The subject of Thoreau's “Slavery in Massachusetts” (1854), was on public view when an escaped slave named Anthony Burns was captured in Boston. Thoreau denounced the absurdity of a court in Boston “trying a MAN, to find out if he is not really a SLAVE,” when the question has already been “decided from eternity”. The citizen has no duty to resign his conscience to the state, and may even have a duty to oppose moral legislation such as that which supports ever in the Mexican War. Thoreau concludes “I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is slave's government also”. Slavery could be abolished by “peaceable revolution”, he continues, if people refuse to pay their taxes and clogged the system by going to jail. Although Thoreau advocates nonviolent action in “Resistance to Civil Government,” he later supported the violent actions of John Brown who killed unarmed pro slavery settlers in Kansas, and in 1859 attacked the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.
I believe that Thoreau did a good job describing how slavery worked and why it should be ended. I liked how he was against violent and how his writing made people think about slavery more often and it’s bad for the