Compare Rw Emerson\'s Self-Reliance and Thoreau\'s Civil Disobedience
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American lecturer and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century and was a proponent of individualism and critic of societal pressures. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was also an American poet, but also an abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, historian and part of the Transcendentalist movement. To understand both of these men and their ideas, it is first necessary to place them in context with the historical and cultural aspects of America from 1820 on.