Thoreau, Henry David

1817–1862

Philosopher and Author

Henry David Thoreau shared with Ralph Waldo Emerson and other transcendentalists an ideal of manhood grounded in scholarly activity, self-awareness, and self-reliance. More radical in his advocacy of dissent, Thoreau espoused an environmentally conscious definition of manhood that encompassed, at least in part, the tenets of capitalism. Whereas Emerson initially eschewed market capitalism, only to embrace it whole-heartedly after 1860, Thoreau accepted market exchange, but rejected the exploitation of both labor and nature.

Thoreau graduated from Harvard in 1837, and then returned to his native Concord, Massachusetts, to take a position as a teacher in the town's public school. During the 1840s, he observed that the market revolution was undermining Concord's identity as a small fishing village. The town experienced firsthand the selective forces of capitalism when, in 1843, the opening of the Boston & Fitchburg Railroad reduced traffic along the Middlesex Canal (which served the town) and forced the filling in of a section of nearby Walden Pond.

Thoreau responded to these changes in 1854 by moving to Walden Pond, where he tried to realize an agrarian ideal of manliness that valued productive labor as the true basis of wealth. While he accepted market exchange and economic gain, he also saw nature as an aesthetic, sensual, and invigorating antidote to industrial civilization. He sought, not seclusion, but a critical juncture between nature and industrial change where he could live a life embedded in social patterns of obligation, exchange, and communal reciprocity. For instance, Thoreau partially built his cabin himself, while part of it was contracted out, and he worked in a variety of jobs to make ends meet, as well as planting vegetables for sale and consumption. Thoreau did not resist market capitalism, but he sought to explore the conditions of subsistence during a time of rapid change.

In Walden (1854), the literary product of this sojourn, Thoreau added a spiritual dimension to this masculine ideal, conceiving of manhood as a transcendental awareness of the inner self as discovered through nature. His naturalist and travel writings, such as A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), Cape Cod (1855) and “Walking” (1862), reflect his belief that an excursion into nature is a journey into the self.

Thoreau's understanding of manliness also emphasized an unwavering commitment to the principles discovered in the inner self—both as the root of moral action and civic consciousness and as the only acceptable foundation for political society. This understanding of individual autonomy led him, in 1848, to oppose the Mexican-American War by refusing to pay his poll tax (for which he spent a night in jail) and to write “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849; now known by the title “Civil Disobedience”), in which he elevated the authority of the conscience over that of the state.

Like other transcendentalists, Thoreau supported the abolitionist movement. In 1859, he spoke out in support of what he considered the moral heroism of John Brown, who had been sentenced to death for leading an attack on the Harpers Ferry Armory and attempting to incite a slave rebellion.

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