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  1. Civil Disobedience. by Henry D. Thoreau. Original title: Resistance to Civil Government. I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe--"That government is best which governs not at ...

  2. Libertarianism portal. United States portal. v. t. e. Resistance to Civil Government, also called On the Duty of Civil Disobedience or Civil Disobedience for short, is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or ...

  3. Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience espouses the need to prioritize one's conscience over the dictates of laws. It criticizes American social institutions and policies, most prominently slavery and the Mexican-American War. Thoreau begins his essay by arguing that government rarely proves itself useful and that it derives its power from the majority because they are the strongest group ...

  4. Essay: “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” Author: Henry David Thoreau, 1817–62 First published: 1849. The original essay is in the public domain in the United States and in most, if not all, other countries as well. Readers outside the United States should check their own countries’ copyright laws to be certain they can legally ...

  5. One of Thoreau's most influential writings, it has been published separately many times (Walter Harding's The Variorum Civil Disobedience, for example, appeared in 1967), included in volumes of selections from Thoreau (among them the 1937 Modern Library Edition of Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau, edited by Brooks Atkinson), and ...

  6. Jan 4, 2007 · Features of Civil Disobedience. Henry David Thoreau is widely credited with coining the term civil disobedience. For years, Thoreau refused to pay his state poll tax as a protest against the institution of slavery, the extermination of Native Americans, and the war against Mexico. When a Concord, Massachusetts, constable named Sam Staples asked ...

  7. Active Themes. Thoreau provides examples of his own acts of civil disobedience. First, he recounts how he refused to pay a tax to the church, though someone else eventually paid on his behalf. Then he shares that he also did not pay a poll tax for six years, for which he was eventually imprisoned.

  8. Thoreau is making a reference to slavery and the threats of the southern states to secede. Since “Civil Disobedience” was published in 1849, this is a clear indication that slavery had remained a contentious issue since the country was founded, eventually leading to the American Civil War (1861–1865).

  9. May 2, 2024 · Henry David Thoreau, American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher renowned for having lived the doctrines of Transcendentalism as recorded in his masterwork, Walden (1854), and for having been a vigorous advocate of civil liberties, as evidenced in the essay ‘Civil Disobedience’ (1849).

  10. Civil Disobedience. In July of 1846, town constable and tax collector Sam Staples arrested Henry David Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau had refused to pay his poll tax for six years, resulting in his arrest. He was released on bail just the next morning, but his night in jail proved pivotal, inspiring his 1849 essay “Resistance to ...

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