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The Natural Bridge, VirginiaFrederic Edwin Church, 1852

Name one historical event or discovery in the period 1770-1870

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Context for Thoreau’s essay

• American Revolution – attitudes toward government and the role of the individual

• Manifest Destiny and westward expansion• Mexican-American war • Slavery• Attitude toward Nature

American Revolution

• 1755 – 1763 Britain and France at war• War ends and Britain, France and Spain divide up North

and South American• Britain in debt and taxes colonies to pay for war• Colonists export raw materials to Britain and import

goods• Colonists complain of taxation without representation• Britain undercuts colonial importers to keep British East

India Company solvent

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• Boston Tea Party – Colonial businessmen disguised as Indians climbed on board British ships and threw 342 chests of tea overboard

• King George III closed Boston harbour, forbid town meetings, and forced colonists to pay for the tea

• 1774 each colony except Georgia agreed to boycott trade with Britain

• Britain sent troops to the colonies to confiscate munitions

• 1775 - First battles between British troops and colonial Minutemen militia at Lexington and Concord

• 1775-1783 – American Revolution, France supplied colonists with munitions

• July 4, 1776 – Thomas Jefferson writes The Declaration of Independence which advocated respect for the right of revolutions and the rights of the individual:

“WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Thomas Jefferson

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• 1783 Treaty of Paris recognized independence of the U.S.A.

• 13 states established with western boundary of the Mississippi River; Florida returned to Spain

• 25,700 loyalists and revolutionaries dead from war and disease

• U.S. has large debt

Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny

• Period of expansion and land acquisition; • Manifest Destiny: U.S. believes it has a God-given right

to take land, spread democracy.• Trying to get the Oregon territory from Britain, the

Lousiana Purchase from France, the southwest from Mexico, southeast from Spain

• Native Indian herded west to increasingly small territory• 1816 – 1821: 6 new states added to U.S.• 1835 – Texas declares independence from Mexico• 1845 – U.S. annexes Texas

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Mexican-American War

• 1846 – U.S. declares war on Mexico - fight for control of southwest

• Northern U.S. politicians objected to Mexican-American war:- seen as land grab to increase U.S. boundaries- get more land for cotton production- increase number of slave states

• Daniel Webster, politician, denounced war• Southerners blamed Mexico for refusing to

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Slavery

• Post-Revolution - “all men are created equal” prompts reform movements – abolition and suffrage

• Slavery issue divided North and South since south relied on slavery for cotton production

• Numerous legal battles regarding which areas of North American allow slavery

• By early 19th century – there are Slave States and Free States

• Each state sends 2 senators to Washington; #slave states = #free states

Slavery, cont.

• Difficult to repeal slavery• Slave states determined to maintain balance in senate• Massachusetts ended slavery in 1783• 1832 – William Lloyd Garrison formed New England

Anti-Slavery Society

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Relationship with Nature

• Huge frontier; perceived as uncharted, with no geographic limitations

• Relationship with nature: New World, the Biblical Promised Land,

• Nature as untouched, agent of moral and spiritual transformation

• Reflects human impermanence and smallness in comparison to grandeur and power of nature

• Celebration of self-reliance, individuality, your own intuition rather than inherited knowledge, rejection of conformity

• Return to nature to find spiritually and physically pure state

• Utopian experiments in response to increasing industrialization Utopian movements prolific – 1840-2860 approximately 84 utopian communities were established in the U.S. – (Transcendentalists, Icarians, Mormons, Harmonists, Fruitlands, Shakers)

• Invention of steam engine, cotton gin, spinning mill• Industrialization, cities full;• U.S. population grew from 7 – 12 million people

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American Renaissance1830 - 1860

• Concord, Massachusetts centre of Renaissance in New England

• Historical reasons: • first town settled off the coast of

Massachusetts,• Had printing press since 1639• Large population with militia• Home of the original conflict with Britain

(Boston Tea Party)• Intellectual life

• Transcendentalists – group of intellectuals, writers and ministers, including women to discuss in conversation, discuss questions of philosophy, – Essential nature of human beings is good; society

corrupts– Childhood is the pure state– Moral insight more important than money– Nature as path to spiritual, intellectual and moral

development

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– Transcendentalists formed The Dial to publish their work since conventional literary journals found their work too radical

– Provided forum for emerging American writers and Transcendental philosophy

– Published many writers whose works are now canonical

– Membership of group varied, but included Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Elizabeth Peabody and many others

Henry David Thoreaub. 12 July 1817, Concord, Massachusettsd. 6 May 1862, Concord, MassachusettsMajor texts: A week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1848Resistance to Civil Government (On the Duty of Civil Disobedience) 1849Walden 1854Journals, 1966 (Posthumously)20 vols of poems, essays and writings

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Brief Biography

• Life of genteel poverty• 1833 – entered Harvard• Dropped out more than once for reasons of financial and

physical health• Invited to speak at graduation• Hired immediately as a teacher• Quit two weeks later due to arguments surrounding use

of corporal punishment• Unable to find another post due to financial depression• Started his own school and brother joined him• Prospered until brother’s tuberculosis forced him to quit

