On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (Version 3)

LibriVox recording of On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau. Read in English by Phil Chenevert "That government is best which governs least" is the famous opening line of this essay. The slavery crisis inflamed New England in the 1840s and 1850s. The environment became especially tense after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. A lifelong abolitionist, Thoreau delivered an impassioned speech which would later become Civil Disobedience in 1848, just months after leaving Walden Pond. The speech dealt with slavery, but at the same time excoriated American imperialism, particularly t