A Plea for Captain John Brown

by Henry David Thoreau

Overview

A Plea for Captain John Brown
by Henry David Thoreau

"A Plea for Captain John Brown is an essay by Henry David Thoreau. It is based on a speech Thoreau first delivered to an audience at Concord, Massachusetts on October 30, 1859, two weeks after John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and repeated several times before Brown's execution on December 2, 1859. It was later published as a part of Echoes of Harper's Ferry in 1860."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940012297303
Publisher:	Apps Publisher
Publication date:	04/05/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

"Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862; born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, and philosopher who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism.

He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of nonviolent resistance influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thoreau is often claimed as an inspiration by anarchists, as well. Though Civil Disobedience calls for improving rather than abolishing government - "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government" - the direction of this improvement aims at anarchism: 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."

Date of Birth:

July 12, 1817

Date of Death:

May 6, 1862

Place of Birth:

Concord, Massachusetts

Place of Death:

Concord, Massachusetts

Education:

Concord Academy, 1828-33); Harvard University, 1837