Born in 1817, Henry David Thoreau retreated to Walden Pond at the age of twenty-eight to escape a life of "quiet desperation," which he felt that most people led (Knoebel, p. 300). Defying social convention, Thoreau lived at Walden for two years in contemplative solitude. During that time he refused to pay his poll tax in protest of the government's support of slavery and the Mexican War. He was arrested for tax evasion, and the experience prompted lectures and an essay on the subject of civil disobedience, in which he urged Americans to peacefully protest unjust government policies as he had done. Living during the tumultuous era that culminated in the Civil War, he spoke out against what he regarded as misguided and immoral government policies and warned of the imminent dangers they posed to the nation if citizens did not take individual action.
American democracy under a microscope.With the adoption of the Constitution in 1788, the United States of America created a government described as the first true democracy in the world and became the "hope of the human race" (Davidson, Life in America, p.
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