Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience"

Henry David Thoreau's essay on "Civil Disobedience" inspired many leaders, spanning from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr., to use nonviolent resistance to enact change. King wrote: "I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau" ("Civil Disobedience," Introduction). In the case of Thoreau, the Transcendentalist author of Walden refused to pay taxes to support what he considered to be an unjust conflict, the Mexican-American War. However, in his essay, Thoreau's argument has far greater implications than a single war, and instead he argues that all forms of collective representation including democratic ones are fundamentally less just and valid than the individual conscience. " This American government -- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one,...
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