Jailed for not paying a poll tax, Thoreau contemplates on his unjust lot in life: "I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up." Thoreau's act of civil disobedience seems effective for the time period, before mass communication was available. Indeed, a Tweet from him today may have won his freedom. At the least, his actions, thoughts, and writings got Americans thinking in a new manner unseen before in the nineteenth
Jailed for not paying a poll tax, Thoreau contemplates on his unjust lot in life: "I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up." Thoreau's act of civil disobedience seems effective for the time period, before mass communication was available. Indeed, a Tweet from him today may have won his freedom. At the least, his actions, thoughts, and writings got Americans thinking in a new manner unseen before in the nineteenth