Regardless, to condemn Brown to death in Thoreau's view demoted the far greater human destruction of life via the institution of enslavement Brown attempted to end. This does not seem so much to be a contradiction or a defense of violence but a tempering of the anger that Brown created in the hearts of many Americans, and an attempt to put the violent acts of Brown in the context of the equally violent actions of slavery. Perhaps the main contradiction between Thoreau is not his praise of Brown and his advocating of his own pacifist, resistance to the Mexican War, and the value of civil disobedience, but his condemnation of slavery and praise of populism and a lack of government authority in "Civil Disobedience." The latter work's expressed defense of the popular sentiment as unilaterally guiding the government's will would not have ended slavery in the South. To follow this belief in majority rules to its logical extension is to entirely deny minority rights such as Black Americans.

Also, Thoreau's defense of his own moral principles, based on the transcendentalist upholding of the self and self-reliant principles, often came into conflict and contradiction with the popular will and common imagination of his own day, which was not nearly so pacifist, abolitionist, or radical. To respond with one's own principle when recalling Thoreau's motto that the government that governs best, governs least, one might say that a government that protects minority as well as majority rights in an active fashion commands more respect...

Thoreau asks readers to opt out of government, but opting out of voting can result in one's opponents taking command of the good or bad government that does exist, despite Thoreau's desire for the abolition of all governance.
Martin Luther King, Junior may have advocated nonviolence like Thoreau, but it was a nonviolent form of resistance with the purpose of helping African-Americans to become more included in the systems of American governing through access to voting, not to create a society without a government of participatory democracy that could, no occasion, keep the majority will in check to protect minorities and minority rights. It is all well and good to say that the government governs best that governs least, but too little government in a non-ideal world, where individuals are not uniformly willing to act with respect towards minorities can be dangerous -- and perhaps may have proven dangerous to Thoreau, had he found himself in a crowd of populist supporters of the Mexican War.

Works Cited

Civil Disobedience." Prentice Hall Literature Georgia Student

Edition. Pp. 412-413.

Wood, Barry. "Thoreau's Narrative Art in Civil Disobedience." Modern Critical Views on Henry David Thoreau. Edited by Harold Bloom. Pp.173-174

Yarborough, Wynn. "Readings of Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government" Virginia Commonwealth University, 1995.