Civil Disobedience Essay

The act of rebelling is a trait engrained in humans that it is prevalent within babies, children, teenagers, and adults. This of course has led it to become a recurrent way throughout human history to go against the status quo, and Oscar Wilde proclaims that disobedience promotes progress. The extent to which this remains true is only when suppressed ideas and oppressed people need liberation through rebellion. When disobedience is used to cling onto antiquated ideas, to resist progress, that is when it becomes a force of regression. Examples of this are plentiful throughout history and the numerous conflicts which have transpired as a result of it. The colonies in North America, under British rule, had grown unhappy with Great Britain for

An embarrassing and large part of American history is woven with oppression through slavery where African Americans, humans, were treated as subhuman; they were treated as if their lives had less value than that of a insect. When Abraham Lincoln was elected and it seemed as if slavery could be abolished, many southern states found this unacceptable and threw away the unity of the fifty states in a massive rebellion. They seceded from the United States to form the Confederacy, a new country which had slavery as its goal. Although disobedience and rebellion were used, it served to do anything but progress society. The idea of slavery reaches far back into human history; it was not a suppressed idea. The people who supported and used slavery were not being punished either when slavery was abolished, yet disobedience was used as if they, the southerners, were being oppressed. It was the African Americans in fact who were further oppressed by this disobedience. As a result of their disobedience, over 600,000 people died and deep resentment would ripple throughout the country for over a century. If the southern states did not disobey, African Americans would’ve had their newly found freedom sooner, and American history would’ve been less bloody with less lives wasted. The divisions created by the Confederacy’s regressive disobedience still has repercussions to this day with some still supporting