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.
Transcendentalism is a philosophical, spiritual, and literary movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in the New England region of the United States. A core belief is in the inherent goodness of people and nature, and while society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. Transcendentalists saw divine experience inherent in the everyday, rather than believing in a distant heaven. Transcendentalists saw physical and spiritual phenomena as part of dynamic processes rather than discrete entities.
"A Plea for Captain John Brown" is an essay by Henry David Thoreau. It is based on a speech Thoreau 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 for short, is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his repulsion of slavery and the Mexican–American War (1846–1848).
Tax resistance is the refusal to pay tax because of opposition to the government that is imposing the tax, or to government policy, or as opposition to taxation in itself. Tax resistance is a form of direct action and, if in violation of the tax regulations, also a form of civil disobedience.
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 a 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.
The Ralph Waldo Emerson House is a house museum located at 18 Cambridge Turnpike, Concord, Massachusetts, and a National Historic Landmark for its associations with American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. He and his family named the home Bush. The museum is open mid-April to mid-October; an admission fee is charged.
The Service is an essay written in 1840 by Henry David Thoreau. He submitted it to The Dial for publication, but they declined to print it. It was not published until after Thoreau's death.
"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.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) is a book by American writer Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). It recounts his experience on a boat trip with his brother on the Concord River and Merrimack River.
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.
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.
