Thoreau uses the Transcendentalist philosophy to attack the state from an anti-slavery platform. ... Those that have stood up from down low and challenged the establishment occasionally have shaken the foundations of injustice, but inevitably are brought to a bitter end by that which they resisted. ...
He also recognizes the irony and hypocrisy of dissenters of slavery and the Mexican War being called unpatriotic and troublemakers. While being citizen of the United States of America was something to be proud of in Thoreau's day, only decades earlier stating something similar could have been grounds for being thrown in a British prison, "All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. ...