(Original signature) Portrait of Henry D. Thoreau. Undated photo.
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Henry David Thoreau was an extremely efficient tax demonstrator. In terms of social impact per unit of personal sacrifice, he did something remarkable 175 years ago when he was jailed – briefly but significantly – for refusing to pay his taxes in Concord, Massachusetts.
On July 23, 1846, Thoreau set out from his rustic cabin on Walden Pond to run an errand in the nearby town of Concord. On his way, he met local Sheriff Sam Staples, who took the opportunity to arrest Thoreau for failing to pay his local poll tax – a fairly modest annual fee of $ 1.50 per adult male Massachusetts citizen.
When he met Staples that midsummer afternoon, Thoreau was no stranger to tax protests. He had stopped paying taxes a few years earlier, prompted by the anti-slavery tax protest of his friend and neighbor Amos Bronson Alcott (father of author Louisa May Alcott). Alcott had been arrested in 1843 for failing to pay poll taxes.
Like Alcott, Thoreau believed that taxes – all taxes paid to every level of government – were morally compromised by the institution of slavery. The subtle differences in fiscal federalism were indifferent to both men: local and state taxes such as poll tax were important, albeit indirect, pillars of the national slave state.
The sheriff had ignored Thoreau’s tax sins for several years. But after the United States USM declared war on Mexico in 1846, Thoreau condemned the move as yet another attempt to protect and expand slavery. His public stance on the war gave new meaning to his tax protest, forcing Staples to abandon his benevolent neglect and enforce the tax law.
As it turns out, Staples may itself be outdated. As Walter Harding pointed out in American Heritage magazine, Thoreau’s arrest was almost certainly illegal. Massachusetts law allowed the seizure and sale of property to make up for late taxes, but not (except in extreme cases) the arrest of the late taxpayer.
Apparently Staples was unaware of such legal subtleties. And Thoreau was happy – eager even – to be arrested; Detention would pay more attention to his cause than a sheriff’s auction of his modest possessions, even on the steps of the courthouse.
Old prison with its barred bars
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Much to Thoreau’s dismay, however, his time in prison turned out to be quite short. Almost immediately, an unknown woman wrapped in a veil (commonly believed to be Thoreau’s Aunt Maria) paid his outstanding tax debt. After allowing Thoreau to spend a single night in his cell, the sheriff released him the next morning.
Thoreau had hoped for more time behind bars, convinced that imprisonment would draw attention to his protest. But at least he was locked up long enough to shame his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson for his moral shyness. “Henry, why are you here?” Emerson asked the younger man on a brief visit to the prison. “Why are you not here?” Thoreau asked back demonstratively.
Thoreau returned to his home in Walden Pond, disappointed with his early release; through no fault of his own he had suffered only modest inconvenience from his civil disobedience, which limited his direct public effect.
But Thoreau had other tools at his disposal. His tax protest and subsequent imprisonment formed the basis of his famous essay “Civil Disobedience,” which was first published in 1849.
“I say break the law,” Thoreau wrote in one of his more quotable passages from the essay. “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”
In Thoreau’s case, the violation of the law was rather limited and the resulting penalties rather modest. And above all, his protest did not stop the intended machine: it would require another, murderous war to end the hated institution of slavery.
But the success of Thoreau’s civil disobedience should not be measured solely by the yardstick of its immediate goal. Over the past three quarters of a century, his violations of the law have inspired legions of political and social activists, including giants like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
The black American civil rights activist Martin Luther King (1929-1968) speaks during the … [+]
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In other words, Thoreau may not have managed to kill his own dragon – but he inspired others to kill their own.