Civil Disobedience vs. Sociology of the South essays

Civil Disobedience vs. Sociology of the South essays Civil Disobedience vs. Sociology of the South Examining two pieces of writing from 1800 US history, we see two writers with strong polar backgrounds agreeing on minor issues of the time. It is hard to find a common ground between Henry Thoreau and George Fitzhugh, but they share similar views toward government and its relationship with the masses. They opposed the government and wanted the people to dictate their wants to the government. Henry David Thoreau, writer, naturalist, and philosopher, was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817. Thoreau became involved in the transcendentalist movement, a discipline promoting self-education and the development of the individual. Thoreau's most famous essay, Civil Disobedience (1849), was a result of an overnight visit in 1846 in a jail, when he refused to pay his taxes in protest against the Mexican War and the extension of slavery. Believing that his money should not go towards programs he did not believe in, Thoreau ended up in jail for one night. In Civil Disobedience, Thoreaus advocacy of civil disobedience as a means for the individual to protest those actions of his government that he considers unjust has had a wide-ranging impact. Emphasizing the magnitude and significance of individuality vs. conformity, Thoreau expresses a strong distaste for the interfering role of the government in peoples lives. His reasoning behind this is essentially that the government is always throwing up seemingly impossible obstacles to obstruct the path toward individual success. As a result of mankinds frustration at not being able to get around these obstacles, man instead marches in line at the governments bidding, believing only with the governments control will they be able to successfully plot the path to individual freedom. Thoreau found it ironic, however, that this supposed path to individual freedom was paved by traditional mindsets. Thoreau viewed the government as the ...