This vicious circle still lies vestigial in the ugly face of modern-day racism, but in the late 18th and early 19th centuries the tide was turning for the better thanks to an increasing number of liberally minded intellectuals who saw through the illusion of Caucasian racial superiority upon which the slave trade relied. In Britain the leading light was William Wilberforce. He headed a parliamentary campaign to abolish slavery, which eventually succeeded in 1807 with the Slave Trade Act. This act aimed to abolish slavery within the British Empire and this was finally achieved in 1833.
In the US, where slavery was a part of everyday life, the abolition cause took longer to foment. In 1849, a seminal essay was published by Henry David Thoreau, entitled ‘Civil Disobedience’, in which the author vented his discontent with the US establishment. In part, his motivation was his opposition to slavery. The following year the government added fuel to the fire by announcing the Fugitive Slave Act. As the divide between the North and South was already in evidence, and many slaves were seeking refuge in the North, the directive was that all runaway slaves should be returned to their ‘owners’. This was viewed as an awkward compromise by a government trying to preside over two vastly different ideologies. The 1850 act was so despised by the abolitionists that it was dubbed the ‘Bloodhound Act’, in allusion to the tracking dogs used to hunt down the slaves.
Tensions between northern and southern states would continue to rise for another decade, before the American Civil War broke out in 1861, lasting for four bloody years. In 1860, the newly elected president Abraham Lincoln launched a campaign to restrict the practice of slavery and the scene was set for a showdown. Bellicose sentiments finally came to a head and all-out war was the result. It proved so divisive that even family members found themselves enlisting on opposite sides, ready to kill kith and kin for the sake of their heartfelt beliefs.
It wasn’t about slavery per se, but about what slavery represented. In the northern states it was generally thought that progressive, enlightened people should know that slavery was an unethical practice. Thus, the anti-slavery cause was as much about being superior of mind as it was about achieving manumission for the Negro. The opposite was true in the southern states. They clung to more traditional values and resisted change, and thus the anti-slavery campaign seemed emblematic of the more sophisticated northerners’ habit of telling them what they should and shouldn’t do.
‘Civil Disobedience’ itself might be described as a passive-aggressive directive. In essence, Thoreau suggests that the way to affect change is by non-cooperation, or disobedience, because the outcome is then the disempowerment of government. He observes that regimes are self-supporting structures, so proactive opposition has the effect of strengthening that structure. Non-cooperation, on the other hand, has an undermining quality because the integrity of the structure relies on those who form the foundations. As they begin to perceive the regime as ineffectual, they walk away and the structure collapses. So, to Thoreau, the most important thing is to establish a clear moral basis on which to object to an ensconced governmental system and then allow it to erode its own footings.
Thoreau’s gripe wasn’t about party politics, but the general approach to government in the US. Thus, the message of ‘Civil Disobedience’ infiltrated the upper echelons of power, causing politicians to analyze their common views objectively. In fact, all those who read it found themselves reflecting on their collective behaviour and wondering whether Thoreau might be right. ‘Civil Disobedience’ became a catalyst for cultural change, which is why the slavery issue took centre stage. It was the most obvious blot on the new cultural landscape that Thoreau had inspired people to hope for. Slavery became what less refined people practised, because they lacked the ethical and moral fibre to understand their wrongdoing.
This drive towards a better way of acting and reacting to the world became known as transcendentalism. At its root was the fundamental idea that humanity is good when stripped back to basics, and that society, culture, and religion only serve to corrupt this goodness when left unchecked. As humans are generally deferential in nature, they are easily drawn into regimes and the danger comes when no one knows any different. When normality is never contrasted with other ways of viewing the world, people lose the ability to reflect and alter the status quo. Thoreau encouraged people to transcend normality to achieve a better way of living life, by looking inwards at the basic human condition. Therein lies his basic argument against slavery: all humans are equal when societal and cultural layers are stripped away. When we take things down to what lies beneath, we are all nothing more than members of the same species.
Due to the insightful nature of ‘Civil Disobedience’, it has often been referenced when populations have been driven to civil unrest by governments or regimes. It has universality because it has a generic message that applies to any era. For that reason, Thoreau’s wisdom has lived on in his writing. It seems that humanity has a habit of settling on unsatisfactory societal norms, but that is because society is a human construct. There is no one right way of running society, but there are plenty of wrong ways, and Thoreau’s words are all about maintaining the process of self-monitoring in an effort to do our very best in perpetual pursuit of the ideal. The act of civil disobedience is therefore the driver to keep things evolving, while civil obedience only allows a society to become set in its ways, so that the rot sets in.
Thoreau himself was very much a renaissance man. He was a polymath and lived a life intellectually removed from popular society. He put his own theory into practice a few years before his death. He built a cabin in a remote location and lived there for two years, so that he could get back to nature and become lost in his thoughts. His rationale was that he could be more objective by living a self-reliant lifestyle. He documented the results in his book Walden, published in 1854. Among the people who visited his cabin was a runaway slave. The author helped him flee to Canada, where slavery was not practised. This event is among many that generate deep philosophical discussion in the book, about how American society should emerge into the modern world. He died in 1861, just when the great cultural shift in America was being played out in the theatre of battle.
When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.
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