1. Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862

2. Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817. As a boy, he loved the woods and fields around his town. • He entered Harvard in 1833 and graduated four years later. • He never ranked higher than the middle of his class. • He was independent and eccentric, and he wore a green coat to chapel “because the rules required black.”

3. Thoreau seems to be the opposite of the great American self-made man. He, by his own choosing, became a self-UNMADE man. • He lasted only two weeks as a schoolteacher (he quit, refusing to whip a child). • The woman he proposed to turned him down. • He had little interest in the family business, despite his Harvard education.

4. At the age of 28, on July 4, 1845, he ended his three-year stay at the house of a friend and moved to a cabin on the shores of Walden Pond in Massachusetts. • The experiment was an attempt to rediscover the grandeur and heroism inherent in a simple life led close to nature.

5. One of Thoreau’s most famous remarks is: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” • What does he mean?

6. Thoreau is also very famous for an act of civil disobedience. • He refused to pay taxes to support the Mexican War, which he felt would extend American slave-owning territory. • He was extremely opposed to slavery. • He spent the night in jail before someone paid the tax for him.

7. In 1861, Thoreau developed tuberculosis. • On his deathbed, his aunt asked him, “Have you made your peace with God?” Thoreau replied, “Why, Aunt, I didn’t know we had ever quarreled.”