Sheshe Giddens
Dr. Craig White
Literature 5535
November 11, 2000

Passive Resistance and a Higher Law

One of the major literary motifs that developed during the American Romantic Movement of the nineteenth century is the individual separate from the masses, and one of the most profound expressions of this motif is the concept of civil disobedience. What is profound about this concept is that it moves beyond separating the individual and society by transforming the relationship between the two. This new relationship is based on an endowment of power entrusted by the individual to the state. This relationship also posits the notion that the individual maintains the right and obligation to withdraw that power when the state is in violation of the natural laws common to all of humanity. This concept sets the tone for a precept that would have a global impact, permeating and transforming literary, philosophical, political and social thought. During the Romantic Movement, Henry David Thoreau developed the revolutionary concept of civil disobedience through passive resistance, a form of nonviolent protest, in his essay "Resistance to Civil Government." In doing so, Thoreau cultivates the relationship between the individual and society expanding an aloof, ethereal philosophy into a doctrine of social reform with the individual at the center. Passive resistance transcends Romanticism’s literary concept of the individual separate from the masses by empowering the individual and embracing the philosophy that a higher or natural law transcends the laws of government.

Literature has long reflected the theme of man contesting the authority of those in power because it contradicts the mandates of natural law. In the Old Testament, Moses was endowed with God’s authority and single-handedly defeated mighty Pharaoh and his powerful army in order to deliver his people from slavery. In Middle Ages, stories prevail of knights and nobles who fight to restore the crown to a king whom they believe is God’s representative sanctioned by the concept of divine right of kings. Although these stories predate American Romanticism, each shares the common thread of man standing apart from society to right a wrong that violates a higher authority, in these instances it is God’s authority, or natural law that transcends the laws and decrees established by government.

Religion, especially in Christianity, has long been utilized in western literature as a thematic representation of the higher authority or natural law upon which man is compelled to act. The New Testament illustrates one of the most poignant acts of civil disobedience in the Bible. Jesus discussed the authority of government and of God when the Herodians, supporters of Roman rule by the Herods in Palestine, tried to entrap him into making seditious comments against Roman rule.

" ‘Teacher, they said, ‘we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then what is your opinion? Is it right to pay to taxes to Caesar or not?’ " (Barker 1471). Knowing that the Herodians are attempting to entrap him in to an act of civil disobedience, Jesus responds in a veiled manner and asks see a coin that would to pay the taxes. Jesus says " ‘Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?’ ‘Caesar’s,’ they replied. The he said to them, ‘ Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s’ " (Barker 1471-1472).

What is implicit in his comment is that all falls under God’s realm of authority. "In distinguishing clearly between Caesar and God, Jesus also protested against the false and idolatrous claims made on the coins" (Barker, 1472). Based on this interpretation of Jesus’ comment, the Roman coin represents a violation of God’s law or the natural law whose inscription explicitly infers the divinity of Roman Emperor Tiberius’ parentage and his divine right to rule. It is this Christian heritage in western literature that inspires Thoreau’s opposition to violations of the natural law.

The concept of natural law predates Christianity and can be traced to ancient Greek philosophers who first extensively developed the theory. "Natural Law, in ethical philosophy, theology, law, and social theory, [is] a set of principles, based on what are assumed to be the permanent characteristics of human nature, that can serve as a standard for evaluating conduct and civil laws. It is considered fundamentally unchanging and universally applicable" (Natural Law). It is the intrinsic characteristics of the natural law that imbues the Declaration of Independence with a mandate to oppose the civil laws and rule of the English crown when it is in violation of rights of its colonial citizens in North America.

In one of the most Romantic documents in American history, the Declaration of Independence employs natural law to invalidate English rule therefore making civil disobedience an integral part nation’s foundation when it was signed by the founding fathers. In this declaration, as with many acts of civil disobedience, an individual or group opposes a law or ruling government that they believe violates a higher law than that of man because of its unjust, immoral or inhumane nature, as evident by the very language used.

This document explicitly illustrates the intricate relationship between the governed and the governor when that relationship is scrutinized under natural law. The Declaration of Independence predates the American Romantic Movement but was very much in keeping with the Romantic spirit and the ideals of the movement which had begun in Europe in it’s expression of freedom of thought. These few sentences, written by Thomas Jefferson, would later revolutionize civil government and establish democracy as a mutual relationship between the individual and government. It also represents a progression of the concepts of natural law and the entitlements of man under natural law. These ideas would later coalesce in Thoreau’s essay, "Resistance to Civil Government" for which it has set the groundwork for some of essays innovative ideas.

