On the Duty of Civil Disbedience
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience CD sleeve

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Henry David Thoreau


In July of 1846, Henry David Thoreau was on his way to Concord to run an errand when he was arrested by sheriff Sam Staples for failure to pay a poll tax. Thoreau had stopped paying the tax four years earlier, believing that it supported the Mexican American War and the expansion of slavery into the southwest territories. That turned out not to be true; the tax was strictly local and nothing to do with the federal government or that of the state of Massachusetts. News of the arrest spread quickly, and an unidentified woman promptly visited the jail to pay the tax. Staples, however, decided to keep Thoreau overnight. To his surprise, when he went to Thoreau’s cell to release him, he didn’t want to go. And was “mad as the devil” when he learned that someone had paid the tax and he was free to go. The experience led to a series of lectures in at the Concord Lyceum entitled “The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government”. The essay was first published in 1849 as Resistance to Civil Government. The central idea is that individuals should not permit government to overrule their consciences, and that there is a duty to refuse to acquiesce when governments seek to make them agents of injustice. The essay was reprinted four years after his death in 1866 under the title Civil Disobedience. The use of the word “civil” in the title can be misleading. Thoreau used the word in the sense of “relating to citizens and their relations with others and with the state”. Civil can also mean “socially acceptable; polite”, a reading which leads to the impression that the argument is for nonviolent resistance. That was not his intent.

Play sample: 


Product Details

Read by: Gordon Mackenzie
Length: 1 hour 21 minutes
Type: Solo reading
Media: MP3 CD
Package: CD security sleeve
Item No.: CD-5016
EAN: NA
List Price: $3.99


Credits


Production

Book Coordinator: Gord Mackenzie
Meta Coordinator: Gesine

Artwork

Cover: Photo of plaque commemorating Thoreau’s night in jail in Concord, Massachusetts, 2010, by Daderot.
Inset: Photograph of Henry David Thoreau 1861 by Geo. F. Parlow.


The Recordings

About MP3 Audio

This MP3 digital audiobook is duplicated on compact disc in the MP3 audio format and is designed to play on any computer. It will play on CD and DVD players that are designed with MP3 capability. The files contained in an MP3 CD can be imported and played on mobile devices such as the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Android tablets and smart phones and on PSP (Play Station Portable) and PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) devices. Your CD/DVD player or mobile device owner’s manual should specify whether the device has MP3 compatibility. If the device is not directly compatible with the MP3 Audio format, the files on the MP3 CD can be copied onto a computer drive and then played on the computer media player or transferred to a mobile device.

The Recordings

These recordings were made using the author’s original published work, which is in the public domain. The readings were recorded by members of Librivox.org, which has generously made the recordings available to the public domain. While Librivox condones the sale and distribution of these recordings, it is not associated with the management or operations of MP3 Audiobook Classics. The audio files have been lightly edited and have been engineered using professional audio tools for maximum sonic quality. We spend considerable time and effort to ensure the recordings are free of noise, equalized for maximum listener pleasure, and that tracks are leveled and normalized to provide a consistent listening experience.


Table of Contents

Track Section Length
24 24 - Chapter 1 42:24
25 25 -Chapter 2 38:21

 


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