Thoroughly Thoreau

       More Letters From Paradise
           Throughly Thoreau
For more years than I care to count, I have been a huge fan of the American writer Henry David Thoreau. While I was in the Navy I went with a friend from our ship to try and find the site of Thoreau's cabin on Walden Pond. I returned many years later with my youngest daughter Jessica, to find that a replica of his cabin had been built.

Every American literature book has a section devoted to this writer. Much attention is paid to his book "Walden," which contains his essay on "Civil Disobedience." Both Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King read and were greatly influenced by this essay. But what I feel is often overlooked is Thoreau's contribution to understanding nature, and his work for the abolition of slavery. He understood ecology before the word was invented. He kept many journals which were left unpublished until now. He was friends of Emerson,Hawthorne,Louisa May Alcott, and William Lloyd Garrison,publisher of the anti-slavery paper "The Liberator." He was also friends with the ex-slave Frederick Douglas, and John Brown. And he met Walt Whitman while he was doing some survey work in New York.

American literature began with these writers in and around Concord, Massachusetts.This small town was also a hot bed of abolitionists. Thoreau delivered a plea to a large crowd,in support of John Brown,following his attack on Harper's Ferry. Thoreau had helped drive one of the the men involved in the attack, to escape into Canada. Also, when the government passed the Fugitive Slave Act, Thoreau's family hid and helped runaway slaves to escape to Canada.

Thoreau graduated from Harvard with understanding of both ancient Greek and Latin. I don't think it did much for him  in his study of Botany. Few know that his father had a pencil making factory, and that Thoreau made his living after Harvard by surveying. He also made paid lecture tours.  He tried his hand at teaching, but quit after refusing to cane students.

A new book "Thoreau, a life " written by Laura Dassow Walls, published 2017 by The University of Chicago Press, is most excellent. I think this is the book for people who really want to know more about     Thoreau. The author provides us with a complete picture of the man. Thoreau died in 1862, at the age of 44, never having seen the end of slavery.

    Aloha  
    Grant