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Brandon Burrow
12 December 2018
Walking Your Own Path: Civil
Disobedience and Passive Resistance
In this course we learned about the concepts of Civil
Disobedience and Passive resistance through our readings of Henry David Thoreau,
Levi Coffin, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Civil Disobedience is an excellent
strategy to take when the institution that is being opposed can be illustrated
as morally wrong, often by using the texts or belief of the institution against
them as argumentation i.e. the guarantee of unalienable rights to all men in the
Constitution is effective in a dispute about slavery. Following non-violent
principles and setting an example for the misguided majority has allowed the
voices of oppressed minorities to be heard throughout the ages.
Some of the specific tenets of the doctrine of Civil
Disobedience are: Deciding for oneself what is right and pursuing that “higher
law” even under threat of punishment for disobeying the law of the land,
maintaining a “moral high ground” by remaining non-violent and dialogue
oriented, the willingness to endure personal hardship and live frugally without
depending on the fruits of the protested government, thus accentuating the
importance of the movement, and finally, steadfastness in the face of
ostracization and “social pressure” to conform (course page). As Kristin Mizell
points out in her 2017 essay “Do the Right Thing,” “No one wants to hear someone
shouting at them about how terrible they are” so the focus of Civil Disobedience
is less about attacking the other side, and more about modeling the right
behavior (Mizell). Often adherers to Civil Disobedience are underdogs who are
unpopular and persecuted, but through the strength of their convictions can
guide an injudicious society towards a better path. In Henry David Thoreau’s
essay “Resistance to Civil Government,” Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Levi Coffin’s
“Reminiscences” the principles of Civil Disobedience and Passive Resistance are
all present and working towards a goal of a more Just society.
Thoreau’s essay is central to the idea of Civil
Disobedience and contains many persuasive quotes and ideas. Thoreau envisions a
corrupt or immoral government as a giant inefficient machine that serves only to
perpetuate itself rather than the will of the machine’s creators, the people who
are governed. Many people go along with the majority, acting as cogs in this
machine that can easily be made to serve “a single man” (cautioning against a
tyrant or powerful leader) as he bends the entire construct “to his will” (2).
Often the majority is in charge because it is the strongest party, but Thoreau
resists this saying “a government in which the majority in all cases cannot be
based on justice” (5). Too often the voices of minorities go unheard in these
majority systems, and the status quo is kept, particularly in cases where
economic consequences would result from change. This was the case with slavery
during the time Thoreau wrote this essay, and he rejected the American
government saying: “I cannot for an instant recognize that political
organization as my government which is the slave’s government also” (8). He has
identified the hypocrisy in the nation and its unwillingness to move towards the
moral high ground because of the perceived cost, but to Thoreau, not doing what
is right is the ultimate cost. Instead of being driven by profit motive and
subscribing to the game that is voting, every man should take a stand for what
he believes in and become the majority they wish to see (12). Thoreau proposes
that, “we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to
cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right” (5). This
identification of the shortcomings of the government and Thoreau’s peaceful
resistance against it predicated on the principles of moral superiority,
voluntary simplicity, and dedication to doing what is right in the face of
unjust consequences are all representative of Civil Disobedience.
In Levi Coffin’s
Reminiscences, he also takes the moral high ground and leads by example of
what he believes is right even if it threatens to kill him and ruin his
business. Being awakened to the plight of slaves in America at an early age,
Coffin grew to believe in the rightness of helping the downtrodden and uses the
Bible as justification for his idea that it is “always safe to do right” when he
is challenged by peers who ask him if he is afraid of “the penalty of the law”
for helping escaped slaves (6a). When pro-slavery clients refuse to do business
with him, he accepts the loss stating that “If by doing my duty and endeavoring
to fulfill the injunctions of the Bible, I injured my business, then let my
business go” (8). Coffin is not afraid to sacrifice his own gain for the gain of
his fellow man. Leading by example, he notices that “the number of those who
were friendly to the fugitives increased in our neighborhood” (14). He is
beginning to cultivate the just majority that Thoreau spoke of through his own
individual actions. Soon, the pro-slavery customers came back to him, even
though he openly helped the Underground Rail Road, because slavery was not the
issue for them, but rather their own bottom line (15). The slavers were
unwilling to sacrifice profits and so refused to help Coffin when he was
protesting against their slave economy, but when it became more profitable to do
business with Coffin anyways, they folded on their own morals, suggesting they
never had any and were simply cogs in the machine, unwilling to fight for
change. Coffin mentions that death threats were spoken to him, but his village
of Quakers were not alarmed as “their principles were those of peace and
non-resistance” (16). Coffin’s justification for his actions based on the
accepted moral compass of the Bible and devotion to do what he felt is right in
lieu of the consequences and threats he received proves to be infectious and
works as a great example of Civil Disobedience affecting change in a society.
In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin many of the
characters do not have the means that Thoreau or Coffin did, but they do have
their own social ties and ability to resist through their own ingenuity and
moral strength. In chapter seven, Aunt Chloe delays the pursuit of the escaped
Eliza and her son by simply cooking dinner in “an unusually leisurely and
circumstantial manner” (7.39). Her example causes “a number of counter
accidents” to occur among the rest of the slaves “to retard the course” of the
search party getting together (7.40). In chapter nine, Mrs. Bird chastises her
husband for supporting a law that prevents the very thing Levi Coffin was doing,
aiding and sheltering runaway slaves. Upon hearing that her husband supported
such a “shameful, wicked” and “abominable” law she tells him that she will
“break it” the “first time [she] gets a chance” (9.23). Here Mrs. Bird is
displaying Thoreau’s idea of not conforming to unjust laws, even if it means
breaking them and being in jeopardy of being punished. Another example of the
tenets of Civil Disobedience in Stowe’s novel is in chapter 13 when Simeon
professes his hatred for “those old slaveholders” (13.76). His father rebukes
him and tells him that he was brought up differently and that his father “would
do even the same for the slaveholder as for the slave, if the Lord brought him
to [his] door in affliction” (13.77). Simeon’s father is saying he would “turn
the other cheek” because he is ruled by a higher moral law and not by a violence
and hatred for the other side. He wishes to affect change in the world by the
strength of his character and the rightness of his action, not by forcing it.
Stowe’s novel offers looks at characters doing what they can as a minority to
show the misguided majority that they too are human and are possessed of a sense
of what is right.
In all three of these works, the tenets of Civil
Disobedience are displayed, and looking back on them from present day can be
seen to have been very effective in their discourse. There is a natural human
tendency to fight fire with fire, but adherence to the tenets of Civil
Disobedience and Passive resistance instead seeks to place a flower in the gun
pointed at those who choose to use these tools for social change, while they do
cartwheels in the meadow, giving their oppressors time to think about who is
really on the right side of a debate. Everyone likes a good underdog story, and
Civil Disobedience is an effective way to give a voice to those who are
underrepresented and mistreated by an institution.
