Resistance to Civil Government: On The Duty of Civil Disobedience

Probably the best-known essay of the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government: On The Duty of Civil Disobedience was originally published in 1849. In this essay, Thoreau argues that people should not allow governments to override or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a responsibility to resist enabling such complacency to enable the government to turn them into agents of injustice. The horrors of slavery and the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) were also sources of motivation for Thoreau writing this essay.