Rhetorical Analysis Of Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
When Thoreau was writing this essay, he had a certain audience in mind. The audience is the white men, the tax payers. In 1849 when Thoreau wrote Civil Disobedience, only white men of means paid taxes. This meant that only white men were eligible to vote and only white men held the power to affect change in the government.. Thoreau was a man that believed he should not have to pay taxes because he had absolutely zero say as to where his tax money was being sent and what it was being used for. The reason this was important to Thoreau was because he did not want to be funding specific things like the killing of people in the Mexican war and slavery which were happening at the time. Thoreau, instead

Thoreau’s reason for writing Civil Disobedience was to show just how corrupt the whole government system was and how government interference in everything did not help. Thoreau chose to target the white men and all eligible voters with this paper because of his belief that it was wrong to pay taxes, or at least not have a say as to where your tax money goes. He was prompted to write Civil Disobedience because slavery and the war with Mexico were very large events in his time. With these events going on, his tax money was funding the Mexican American war, and ultimately, an expansion of slave states.
There are a number of events that prompted Thoreau to write Civil Disobedience. To begin with Thoreau was a transcendentalist. Being a transcendentalist, Thoreau believed a man’s conscience is the ultimate judge of what is morally right, not the government. In the following excerpts, Thoreau first appeals to our logic, “But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?- in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of

Thoreau was arrested for refusal to pay his taxes. While only in jail for 1 night, his cell-mate’s predicament changed Thoreau’s whole view on the government and punishment. Thoreau became someone who was very anti- big government. Thoreau's first line in “Civil Disobedience” is “I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.” He was also a very anti-slavery and against the Mexican American war that was going on at that time. He was so against the war because it was his tax money that was paying for it and he didn’t want his money to be the cause of people’s deaths. Thoreau appeals to our emotions when he states, “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood.” No moral man would want to “shed innocent blood” yet in Thoreau's mind, by paying taxes, men are allowing the government to do just