When was thoreau arrested

Thoreau, who believed this poll tax supported the Mexican-American war and the expansion of slavery into the Southwest, had stopped paying this tax in but the sheriff, Sam Staples, failed to take action against him for several years. Thoreau, who was living in his cabin at Walden pond at the time of the arrest, was not the first Concord resident to be arrested for failing to pay this tax.

The incident later inspired Thoreau to write his essay Civil Disobedience in which Thoreau argues for nonviolent, passive disobedience to protest unjust government actions. Alumni Volunteers The Boardroom Alumni.

Curriculum Materials. Add Event. Main Menu Home. Henry David Thoreau — Thoreau, Henry D. The Portable Thoreau. New York: Penguin Books. Remember Me. Rural officers of those days—and often nowadays too— tended to consider themselves the law; they had no legal training.

He probably assumed that any violation of the law was to be answered by arrest. As for Thoreau, since he knew Alcott had been arrested for the same offense, he too probably assumed that incarceration was the legal punishment for nonpayment of taxes. Certainly for his own purposes arrest would have been preferable to a public auction of his books.

Martyrdom of the protester is one of the essential elements of the theory of civil disobedience. The reasoning is that if a protester is willing to suffer martyrdom, he is much more likely to win a sympathetic ear from his fellow man for his cause. It has often been wondered why it took Sam Staples three years to get around to arresting Thoreau. Staples was not only the constable for Concord, but also the tax collector and, as a matter of fact, the jailer, too.

The office of tax collector was neither an appointive nor an elective office; it was open to the lowest bidder. In Staples won the office with a bid of collection charges of one cent on the dollar, a rate he had raised to one and a half cents by In he resigned his office.

According to the law he had to clear his books before he resigned his office or he would have been out-of-pocket any uncollected taxes. Please support this year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

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