Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862; born David Henry Thoreau) was first and foremost an Anarchist. He was also an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, and philosopher who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau’s books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. He was famous for writing: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.” Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism.

He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Some anarchists claim Thoreau as an inspiration. Though Civil Disobedience calls for improving rather than abolishing government — “I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government” — the direction of this improvement aims at anarchism: “That government is best which governs not at all.”

Walden Years: 1845–1847
Thoreau embarked on a two-year experiment in simple living on July 4, 1845, when he moved to a small self-built house on land owned by Emerson in a second-growth forest around the shores of Walden Pond. The house was not in wilderness but at the edge of town, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from his family home.

It is a widely known fact that Thoreau's mom walked to his cabin everyday to bring him lunch.

On one trip into town, he ran into the local tax collector 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, over his protests, when his aunt paid his taxes.) His later essay on this experience and his reasons for taking this stand, Civil Disobedience, influenced such political theorists and activists as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.