Ralph Waldo Emerson once called at the Concord jail to see his friend Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau had been sentenced for refusing to pay taxes to a town that supported drilling for the Mexican War, a war which he deemed a move to extend slavery.
The exponent of Self-Reliance was puzzled by the situation. “Henry,” he said, “why are you here?”
”Waldo,” asked Thoreau, “why are you not here?”
Bonus: Robert Edwin Lee and Jerome Lawrence later wrote a two-act play about this event, titled The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail!
From the Wikipedia link:
Writing in the New York Times, Howard Taubman described the ideological relevance of the play to contemporary audiences, stating "this play and its protagonist, though they are of the 19th century, are speaking to today's concerns: an unwanted war in another land, civil disobedience, the interdependence of man and nature, education, the role of government and the governed."
Source:
Humes, James C. Speaker's Treasury of Anecdotes About the Famous. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. 122. Print.
Further Reading:
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