedience compels one to be true to his own beliefs despite the discomfort doing so will cause him. It instructs that to stop the injustices of bad government, individuals must not follow the well-worn path of those who let injustice continue unabated. They must instead act according to their own, God given, internal sense of right and wrong.