• Thoreau’s only known romance was with Ellen Sewall in 1839. Her father was a conservative Unitarian; objected to Thoreau’s politics and religion

• Met Ralph Waldo Emerson, prominent writer of area• Emerson encourage Thoreau’s writing• Emerson mentored Thoreau, introduced him to

Transcendentalists, publishers• 1841-3 – Emerson invited Thoreau to live in Emerson’s

home when Thoreau’s school closed• Used The Dial as outlet for publishing• First literary works were poems, but Emerson was

discouraging and Thoreau destroyed a great deal of early work

• Emerson arranged for Thoreau to tutor his nephews in New York

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• Thoreau met Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune

• Greeley volunteered to be Thoreau’s literary agent• Thoreau became homesick for Concord and left New

York after 6 months.• 1845 – persuaded Emerson to let him build a cabin on

Emerson’s property on Walden Pond, 2 miles south of Concord

• Intention was to write an elegiac account of boat trip with his deceased brother

• Thoreau lived at Walden Pond for 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days

• 1843 – Bronson Alcott refused to pay poll tax to protest legality of slavery

• Avoided jail term when someone else paid the tax

• Thoreau inspired by Alcott’s protest and refused to pay his poll tax

• 1846 – jailer/tax collector saw him on the street and offered to pay the tax for him, but Thoreau refused

• Aunt paid it for him, but Thoreau resisted efforts to let him out of jail

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• Thoreau’s friendship with Emerson waned - issues with imitation, Thoreau’s politics

• Emerson gave eulogy at Thoreau’s funeral• Thoreau produced 40 volumes of journals in 25 years;

wrote continuously until a few months before his death at age 44

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

• Title?

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• Duty: moral or legal obligation• Civil: pertaining to the community,

belonging to the citizens: orderly, well-governed

• On the obligation to disobey in an orderly fashion OR

• On the obligation to disobey laws and tax demands of the government

• “That government is best which governs least…” (265). • Implies that citizens are self-reliant, reasonable,

individuals

• Makes more radical assertion: • “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” (265).

• Suggest the possibility of freedom, but also anarchy• Very different from Swift’s perspective, which insisted on

traditional forms of government and religion• Ideology grounded in American Revolution• Right of individuals to repel a government

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• “The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure” (265).

• Thoreau alludes here to the division in the country regarding the U.S. declaration of war on Mexico; many of the free states saw the war as self-interested, rather than just

• Refusal to accept governmental actions as just and correct simply because those actions originate with the government

• “This American government, - what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavouring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? …It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves; and, if ever they should use it in earnest as a real one against each other, it will surely split” (265).

• Refers to the Revolution and lost potential• Eerily foreshadows the Civil War, which split the country

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• To date, the government has been an impediment to the advancement of the country

• Held back trade, commerce• Majority government rules out of physical strength• Majority government cannot in all cases be just since it

sometimes goes against the minority• Individual conscience should take precedence over law• Otherwise, why does each man have a conscience?

Thoreau’s definition of citizenship:“The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said, that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a white more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice” (266-7).

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• Undue respect for the law can create a military composed of men who participate against their will

• Most men serve the government as machines• Machine imagery contradicts contemporary thoughts

regarding the state of humanity, respect for nature, spontaneity and non-conformity rather than rules and order

• Such men “command no more respect than men of straw, or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these are commonly esteemed good citizens” (267).

• Those reformers who follow their conscience and serve the State by resisting it are branded enemies

• Posse comitatus: body of men over 15 who can be summoned by the sheriff, literally, the ‘force of the country’

• Notice emphasis on the individual• importance of exercise of one’s personal conscience• Ability to think for oneself• Resistance to organized bodies such as military,

government as hindrance to humanity’s natural, and therefore, more elevated state

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Manifesto

• “I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government whish is the slave’s government also”(268).

• “The people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people” (269).

• Makes the comparison between the present injustice of slavery and the earlier injustice of taxation without representation:

“All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of ’75”(268).

• In fact, faced with the taxation question now, he would see it as less significant than slavery and the military presence in Mexico

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Offers measure for determining when one should resist the government:

“If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself” (269).

You must not undertake injustice, even it such activity inconveniences or harms you.

You are not obliged to eradicate all wrongs, but you are obliged to refuse to support such wrongs

To disapprove of a government, yet continue to pledge your allegiance and support to it, is to hinder reform of the government

On voting

• Voting is not enough• Voting is like a game and you bet on the

outcome• Voting for the right is doing nothing for the right• Don’t wait for the majority to prevail• You must act• “Action from principle, - the perception and the

performance of right, - changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with any thing which was”(273).

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• Unjust laws exist• People obey them because they fear the consequences

of transgressing them• But a good government would anticipate and reward

reform• A law that requires you to be the agent of injustice to

another should be broken • Abolitionists should withdraw their support of the State• Tax-gatherer is representative of the state• Therefore, refuse to pay taxes• Welcome jail as the refuge of the just