Resistance to Civil Government, also called On the Duty of Civil Disobedience or Civil Disobedience for short, is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican–American War (1846–1848)....

Thoreau writing belongs to the Civil Disobedience pamphlet (Civil Disobedience, 1849), where he expressed convictions for which in July 1846 he had to spend a night in prison, because he refused to pay taxes to the government, whose actions did not approve. Many years later, this essay had a great influence on Gandhi in his speech against British rule in India....