[Kowboy]

THOREAU, Henry David (1817-62). If the movement called New England transcendentalism stood for the individual as rebel against the established orders of society, then Henry David Thoreau was its foremost representative. He was a man unto himself who looked at society and government and found them lacking in nearly every respect. His friend Ralph Waldo Emerson said of him: "He was bred to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the state; he ate no flesh; he drank no wine; he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun." (See also Transcendentalism.)
To a modern observer, Thoreau's life might appear drab and uninteresting. To those who know his writings, however, he is an author of international stature whose words can still move and inspire.
He was born on July 12, 1817, at Concord, Mass., where he spent nearly his whole life. He was graduated from Harvard University in 1837 and failed at a teaching job before operating a private school with his brother John from about 1838 until John fell ill in 1841.
Emerson and his family had moved to Concord in 1834, and Thoreau lived at Emerson's home intermittently. It was while there that he decided to devote his life to writing. He rarely worked at anything else except his father's pencil-making business and surveying.
It was restlessness that led him to seek the solitude of Walden Pond, 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from Concord. He built a small cabin and moved into it on July 4, 1845. He left Walden on Sept. 6, 1847. During this period he wrote 'A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers', published in 1849; composed hundreds of pages in his journal; and executed the first draft of 'Walden; or, Life in the Woods' (1854).
During his Walden stay he was forced to spend a night in jail for failure to pay the poll tax. From this experience came a lecture, "Civil Disobedience." The experience marked a turning point. He vowed not to support a government that permitted slavery and waged an imperialist war against Mexico. He helped to free slaves through the Underground Railroad, and, in the fiery abolitionist John Brown, Thoreau found a new hero. His "Plea for Captain John Brown" is among his best works. Thoreau lived only a few years more. He died of tuberculosis on May 6, 1862.
He was an individualist but of a peculiarly American type. "We go westward," he said, "as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure." Among his other works, published after his death, were "Life Without Principle" (1863), 'Excursions' (1863), and 'The Maine Woods' (1864).

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THE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE:

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. On the face of it, they were unimportant incidents. In 1846 the American essayist and poet Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail because he would not pay a poll tax; the next day his aunt paid the tax, and he was released. On Dec. 1, 1955, a black woman named Rosa Parks was seated on a bus in Montgomery, Ala.; when she would not give up her seat to a white man, she was arrested. A few days later there was a bus boycott by the blacks of the city.
Thoreau pondered his experience, and two years later gave a lecture on it. Published in 1849 with the title "Civil Disobedience," it provided the proper name, as opposed to revolution or rebellion, for resistance to the unjust laws and acts of government. The Rosa Parks incident fused with other instances of black civil resistance to become the civil rights movement of the 1960s. (See also Black Americans, "The Civil Rights Movement"; Thoreau.)
Nonviolent Protest
Civil disobedience is a symbolic, but nevertheless real, violation of what is considered an unjust law rather than the rejection of a whole system of laws and government. Proponents of such resistance assert that legitimate avenues of change are blocked, and they see themselves as obligated by higher principles or ideals to break a specific law. It is because civil disobedience is an acknowledged crime that it can serve as a protest. By submitting to punishment, the lawbreaker hopes to set a moral example that will provoke the majority or the government to effect a meaningful change through change in law and public policy. The major qualification is that the disobedience be nonviolent.
Most proponents of political change have historically been revolutionaries bent on overthrowing a government. By comparison, the tradition of civil disobedience has been a weak undercurrent. As long as the masses of people were ruled by kings, tyrants, or dictators, the normal view--perhaps best expressed by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant--was, "It is the duty of the people to bear any abuse of the supreme power, even though it should be considered to be unbearable."
To Kant it seemed that the line separating resistance from revolution was thin. It was better to have order with authority than disorder without it. But the United States provided a different environment. In Thoreau's time the government was not held in such reverence that it could command the lives and fortunes of people easily. A strong tendency to regard some acts of government with hostility developed early. In the administration of George Washington there was the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania against federal tax policies.
Decades later John C. Calhoun supported the doctrine of nullification, declaring that states could veto acts of the federal government. And, of course, the slavery issue provided sufficient justification for many to resist a government that sanctioned slavery.
20th Century
Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" was not much heralded in its time, but in the 20th century it became the textbook for resistance to injustice for nationalist movements in India, Africa, and Latin America. Mahatma Gandhi in India read it and formulated his doctrine of nonviolent resistance to the British colonial authorities (see Gandhi, Mahatma).
Nonviolent resistance has had a tendency to bring out the worst in governments and people opposed to change. They react violently to maintain things as they are. America's leading proponent of nonviolent resistance, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in 1968, as was Gandhi in 1948 (see King, Martin Luther, Jr.). But, like water wearing away a rock, nonviolent resistance frequently obtains results. The British left India, and civil rights laws were passed in the United States.
The 20th century has afforded numerous instances of civil disobedience apart from the work of Gandhi and King. The protests in the United States against the Vietnam War in the 1960s are a good example: the burning of draft cards, draft-eligible males fleeing to Canada or Sweden, and marches on the Pentagon are some of the ways the protests were carried out. The women's liberation movement of the 1970s is another example. An eruption of youth protest in Paris nearly brought down the French government in 1968. Protest by blacks in South Africa pushed the government to begin dismantling apartheid--the systematic policy of discrimination aimed at nonwhites. In the United States, beginning in the late 1980s, gay and lesbian activists protested alleged government inaction on AIDS research. Similarly, the abortion controversy created numerous counter-protests as the antiabortion and pro-choice sides faced off against each other, seeking to gain political support. The international Greenpeace organization mounted frequent protests against nuclear power and weapons testing. In Europe and the United States environmentalists and animal rights activists have created public disturbances over many issues.