Thoreau’s essay is very much in the spirit of the American Romantic Movement, in terms of its freedom of thought and expression. Transcendentalism, which was strongly influenced by the American Romantic Period, was key to the development of some of Thoreau’s idea. There was a strong movement by Transcendentalists, like Thoreau, to explore the relationship between the individual and the natural law. "Transcendentalism, in philosophy and literature, [is the] belief in a higher reality than that found in sense experience or in a higher kind of knowledge than that achieved by human reason. Nearly all transcendentalist doctrines stem from the division of reality into a realm of spirit and a realm of matter" (Transcendentalism).

Like the concept of natural law, Transcendentalism was first fully explored by ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato. Plato asserted that there is an existence of "absolute goodness," that is intangible and intuitive. This concept of transcendence, as described by Plato, correlates transcendence and divinity. Under this paradigm, God, or the divine, transcends the realm of the spirit into the realm of matter and imbues man with elements of the divine. This concept also correlates with the Deist philosophy, which also strong influenced Transcendentalism. Deism, also referred to as natural religion, is a religious philosophy that certain religious knowledge is part of the human consciousness and that the individual only realizes it when reason is exercised. Transcendentalism does not conform to the traditional religious thought of Christianity that permeated Puritan New England was Transcendentalism was born.

This idea corresponds with concept of the divinity in man that Transcendentalists tapped into in their discussion of man’s relationship to man, nature and society. Under the transcendentalist model, divinity is not one that is validated by institutionalize religion but one that connects with the idea of the natural law. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who led the Transcendentalist movement, argued that the individual was an incarnation of the Universal Spirit and that each individual was "part and parcel of God." According to Emerson, "Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine. This universal soul, he calls Reason: it is not mine or thine or his, but we are its; we are its property and men" (Emerson 505). By elevating man and making him divine, or at least partly divine in the Emersonian philosophy, man also has the moral authority to overrule the laws of society when it is in violation of the natural laws that man is able to tap into through the use of reason.

Under that transcendentalist model of Emerson, man must rely on himself to improve his life through the exercise of Reason and nonconformity. "It is east to see that a greater self-reliance, - a new respect for the divinity in man, - must work a revolution in all offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their modes of living; their association; in their property; their speculative views" (Emerson 562). Emerson does not advocate action to improve the society in which the individual must reside. This is the area in which Thoreau and Emerson differs.

In contrast to Emerson, Thoreau extended transcendentalism and individualism beyond the ideas of Emerson. Born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817, Thoreau grew up in a home with liberal father and an Abolitionist mother. His family participated in the Underground Railroad, which aided slaves in their quest for freedom. So, when Thoreau first met Emerson, he already had first hand exposure to civil disobedience as a way to oppose the institution of slavery. Prior to meeting Emerson, Thoreau read his work and he would later become Thoreau mentor.

Although Thoreau championed the individual as a nonconformist, he fundamentally viewed society as negative. Taking Emerson to the extreme, Thoreau was essentially an anarchist advocating the ideal society under a Deist approach. He believed that if each individual yield to his own interpretation of the Universal Truth then there would be no need for civil government because the result would be a universal morality. As he wrote in his essay, "‘I heartily accept the motto, - "That government is best which governs least;’ and I should like to see it acted upon rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amount to this, which also I believe, - ‘That government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have" (Thoreau, Civil 852). He also believed that each individual was valuable and that majority rule does not equate to the majority being right because there is no innate virtue in the masses. "Thoreau is the complete individualist. ‘When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man.’ He thinks that the sight of ‘herds of men’ has a ‘very bad influence on children’. Carlyle would put and keep the masses in their place because he fears true place them. Thoreau does not fear the masses, he disdains them" (Jackson 221-222).

Emerson, by contrast, had no fundamental complaint against society and he believed that individuals did not have to be nonconformist for the sake of nonconformity and that society can improve through self-reliance on the part individuals. "Thoreau’s philosophy, like his life, is more direct than that of Emerson. If Emerson is a scholar bourgeois, Thoreau is a scholar gypsy. He is influenced by the more sophisticated of the Emersonian formulae, but he is more satisfied with a theory, and in the end, his philosophy seems to be a criticism of Emerson. The vice of the intellectual is inaction, which Thoreau fears and condemns and Emerson fears and condones" (Jackson 221).

Thoreau speaks out and acts upon the principles that he developed in "Resistance to Civil Government," an example of which is his refusal to pay his poll tax which would in turn support slavery. This act of passive resistance resulted in him being put into prison, where he was visited by Emerson. "Emerson calls at the prison. ‘Henry, why are you here?’ he asks. Thoreau replies, ‘Why are you not here?’ Thoreau practices where Emerson preaches and it is for that reason that we turn to him for conception of an individual action" (Jackson 221). Direct action as a form of protest was not the only method that Thoreau advocated.

