Henry David Thoreau was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience", an argument in favor of citizen disobedience against an unjust state.
John Brown was an American abolitionist in the decades preceding the Civil War. First reaching national prominence in the 1850s for his radical abolitionism and fighting in Bleeding Kansas, Brown was captured, tried, and executed by the Commonwealth of Virginia for a raid and incitement of a slave rebellion at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859.
"A Plea for Captain John Brown" is an essay by Henry David Thoreau, based on a speech he first delivered to an audience at Concord, Massachusetts, on October 30, 1859, two weeks after John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, and repeated several times before Brown's execution on December 2, 1859. It was later published as a part of Echoes of Harper's Ferry in 1860.
Resistance to Civil Government, also called On the Duty of Civil Disobedience or Civil Disobedience, is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should prioritize their conscience over compliance with unjust laws, asserting that passive submission to government authority enables injustice. Thoreau was motivated by his opposition to slavery and the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), which he viewed as morally and politically objectionable.
Samuel Worcester Rowse was an American illustrator, lithographer, and painter. He was most famous for his drawings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Rowse is also well known for his lithograph, The Resurrection of Henry Box Brown at Philadelphia.
Slavery in Massachusetts is an 1854 essay by Henry David Thoreau based on a speech he gave at an anti-slavery rally at Framingham, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1854, after the re-enslavement in Boston, Massachusetts of fugitive slave Anthony Burns.
Franklin Benjamin Sanborn was an American journalist, teacher, author, reformer, and abolitionist. Sanborn was a social scientist and memorialist of American transcendentalism who wrote early biographies of many of the movement's key figures. He founded the American Social Science Association in 1865 "to treat wisely the great social problems of the day." He was a member of the so-called Secret Six, or "Committee of Six", which funded or helped obtain funding for John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry; in fact, he introduced Brown to the others. A recent scholar describes him as "humorless."
"Herald of Freedom" was an essay by Henry David Thoreau, published in The Dial in 1844, that praised Herald of Freedom, the journal of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society, and its editor, Nathaniel P. Rogers. After Rogers died, Thoreau revised the essay and republished it.
"Paradise Regained" is an essay written by Henry David Thoreau and published in 1843 in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. It takes the form of a review of John Adolphus Etzler's book The Paradise within the Reach of all Men, without Labor, by Powers of Nature and Machinery: An Address to all intelligent men, in two parts, which had come out in a new edition the previous year. The essay amplifies such Thoreauvian themes as imploring people to self-betterment and a distrust of humanity's attempts to improve upon nature.
Sir Walter Raleigh is an essay by Henry David Thoreau that has been reconstructed from notes he wrote for an 1843 lecture and drafts of an article he was preparing for The Dial.
Wendell Phillips Before the Concord Lyceum is an essay style letter-to-the-editor written by Henry David Thoreau and published in The Liberator in 1845 that praised the abolitionist lecturer Wendell Phillips.
Reform and the Reformers is an essay written by Henry David Thoreau. The essay was never published in his lifetime, and has been cobbled together from existing lecture notes that Thoreau himself picked over for his other writings, such as Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
"Thomas Carlyle and His Works" is an essay written by Henry David Thoreau that praises the writings of Thomas Carlyle.
"The Last Days of John Brown" is an essay by Henry David Thoreau, written in 1860, that praised the executed abolitionist militia leader John Brown. He read it at the July 4, 1860, memorial service held at Brown's home in North Elba. It was first published in The Liberator of July 27, 1860.
"Life Without Principle" is an essay by Henry David Thoreau that offers his program for a righteous livelihood. It was published in 1863, a few months after his death.
Henry Clarke Wright was an American abolitionist, pacifist, anarchist and feminist, for over two decades a controversial figure.
Horace Mann Jr. was an American botanist, son of Horace Mann. His mother was one of the famous Peabody Sisters Mary Tyler Peabody Mann. Mentored in botany by Henry David Thoreau, whom he accompanied on an expedition to Minnesota, Mann took classes in zoology with Louis Agassiz and assisted William Tufts Brigham botanize the Hawaiian Islands. Mann was to have headed the botanical garden at Harvard, but died of tuberculosis at age twenty-four. His own herbarium was purchased by Cornell University and became the basis of that university's collection. He is credited with the discovery of more than 100 species.
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown, from October 16 to 18, 1859, to initiate a slave revolt in Southern states by taking over the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. It has been called the dress rehearsal for the American Civil War.
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers is an anthology of works by Henry David Thoreau, edited by his sister Sophia Thoreau and his friends William Ellery Channing and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was published in 1866, after Thoreau’s death, by Ticknor and Fields, the Boston firm that had published Walden.
Henry Bugbee Kane was an M.I.T. fund director, book illustrator, author of nature books for children, and nature photographer.
