Civil Disobidience

Henry David Thoreau wrote and kept journals about his everyday life. He was always unsure what he wanted to do with his life. So after graduating Harvard he was a teacher for a short time but it didn’t last long. The one constant thing that he did was writing. Henry David Thoreau was imprisoned for refusal to pay his poll tax, and after jail he wrote “on the duty of civil disobedience” after this he realized that he should pursue writing as a career and he continued writing.

Thoreau’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance influenced the political thoughts and actions of others such as leo Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

During a rain storm, he became ill with bronchitis. His health declined over three years with brief periods of remission, until he eventually became bedridden. Recognizing the terminal nature of his disease, Thoreau spent his last years revisiting and editing his unpublished works. He also wrote letters and journal entries until he became too weak to continue. He died on May 6, 1862 at the age of 44.