Civil Disobedience

humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already,
as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniment,
though it may be,

    "Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
     As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
     Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
     O'er the grave where our hero was buried."

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly,
but as machines, with their bodies.  They are the standing army,
and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc.
In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the
judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves
on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men
can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well.
Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.
They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.
Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.
Others--as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers,
and office-holders--serve the state chiefly with their heads;
and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as
likely to serve the devil, without _intending_ it, as God.
A very few--as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the
great sense, and _men_--serve the state with their consciences
also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and
they are commonly treated as enemies by it.  A wise man will
only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be "clay,"
and "stop a hole to keep the wind away," but leave that
office to his dust at least:

    "I am too high born to be propertied,
     To be a second at control,
     Or useful serving-man and instrument
     To any sovereign state throughout the world."

He who gives himself entirely to his fellow men appears
to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself
partially to them in pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.

How does it become a man to behave toward the American
government today?  I answer, that he cannot without disgrace
be associated with it.  I cannot for an instant recognize
that political organization as _my_ government which is the
_slave's_ government also.

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is,
the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist,
the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are
great and unendurable.  But almost all say that such is not
the case now.  But such was the case, they think, in the
Revolution of '75.  If one were to tell me that this was a
bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities
brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should
not make an ado about it, for I can do without them.
All machines have their friction; and possibly this does
enough good to counter-balance the evil.  At any rate, it is
a great evil to make a stir about it.  But when the friction
comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are
organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer.
In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation
which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves,
and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a
foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it
is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.
What makes this duty the more urgent is that fact that the
country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.

Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions,
in his chapter on the "Duty of Submission to Civil
Government," resolves all civil obligation into expediency;
and he proceeds to say that "so long as the interest of the
whole society requires it, that is, so long as the established
government cannot be resisted or changed without public
inconvenience, it is the will of God . . . that the
established government be obeyed--and no longer.  This
principle being admitted, the justice of every particular
case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the
quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of
the probability and expense of redressing it on the other."
Of this, he says, every man shall judge for himself.
But Paley appears never to have contemplated those cases
to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which
a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost
what it may.  If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a
drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.
This, according to Paley, would be inconvenient.
But he that would save his life, in such a case, shall lose it.
This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war
on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.

In their practice, nations agree with Paley; but does
anyone think that Massachusetts does exactly what is right
at the present crisis?

    "A drab of stat,
     a cloth-o'-silver slut,
     To have her train borne up,
     and her soul trail in the dirt."