What happened when Thoreau didn't pay the tax?

Henry Thoreau was arrested and put in the Middlesex County jail. Someone arrived at the sheriff’s door during the night and paid the bill. It had probably been his Aunt Maria Thoreau, who lived just a short walk away from the jail, in the center of Concord. Thoreau was released the next morning.

The tax that Thoreau was protesting was the state poll tax. Every man of voting age in Massachusetts was supposed to pay...

Henry Thoreau was arrested and put in the Middlesex County jail. Someone arrived at the sheriff’s door during the night and paid the bill. It had probably been his Aunt Maria Thoreau, who lived just a short walk away from the jail, in the center of Concord. Thoreau was released the next morning.

The tax that Thoreau was protesting was the state poll tax. Every man of voting age in Massachusetts was supposed to pay the annual fee, merely for the right to vote in elections, or to “go to the polls.” Because Thoreau had never voted in elections and never intended to vote at any time in the future, he decided the tax didn’t apply to him. He also didn’t like the fact that the state used these monies as a general fund of sorts. They could therefore be used for any purpose: like furthering the new war with Mexico, or forcing the returns of runaway slaves to their former southern owners. Thoreau was against both of these initiatives, as well as the methods of funding them. As he says at the end of paragraph 17 of “Civil Disobedience:” “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”