Walden’s Hospitality and Fugitive Slave Law Hostility

Abstract

A look at the various versions of Walden, a work Henry David Thoreau revised a number of times between 1847 and 1854, reveals a substantial revision in the early 1850s. A handful of critical works have dealt with the development of Walden over the years leading up to its publication in 1854, yet these works have left room for more consideration of the influence of Thoreau’s historical context on his additions to Walden. Integral to the argument here are two chapters substantially expanded and altered in 1852 and 1853: “Visitors” and “Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors.” The latter chapter especially is one that critics have largely ignored or found dissatisfying, but it and “Visitors” manifest the influence of historical events on the content and form of Thoreau’s famous book. The most pressing historical event of those years was the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, a law that, upon its enactment, enraged Thoreau and many of his contemporaries as it affected fugitive slaves they knew personally. Additionally, this law was at odds with hospitality, a virtue that looms large in the American ethos. In what is likely surprising to many, Thoreau gives focused attention to hospitality in Walden, and he does so in the years after the implementation of the Fugitive Slave Law as he continues to compose and revise his famous work into its final 1854 version. In the aftermath of the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law, Thoreau particularly emphasizes the need for individuals to practice hospitality by being willing to welcome the displaced regardless of the risk. Thoreau utilizes the form of Walden to illustrate that hospitality creates a place for difference. After the Fugitive Slave Law, even as he adds explicit references to hospitality, he also expands the boundaries of chapters in Walden, especially “Visitors” and “Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors,” creating space for Concord’s erstwhile inhabitants to re-inhabit their homes within the pages of his text and challenging his fellow citizens in Concord to choose hospitality rather than conformity to the strictures of an unethical law.