This approach is more in keeping with the form of passive resistance employed by Thoreau when he went to jail. Thoreau was not a strong advocate of Abolitionism, but he did oppose the institution because it violated his principles as well as natural law. In a way, Thoreau’s act of civil disobedience was a form of indirect social action, because his actions were not in direct protest of slavery, it was in protest of supporting those that directly participated in the institution.

Thoreau, in several speeches opposing slavery, called for all people of consciousness to employ passive resistance to oppose this institution that defied reason. In a speech delivered in Massachusetts in 1854 after the conviction of a fugitive slave in that state and the arrest of several Massachusetts citizens after attempting to free slaves, Thoreau was perturbed by the lack of interest by his fellow citizens of Massachusetts.

At that time people were more concerned with the Fugitive Slave Act and the Compromise of 1850, which would determine which states would have slaves and states were free. Slavery and the problems surrounding it that seemed to occupy the national consciousness as well, but Thoreau criticize the people of Massachusetts for ignoring the issues surrounding the issue of slavery in their own state.

Although Thoreau advocated passive resistance, he wrote "A Plea for Captain John Brown" in 1856, in defense of the abolitionist John Brown who seized a U.S. arsenal and armory and led an armed assault in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in order free slaves by force. "I should say that he was an old-fashioned man in respect for the Constitution, and his faith in the permanence of this Union. Slavery he deemed to be wholly opposed to these, and he was its determined foe." Brown represents an individual who acts in a direct manor to oppose slavery. The plea written by Thoreau is portrays Brown as "In what amounts almost to worship of Brown, Thoreau both deifies the action he had tried to avoid and transcends it in passion. Brown died for him, thus he need free no more slaves" (Thomas 322).

Thoreau essay on civil disobedience and other speeches is a response to the issues that faced Americans, calling for a return to the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe also contributed the discussion on the individual and civil disobedience as an appropriate response to the injustices that violate the natural law. Although Stowe is not considered a transcendentalist, her novel, "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" conveys some of the main concepts established by Thoreau. Stowe equates the concept of the natural law with Christian principles and God’s law as the basis for the set of ethics that govern individual behavior.

In one scene in the novel, one of Stowe characters, Mrs. Bird, who is sympathetic to the Abolitionist cause, discusses with her husband, a law that forbids anyone to give assistance to any runaway slave. Mrs. Bird appeals to her husband’s sense of morality by asking him if he believed whether the law was "right and Christian?" (Stowe 804) Senator Bird, on the other hand, is more concerned with what is in the best interest for the state of Ohio. "How sublimely he had sat [in the Senate chamber] with his hands in his pockets, and scouted all sentimental weakness of those who would put the welfare of a few miserable fugitives before great state interests" (Lowance, Westbrook, and De Prospo 16). It is Mrs. Bird who ultimately makes the argument for civil disobedience, because in the case of slavery obedience to the natural law, under which slavery is a violation, outweighs one’s obligation to obey the law of the state. "Obeying God never brings on public evils. I know it can’t. It’s always safest, all around to do as He bids us" (Stowe 804).

Stowe’s pre-Civil War novel proved to be a catalyst for social reform and like Thoreau, her novel extended the ideas of her predecessors and contemporaries. In the novel, Stowe, unlike Thoreau, calls for individuals to go beyond removing their support for laws and institutions that violate natural law. Stowe’s novel employs sentimentality as opposed to Emersonian Reason to argue morality dictates that the individual takes direct action to oppose injustice. Mrs. Bird is outraged by the Fugitive Slave Act that would make common decency illegal. "It’s a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I’ll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; I hope I shall have a chance, I do! Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can’t give a warm supper and a bed to poor starving creature, just because they are slaves, and have been abused and oppressed all of their lives, poor things" (Stowe 804).

Civil disobedience and passive resistance in both literature and in practice have proven to be powerful method for social reform. Since Thoreau’s "Resistance to Civil Government" was written, the ideas have been modified and enhanced by figures such as Mahatma Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who were greatly influenced by the essay. What Thoreau accomplishes his essay and speeches is a transition from the Greek concept of natural law, Emerson’s "Self-Reliance" and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. "Thoreau pushed the transcendental doctrine to its most extreme position, far beyond what the other followers of the Higher Law were willing to claim. He believed that all civil law that covered moral concerns was an unwarranted encroachment on the rights of an individual" (Madden 97).

Thoreau’s essay, "Resistance to Civil Government," is innovative in its approach to the Transcendentalist and Romantic philosophy of the individual while incorporating the Romantic spirit of the Declaration of Independence by establishing the basic tenets of passive resistance as a philosophy. Under Romanticism, the individual separating himself from society and getting back to nature was a wonderful yet aloof ideal. What writers like Thoreau and Stowe accomplished, although in case of Thoreau it was not intentional, was to endow the individual with nobility and power to change the society in which they must live.

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