A more powerful endorsement by Thoreau in this sentence would have suggested an inclination towards progressive social action, but instead this passive acceptance of revolution and change further guides the paper towards ivory tower thought. Instead, “not too soon” suggests that it could wait longer, but it would be acceptable to start now if need be. Thoreau doesn’t suggest that it is overdue, important, or even timely. Thoreau writes that when “a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.” Thinking that it is “not too soon” creates an extremely passive air. This trend towards ideas instead of action continues to be seen within the language of the essay. In this way Thoreau seems to guide his essay more towards interpreting moral philosophy than laying out a plan to enact social change. This conflicts somewhat with the fact that change cannot truly gain legitimacy until it is officially acknowledged by the government.

He says that “government is at best but an expedient but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes inexpedient.” Thoreau makes it clear that he does not believe that the Government can be used as a medium to enact change. Thoreau starts with a jaded sense of the effectiveness government has. Thoreau’s “groundwork” in civil disobedience lacks the urgency that King has in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Thoreau’s language makes civil disobedience seem like a great idea, but one that doesn’t need to have heart and soul placed into it. added both urgency and the power of the majority to the idea of “civil disobedience.” Although Henry David Thoreau laid the groundwork, Martin Luther King Jr. Thoreau and King shared the idea of civil disobedience, but King was the first American to transform the concept into a vehicle for social change. King narrowed “civil disobedience,” directing it towards laws of racial injustice, and then began a mass movement based on that concept.

King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” took Thoreau’s philosophy and put it to work in a mass movement directed at a specific evil. that Thoreau’s ideas took a more tangible form. His essay did not direct itself against routing out a specific evil, but rather portrayed how he felt people should act towards their government. He was not trying to start a movement, and because of this his message lacked urgency. To Thoreau, the importance of this concept was based in his own moral views, not necessarily on the views of anyone else. He put his idea to work in an indirect way, by refusing to pay his taxes. In 1849, Thoreau penned an essay that would come to be known as “Civil Disobedience.” He wrote of a new and radical idea, one that suggested that law should be answerable to the moral compass of man, not the other way around.

Thoreau 1849