Civil Disobedience By H.D. Thoreau example essay topic

361 words
Civil Disobedience By, H.D. Thoreau H.D. Thoreau lived in a time of slavery and taxation. He was an abolitionist and vehemently anti-establishment. Civil Disobedience is the story of his life which is laced with quotes and comparisons of history and literature. The story is also his views on the American and other governments. On page 19 he first compares the army, the tax collectors and government servers to machines and says that they have no morals. "A drab of state, a cloth-o'-silver slut, to have her train borne up and her soul trail in the dirt".

This is a quote Thoreau took from Cyril Tourneur, and used it to describe how the capitalists and bureaucrats functioned in his time. Thoreau hated the fact that the American government had fallen subject to corruption and deception. When Thoreau was living Propaganda was to the democracy as violence was to a dictatorship. Thoreau believed that slaves, Native Americans, and the common people were being wronged by our government.

This made him one of the first outspoken anarchists in the Boston area. He was jailed for a short time because he refused to pay his taxes. He refused because he did not support the Mexican war, he did not support the poll tax, which meant that you had to pay to vote. Thoreau took a stand and proclaimed he wouldn't support the governments ploy to scam money off of the working people in order to fight a war that wasn't necessary in the first place.

Thoreau, on the other hand, did believe in paying his highway tax. This was because he wanted to be known as a "Bad subject but a good neighbor". He was a very educated man who attended Harvard. He also knew what he wanted and was willing to sacrifice his physical well-being, and his societal stature for his beliefs.

Unfortunately he didn't live to see the end of the civil war and the abolition of slavery. He died in 1862, at the beginning of the war. Civil Disobedience by H.D. Thoreau.