Civil Disobedience

A night in jail over a tax became the most influential American essay on conscience. Thoreau argues that a person's first duty is to do right, that an unjust law has no rightful claim, and that the just response is not patience but refusal. King carried it. Gandhi carried it. The essay outlived the war it protested and the empire Gandhi faced, because it speaks to the permanent question of what a free person owes a government that does wrong.

The Concord writer who spent a night in jail for refusing a tax and turned it into the most influential American essay on conscience. Civil Disobedience argues that a person's first duty is to do right, and that an unjust law has no claim on a just man. Walden is the longer argument: that a life lived deliberately, apart from the rush, is itself a civic act. King carried him. Gandhi carried him. The jail cell outlasted the empire.