He listened to the inner voice of his conscience, a voice all men possess but few men follow. If it is possible for one word to summarize a man, then that word would be the advice he offered in Walden: “Simplify, simplify, simplify.” Thoreau was a self-consciously simple man who organized his life around basic truths. He chose, wisely no doubt for himself, to be the bachelor of thought and Nature…. He was bred to no profession he never married he lived alone he never went to church he never voted he refused to pay a tax to the State he ate no flesh he drank no wine he never knew the use of tobacco and though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. His friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, offered the following psychological portrait:

With a childhood surrounded by rivers, woods, and meadows, he became an avid student of nature. Henry David Thoreau was born into the modest New England family of a pen-maker. The incarceration may have been brief but it has had enduring effects through “Civil Disobedience.” To understand why the essay has exerted such powerful force over time, it is necessary to examine both Thoreau the man and the circumstances of his arrest. Without his knowledge or consent, however, relatives settled the “debt” and a disgruntled Thoreau was released after only one night. He was supposed to remain in jail until a fine was paid which he also declined to pay. Thoreau declined to pay the tax and so, in July 1846, he was arrested and jailed. There were no income taxes and Thoreau did not own enough land to worry about property taxes but there was the hated poll tax - a capital tax levied equally on all adults within a community. Because he detested slavery and because tax revenues contributed to the support of it, Thoreau decided to become a tax rebel. It is Thoreau’s extremely personal response to being imprisoned for breaking the law. But “Civil Disobedience” is not an essay of abstract theory. “Civil Disobedience” is an analysis of the individual’s relationship to the state that focuses on why men obey governmental law even when they believe it to be unjust.

It is one of the most influential political tracts ever written by an American. Americans know Thoreau primarily as the author of the book Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854) but it is “Civil Disobedience” that established his reputation in the wider political world. The answer lies in a brief essay that has been variously titled but which is often referred to simply as “Civil Disobedience” (1849). How, then, did he profoundly influence such political giants as Mohandas Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, and Martin Luther King Jr.?

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an introspective man who wandered the woods surrounding the small village of Concord, Massachusetts, recording the daily growth of plants and the migration of birds in his ever-present journal.

Hd thoreau civil disobedience