In 1857, he became acquainted with the militant abolitionists and guerrilla fighter John Brown who led his followers to a “private war” against slavery, and two years later was hanged.
He railed against social injustice and slavery. She served, among others, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King as a source of inspiration for the conscience-led, non-violent resistance against the authorities, and acts up to the present day as a standard work and namesake of civil disobedience more.īeginning in 1849, Thoreau earned his living as a surveyor, a casual worker, and Speaker. The font became the “Bible” of the “heroes of the insubordination”. The duty of disobedience against the state). These lectures took it to the Essay Resistance to Civil Government (1849), which, under the later title of Civil Disobedience was known (dt. Inspired by the night in jail, Thoreau held later lectures to the reason of his refusal to pay. The debts were settled by whom, is not to be finally resolved, and Thoreau was finally released from prison. The war began, however, until a short time before Thoreau’s imprisonment, the tax debts were significantly older. July 1846 spent Thoreau in jail because he refused to give up his tax debt to Massachusetts, the Poll tax or head-tax, to settle, and with this tax money, the American government (and thus slavery and the expansion of the Mexico war) to support. Thoreau as a Prophet of civil disobedienceĢ3. Its descriptions of Nature, had a great impact on Thoreau. An author, he was particularly fond of and often read was Alexander von Humboldt. The remaining time he could use to read, write, reflect, and explore the nature. The Experiment “Walden” made it clear to Thoreau, that six weeks of wage-earners of the year, are sufficient to secure his livelihood. Or life in the woods) he described his simple life on the lake and its natural and built-in topics such as the economy and society. Here he lived for about two years alone and independent, but not isolated. In July 1845, the independence day was Thoreau a self-built log cabin (Walden hat) in Concord, on Walden lake on a plot Emersons. Under Emerson’s influence developed Thoreau reform ideas. After the death of his brother, Thoreau lived for some time in Emerson’s house in Concord, near Boston. Thoreau met in 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had founded as a Poet, Unitarians, and philosopher of the Unitarian movement of the American transcendentalism, heard a large group of American Poets and thinkers attached.