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Sadly, Thoreau died (of tuberculosisis, at age 42) in May 1862, slightly under seven months before CIC Lincoln signed and issued an executive order we call the Emancipation Proclamation. The arc of the universe may always bend toward justice (or not), but certainly not always in individual cases. (Continuing my Boston Chauvinism): The Thoreau family was Bostonian, but moved to Concord, Massachusetts in 1800, 17 years before the birth of Henry David. Still, Bostonians raised him! Being an abolitionist, I assume that HDT was also a Republican (old school, of course). Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist.<2> He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state. <snip> On July 24 or July 25, 1846, Thoreau ran into the local tax collector, Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes. Thoreau refused because of his opposition to the Mexican-American War and slavery, and he spent a night in jail because of this refusal. (The next day Thoreau was freed when someone, likely his aunt, paid the tax against his wishes.<38>) The experience had a strong impact on Thoreau. In January and February 1848, he delivered lectures on "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government"<39> explaining his tax resistance at the Concord Lyceum. Bronson Alcott attended the lecture, writing in his journal on January 26: Heard Thoreau's lecture before the Lyceum on the relation of the individual to the State– an admirable statement of the rights of the individual to self-government, and an attentive audience. His allusions to the Mexican War, to Mr. Hoar's expulsion from Carolina, his own imprisonment in Concord Jail for refusal to pay his tax, Mr. Hoar's payment of mine when taken to prison for a similar refusal, were all pertinent, well considered, and reasoned. I took great pleasure in this deed of Thoreau's. —Bronson Alcott, Journals (1938)<40> Thoreau revised the lecture into an essay entitled Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience). In May 1849 it was published by Elizabeth Peabody in the Aesthetic Papers. Thoreau had taken up a version of Percy Shelley's principle in the political poem The Mask of Anarchy (1819), that Shelley begins with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time—and then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action.<41> <snip> After John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, many prominent voices in the abolitionist movement distanced themselves from Brown, or damned him with faint praise. Thoreau was disgusted by this, and he composed a speech—A Plea for Captain John Brown—which was uncompromising in its defense of Brown and his actions. Thoreau's speech proved persuasive: first the abolitionist movement began to accept Brown as a martyr, and by the time of the American Civil War entire armies of the North were literally singing Brown's praises. As a contemporary biographer of John Brown put it: "If, as Alfred Kazin suggests, without John Brown there would have been no Civil War, we would add that without the Concord Transcendentalists, John Brown would have had little cultural impact."<51> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_ThoreauA remarkable wiki of a remarkable, albeit too brief, life. I recommend reading all of it. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (pronounced <ˈmoːɦənd̪aːs ˈkərəmtʃənd̪ ˈɡaːnd̪ʱi> ( listen); 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the preeminent leader and freedom fighter of Indian nationalism in British-ruled India. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahatma (Sanskrit: "high-souled," "venerable"<2>)—applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa,<3>—is now used worldwide. He is also called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for "father,"<4> "papa."<4><5>) in India. <snip> Gandhi's ethical thinking was heavily influenced by a handful of books, which he repeatedly meditated upon. They included especially Plato's Apology and John Ruskin's Unto this Last (1862) (both of which he translated into his native Gujarati); William Salter's Ethical Religion (1889); Henry David Thoreau's On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849); and Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894). Ruskin inspired his decision to live an austere life on a commune, at first on the Phoenix Farm in Natal and then on the Tolstoy Farm just outside Johannesburg, South Africa.<40>
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