Thoreau, Taxes, Disobedience
On this day in 1846, Henry David Thoreau was jailed for not paying his poll tax. Thoreau was almost exactly half-way through his Walden stay, and had come to Concord to pick up a shoe at the cobblers; this came to the attention of Sam Staples, tax collector and warden of the county jail, who was under orders from the town fathers to confront and, if necessary, confine this most contrary of its sons. and he was not happy to hear, the next morning, that his tax had been anonymously paid for him. Now released, he was again left with no choice: "I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- I was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen." |
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