Disillusioned by the country’s treatment of slavery and its openly imperialist war with Mexico, the question for Thoreau was not which way to vote but whether to vote—or to do something else entirely. In “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” that “something else” is refusing to pay taxes to a system that Thoreau could no longer abide. While he understood that technically this meant breaking the law, Thoreau stood outside the question and judged the law itself: “If [the law] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law,” he wrote.
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