Civil Disobedience

Location:

United States

Genres:

Networks:

Description:

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. Henry David Thoreau delivered Civil Disobedience as a lecture in 1848 and published it a year later under the title "Resistance to Civil Government." He had spent a night in the Concord jail for refusing to pay a poll tax to a government that enforced slavery and was fighting a war of expansion in Mexico. A friend or relative paid the tax for him the next morning, which annoyed him. The essay argues that a citizen is not only permitted but obligated to refuse cooperation with an unjust state — that one honest man in Massachusetts, if he would only stop paying his taxes, could bring down slavery. Thoreau was not being rhetorical. He meant it literally. The essay was largely ignored when it was published. Tolstoy picked it up decades later and began corresponding about nonviolence. Gandhi read it in a South African jail and organized a resistance. King read Gandhi and marched on Selma. The most influential political essay in American history spent its first fifty years in a drawer. Duration - 53m. Author - Henry David Thoreau. Narrator - Digital Voice Ben E. Published Date - Thursday, 29 January 2026. Copyright - © 1849 Henry David Thoreau ©.

Language:

English