"I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward." Henry David Thoreau's 1849 essay is the founding text of nonviolent resistance: protesting slavery and the Mexican-American War, Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax and went to jail for it. His defence of the individual conscience against the state became a document of world importance, inspiring Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and civil-rights movements around the globe.
This carefully typeset digital edition presents the unabridged English original, following the 1946 Liberty Library text.
