Walden

Thoreau is opposed to slavery. In sentiments that would be more fully expressed in his essay "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau recounts in Walden the story of his imprisonment in jail for not paying taxes to a government that supports slavery. Elsewhere in the book, as when aids a fugitive slave on his journey to Canada, Thoreau demonstrates his opposition to slavery and disgust with the Fugitive Slave Law. He sees the state and its institutions as corrupt and insidious controllers of men, even when they try to escape it, as he does by living in the woods.