The Life and Times of Henry David Thoreau

Answer Key

Research Topic #1:

1. Thoreau was born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts

2. He studied at Harvard University.

3. Thoreau had several professions including; writing, teaching, laborer.

4. Emerson was a friend and professional colleague of Emerson.  Thoreau lived with Emerson for a time.  He also opened a school based on Emerson’s philosophy

5. Transcendentalism is the title given to the philosophy that Thoreau and others adopted in the 1800’s.

6. He wrote “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, and “Resistance to Civil Government”.  “Resistance to Civil Government” is commonly referred to as “On Civil Disobedience”.  One of his most widely read novels is Walden.

Research Topic #2

1. The Mexican American War was between 1846 and 1848.

2. The United States wanted to buy New Mexico and California and Mexico did not want to sell the territories.

3. The war was fought in Mexico and Southern Texas.

4. There was little resistance to the war in the United States.

5. He was against it because he believed it would spread slavery.

6. The United States won the war.  Texas, New Mexico, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming were purchased for $ 15,000,000.

Research Topic #3

1. The Law stated that if an escaped slave was sighted he or she should be apprehended and turned into the authorities for deportation back to the right owner down south.

2. It was enacted in 1850.

3. It was part of a group of laws designed to compromise the stand of slavery and anti-slavery .

4. The act encouraged the continued operation of the Underground Railroad.

5. Senator Henry Clay introduced this Act.

6. He was against it as he was against the institution of slavery itself.

Research Topic #4

1. A literary and philosophical movement, associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition.

2. 1836 to 1860

3. Immanuel Kant

4. Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglas, Emily Dickinson

5. The philosophy of transcendentalism is associated with the American Renaissance between 1835 and 1880.  As described by Ralph Waldo Emerson, it was a time when American art liberated itself from European traditions.  During this time, artists, reformers, educators, feminists, et al were influenced by the transcendental philosophy.

6. It was called “The Dial”.

Research Topic #5

1. He lived in Massachusetts between 1803 and 1882.

2. He began his career as a minister.  After giving that up he became a writer and public speaker.

3. Harvard University barred him for several years from lecturing at the university.

4. He made a case for new American culture, freed from Europe.

5. Thoreau was the tutor of Emerson’s brother’s children.  Later, Thoreau lived with Emerson for a couple of years (1847-1849), and worked as a handyman on his property.  The cabin on Walden Pond that Thoreau wrote about was on Emerson’s property.  They both shared the philosophy of transcendentalism.

6. Emerson wrote “Nature”, and “Self-Reliance”.

Research Topic #6

1. It means having ideal conditions especially of social organizations.

2. Brook Farm was the most famous utopian society founded in 1841 in the United States.   

3. It was founded by transcendentalists, George and Sophia Ripley.  Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Horace Greeley were involved with the community.

4. The idea for Brook Farm began in the Transcendental Club, and many transcendentalists were associated with the community.

5. There were many utopian societies at this time.   Two others were Oneida in New York and Amana in Iowa.

6. It never recovered from a fire in 1847.