Letter to Emerson

Letter to Emerson

Peter Joelson

12/17/08

July 23, 1846

Dear Waldo,

My confinement is over, Waldo! I am happy to report that my two year experiment at Walden was an extreme success! I guess that is why I am laughing as I write to you. Just a day after my experiment finished, before I could even write to you about my marvelous revelations and new ideas, I was arrested for refusing to pay my tax, and brought to a place a person may conceive as a “prison”. You have taught me valuable lessons in life, in fact, you changed my life when I first met you and heard you preach. But highlighted in your “doctrine” (as some people would call it), is to live life for what you believe in and not subside to people who hold the power or the money. Well, I certainly have followed that lifestyle faithfully. But old friend, do not feel the slightest tinge of guilt for me and my current predicament. This prison is actually an almost luxury of a kind. I look out and see the sun set brilliantly over concord, and I realize that this feeling I have in the pit of my stomach is in no way a reaction to my own predicament, but rather it is a feeling of great pity that I feel for the rest of concord. For they are imprisoned in a way I will never be, they are imprisoned within their own minds. My experiment in Walden has taught me a good many things, one of which is that exploring one’s own mind is the key to salvation! Never have I thought so clearly then the days in which I spent at Walden. I journeyed to the corners of my brain, discovering new ideas and new places, to which I have never been! Waldo, you’d love the experience! You must explore your own mind; it will shed light into your life like never before!

I find myself quite enjoying my imprisonment, for I have the self-knowledge that I am just and that the government is wrong. In fact, “under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison” (that sounds pretty good, maybe I’ll include it in one of my essays!). As I told you before, I had refused to pay my tax. You might find that strange, but think for a second, don’t you see? I am walking down the path that you created (yes I realize I have said that man should make paths through woods, not walk down them, don’t throw my own words back at me). I have sought to refute this government for their unjustly policies, policies which I am sure you have recognize. “I do not wish to be regarded as a member of any society which I have not joined!” Their policies in treating blacks, as well as their war with Mexico, none of this should be tolerated by us. But, what do we do? We sit and do nothing, we watch as our own government destroys their own citizens, whether it is through war or through racism. Well I say that we should revolt and that we should fight our own government! Our only chance is through “peaceable revolution.” We must do no harm, yet “enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.” Do not sit around and do nothing as you have done so often in the past. Please, join me in a revolution against our own government.

Sincerely, your friend,

Henry David Thoreau

P.S. Say hello to Lydian for me