History 1302

History 1301 – Essay/Exam #2

Henry David Thoreau believed that modern society hampered individual judgment by making men “tools of their tools” (Voices of Freedom pg. 169). In the mid eighteen hundreds Thoreau fled to the mountains to live in his cabin where he enjoyed the freedom of isolation to ponder his thoughts. But, we can see a different perspective from Harriet Noble and her writings about her family journey from the East to Michigan. Here Noble opens up a discussion on the role of a woman and ponders the fate of her children.

Thoreau believed that the new American way of life or the Market Revolution was undermining the real values of freedom. Americans needed to adopt a way of life more in tuned to nature and not commerce. Thoreau held a firm belief that people were so preoccupied with material things that they had lost all compassion for things of nature. They were essentially enslaved by these things. Thoreau insisted, “Genuine freedom, lay not in the accumulation of material goods, but within” (Voice of Freedom pg. 169). Thoreau was passionate about this belief of simplified living. He did not understand the need for so many material things. In 1845 Thoreau decided to get away from this city life and he moved to a remote cabin next to a pond near Concord, CT. Here Thoreau would write his famous “Walden” piece. Walden is still one of the most influential pieces on social conformity and materialism. Thoreau was probably an early libertarian according to his books and beliefs at the time. He was very much an individualist.

A few decades prior to Thoreau’s Walden we discover a memoir by Harriet Noble who spent long hard months on the trail helping migrate her family to the West. Harriet Noble wrote about her family’s journey to the American West in 1824. Harriet described many hardships including tough travels, unsanitary living conditions and very hard work.

In her writing she declared, “Could we have known what it was to be a pioneer in a new...