When historians and teachers look at American culture, the 1800s and commonly used quotes, they are bound to run into the Transcendentalists, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. These two individuals, among many others, would go on to create towns to help runaway slaves, and they would willfully break the law in not paying taxes in order to not support war or tyrannical government. They are also known for promoting elegant nature-based poetry and the term “civil disobedience.” Their words have carried such weight, that their work is often shared, so what’s missing? What is not known or even spoken about, is their rather powerful positions regarding the nature of government. Their positions challenge nearly everyone today who support the systems that be, unwilling to do what it takes to embrace true freedom. Let us break it down, because if we don’t, who will?
Supporting the premises of many Abolitionists such as Lysander Spooner, in sharing that governments aggregate slavery, Ralph Waldo Emerson states “slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.” But America doesn’t have kings or queens, it’s a government “for the people, by the people,” so is it any better? Emerson states, “Representative Government is really misrepresentative; Union is a conspiracy against the Northern States which the Northern States are to have the privilege of paying for; the adding of Cuba and Central America to the slave marts is enlarging the area of Freedom. Manifest Destiny, Democracy, Freedom, fine names for an ugly thing. They call it otto of rose and lavender,—I call it bilge-water. They call it Chivalry and Freedom; I call it the stealing all the earnings of a poor man and the earnings of his little girl and boy, and the earnings of all that shall come from him, his children’s children forever. But this is Union, and this is Democracy; and our poor people, led by the nose by these fine words, dance and sing, ring bells and fire cannon, with every new link of the chain which is forged for their limbs by the plotters in the Capitol.” Let’s not forget, Emerson also details how there was philosophical “anarchy” or “no rulers” in certain parts of the country, yet there was order; an observation also made by American founding father Thomas Paine.
Surely America can be reformed if it ever turns tyrannical, right? Emerson states, “There never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude, to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the State on the principle of right and love. All those who have pretended this design, have been partial reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State. I do not call to mind a single human being who has steadily denied the authority of the laws, on the simple ground of his own moral nature. Such designs, full of genius and full of fate as they are, are not entertained except avowedly as air-pictures. If the individual who exhibits them, dare to think them practicable, he disgusts scholars and churchmen; and men of talent, and women of superior sentiments, cannot hide their contempt.” Ask yourself if we are able to disobey purely because it’s wrong, and not because we have some alternative man-made constructed belief or arbitrary system.
Henry David Thoreau helps us expand on this, stating “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?” “The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” “Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast?” “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” “Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.” “If it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law.” “Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.” “If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.”
But “we have to vote,” right? Thoreau states, “Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.” “In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead... Its officer, as a living man, may have human virtues and a thought in his brain, but as the tool of an institution, a jailer or constable it may be, he is not a whit superior to his prison key or his staff. Herein is the tragedy; that men doing outrage to their proper natures, even those called wise and good, lend themselves to perform the office of inferior and brutal ones. Hence come war and slavery in; and what else may not come in by this opening? But certainly there are modes by which a man may put bread into his mouth which will not prejudice him as a companion and neighbor.” “To one who habitually endeavors to contemplate the true state of things, the political state can hardly be said to have any existence whatever. “ “What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all.” “I doubt if there is a judge in Massachusetts who is prepared to resign his office, and get his living innocently, whenever it is required of him to pass sentence under a law which is merely contrary to the law of God. I am compelled to see that they put themselves, or rather are by character, in this respect, exactly on a level with the marine who discharges his musket in any direction he is ordered to. They are just as much tools, and as little men. Certainly, they are not the more to be respected, because their master enslaves their understandings and consciences, instead of their bodies... Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both North and South. It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.”
Emerson shares with us the only benefit of slavery, “I conceive that thus to detach a man and make him feel that he is to owe all to himself, is the way to make him strong and rich; and here the optimist must find, if anywhere, the benefit of Slavery. We have many teachers; we are in this world for culture, to be instructed in realities, in the laws of moral and intelligent nature; and our education is not conducted by toys and luxuries, but by austere and rugged masters, by poverty, solitude, passions, War, Slavery; to know that Paradise is under the shadow of swords; that divine sentiments which are always soliciting us are breathed into us from on high, and are an offset to a Universe of suffering and crime.” This teaches us to have faith and courage as we move forward in this world, which may come with struggle. We can, and we will, overcome.
So what is it that we do? Thoreau states, “If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.” “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root” “If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, ‘But what shall I do?’ my answer is, ‘If you really wish to do anything, resign your office.’ When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.”
Above all, remember this. Thoreau tells us, “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least;’ and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe- ‘That government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”
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