I begin with a short selection from the Seneca Falls Declaration, which we looked at Last week. The assertion is strong: A law which is contrary to natural law has no force or authority. In other words, one has no duty to obey it. Henry David Thoreau writes his essay shortly after the publication of the Seneca Falls Declaration. We have no direct evidence that he was aware of the declaration, but we can see some relationship. If a law has no force then one has no duty to obey it. Thoreau makes an even stronger assertion: Under certain circumstances disobeying the law may be a duty. We’re going to examine that idea today. Wednesday we're also going to examine a short document which may have influenced both Thoreau and the framers of the Seneca Falls Declaration.
As we noted, the signers of The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, stated that laws which contradicted the spirit of the Declaration of Independence were laws “without force,” which implies that those who ignore or violate them should be able to do so without penalty. The argument sprang from a core democratic belief: those who live under the law have a right to participate in its creation. Women, not possessing the suffrage, should not be held accountable to a system of laws created by men in their own self interest..
Thoreau cannot claim that exemption. He was a member of the privileged elite, and moved in the social circle of some of the United States’ most famous literary and political figures, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne. But Thoreau, too, is put in a position where obeying the law violates his personal conscience. If a democratic society requires a person to violate his conscience, what is the person to do? On the Duty of Civil Disobedience presents Thoreau’s answer to this question.
Civil Disobedience remained a powerful essay throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Click Thoreau's Picture to find many fascinating analyses of it and its relevance worldwide. (The website goes down occasionally, so don't give up.)
We will continue our discussion of Thoreau today, focusing on his use of the rhetorical question, a favorite device of debaters everywhere, wether the debate proceeds in print or aloud. You saw Lincoln use this device in the Speech at Peoria. Unlike true questions, rhetorical questions don’t really seek to resolve an issue. The questioner already knows the answer before he or she pens the question. The question allows the questioner to frame the issue in a way which makes his or her point of view more persuasive. Here are some of Thoreau’s rhetorical questions. We’ll use them to discuss his reasoning.
There are many other questions of this kind. Locate a few others for us to discuss, noting where they are in the margins of your document . If you're thinking "rhetorically" today, you might try coming up with a few of your own
RESOLVED, That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority.
Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?--in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable?
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?
Why has every man a conscience then?
How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also.
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?
Why does it always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?
Today, we're going to think about Thoreau's argument from a tactical point of view. To understand this, locate the section where Thoreau introduces the idea of the clog. It also explains why Thoreau, unlike the Seneca Falls Women, felt it a duty to go to jail We'll see other examples of this later in the semester.
I include the William Lloyd Garrison’s essay of 1832 from The Liberator, largely to show that there were precedents for the arguments made by both Thoreau and the women and men at Seneca Falls. In fact, by comparison, the latter documents are a little tame. Thoreau and The Seneca Falls Declarations speak to the problem of unjust laws. Garrison raises the stakes. What is one to do if the very foundation of law itself is unjust?
It won’t take you long to uncover his answer. It may take you longer to decide whether you agree or disagree with him.
William Lloyd Garrison founded the American Anti-Slavery Society, click on his image to the left to visit the web site of the modern American Anti-Slavery Group. Slavery as an institution isn't extinct by any means. you might want to see what you can do to help the fight against it.
