Civil Disobedience

by Henry David Thoreau

Overview

In 1848, Henry David Thoreau twice delivered lectures in Concord, Massachusetts, on “the relationship of the individual to the state.” The essay now known as Civil Disobedience is a significant and widely admired contribution to abolitionist literature, as well as an anti-war tract, but Thoreau’s focus is less on political organization and solidarity than it is on personal choice and individual responsibility. Cultivating personal integrity in the face of political injustice is the project Thoreau defends in Civil Disobedience; this focus has made the work highly influential for twentieth- and twenty-first-century political movements.

Bob Pepperman Taylor’s new Introduction explains the work’s specific political context, helping readers to understand the text as Thoreau wrote it. The edition also offers a number of historical documents on Thoreau’s abolitionism; the war with Mexico; and Thoreau’s philosophical development in relation to other thinkers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781926842899
Publisher:	Theophania Publishing
Publication date:	09/17/2010
Pages:	38
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.08(d)

About the Author

Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862) was an American author, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore; while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time imploring one to abandon waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.
He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Thoreau is sometimes cited as an individualist anarchist. Though Civil Disobedience seems to call for improving rather than abolishing government - "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government" - the direction of this improvement aims at anarchism: "'That government is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." Richard Drinnon partly blames Thoreau for the ambiguity, noting that Thoreau's "sly satire, his liking for wide margins for his writing, and his fondness for paradox provided ammunition for widely divergent interpretations of 'Civil Disobedience.'" He further points out that although Thoreau writes that he only wants "at once" a better government, that does not rule out the possibility that a little later he might favor no government.

Date of Birth:

July 12, 1817

Date of Death:

May 6, 1862

Place of Birth:

Concord, Massachusetts

Place of Death:

Concord, Massachusetts

Education:

Concord Academy, 1828-33); Harvard University, 1837

Table of Contents

Introduction

Civil Disobedience

Appendix A: Thoreau’s Abolitionism Developed

• From Henry David Thoreau, A Plea for Captain John Brown (1860)

Appendix B: Abolitionism

• Henry Highland Garnet, Address to the Slaves of the United States (1865)
  
• Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, Tea-Table Talk (1836)
  
• William Lloyd Garrison, Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1852)
  
• From William Lloyd Garrison, Declaration of Sentiments Adopted by the Peace Convention, The Liberator (28 Sept. 1838)
  
• William Lloyd Garrison, The American Union (1845)

Appendix C: Sectionalism and the Constitution

• Samuel Hoar, Report on His Mission to Charleston, South Carolina (1845)
  
• From Daniel Webster, Exclusion of Slavery from the Territories, 12 August 1848
  
• From Daniel Webster, Speech at Capon Springs, Virginia, 28 June 1851

Appendix D: War with Mexico

• From Abraham Lincoln, Speech in U.S. House of Representatives on War with Mexico (1848)

Appendix E: Moral and Philosophical Context

• From William Paley, The Duty of Submission to Civil Government Explained (1822)
  
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, Politics (1844)

Editorial Reviews

In this season of political unrest, the arrival of Bob Pepperman Taylor’s teaching edition of Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ couldn’t be better timed … it should be required reading for every person who opines on Thoreau’s essay, whether student, scholar or activist” — Laura Dassow Walls, Early American Literature

“This volume greatly contributes to our ability to understand Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience as a product of a specific historical context. It is a valuable piece of scholarship on the history of political thought regarding Thoreau’s essay. The introduction is pitched at a level that is appropriate to undergraduates and is written in a very interesting, engaging, and readable style. But given the historically situated analysis of Thoreau’s writing of Civil Disobedience, this volume will also be a valuable resource for established scholars as well. The additional primary texts are thoughtfully selected and relevant, and they help give us a more complete portrait of Thoreau in his time: with these additional readings, we can better grasp the historical context of many of the enigmatic references Thoreau makes in Civil Disobedience.” — Shannon Mariotti, Southwestern University

“A masterful historical contextualization. Bob Pepperman Taylor’s introduction is a model of scholarship and his annotations are consistently illuminating. The supplementary voices, ranging from William Paley to Henry Highland Garnet to Daniel Webster to Ralph Waldo Emerson to Abraham Lincoln, help bring Thoreau to life by setting him in his place and time.” — Jack Turner, University of Washington, editor of A Political Companion to Henry David Thoreau

From the Publisher