During the early 19th century, Daniel Webster (1782–1852) was an influential American statesman. Through his legal counsel, he helped support the authority of the federal government and set Constitutional precedents. Thoreau appears to claim that despite Webster’s accomplishments, he failed to question the role of government in an individual’s life.
Located in western and central Europe, the Rhine River flows from the southeastern Swiss Alps through the Rhineland and eventually into the North Sea in the Netherlands. It is one of the longest and most important rivers in Europe.
The Chinese philosopher Confucius (551–479 BCE) is considered one of the most influential thinkers and teachers in history. His writings and philosophy, known as Confucianism, emphasize morality, positive relationships, justice, and honesty. Thoreau and other transcendentalists were greatly influenced by Confucius and other Eastern philosophers.
This is a sect of Hellenistic Jews mentioned in the biblical New Testament on two separate occasions as being unfriendly towards Jesus of Nazareth. Their name in both cases is paired with the Pharisees, a group generally, though not entirely, portrayed as hostile to early Christianity.
One of the most significant figures in Western history, Martin Luther (1483–1546) is best known for sparking the Protestant Reformation, leading to a split in the Catholic Church and the rise of other sects of Christianity.
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) was an astronomer and mathematician during the Renaissance and Reformation eras. He created a heliocentric model of the universe, in which the Earth and planets revolved around the sun, which stood in opposition to earlier theories that the planetary bodies revolved around the Earth.
Thoreau is referring to Jesus Christ, also known as Jesus of Nazareth, who was a Jewish religious leader. He became the central figure of Christianity, believed to be the son of God and the Messiah, or Christ, as prophesied in the Old Testament in the Bible. He was betrayed by one of his disciples and died by crucifixion on a cross.
One of the oldest board games known, backgammon is played by two players on a board. The game proceeds with both players rolling dice and moving their pieces around the board with the aim of removing them. The first player to remove all their pieces from the board wins.
"esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin..."See in text(Civil Disobedience)
Thoreau is referring to General George Washington (1732–1799) and Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), two of the founding fathers of the United States of America. Thoreau critically refers to some of his peers as “children” of these founders to point out that while they claim ancestry, they lack the spirit of such leaders.
William Paley (1743–1805) was a writer, utilitarian, and philosopher. His 1785 book, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, contains a chapter titled “Duty of Submission to Civil Government”—mentioned here by Thoreau—which possibly inspired Thoreau’s own essay. Paley is perhaps best known for his argument for the existence of a God, known as his “watchmaker analogy,” in which he claims that since the insides of a watch reveal an intricate nature constructed by an intelligent being, then the same argument can be made for how the universe works.
The United States fought a war with Mexico from 1846 to 1848, a conflict generally known as the Mexican-American War, but also referred to in the USA as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the American intervention in Mexico. This conflict was fought over the territory of Texas, a region that the USA had annexed in 1845 but that Mexico considered part of its territory after the 1836 Texas Revolution.
