Thoreau establishes a conscience for America within this passage; that the government cannot be trusted and tend to represent such injustice without any means. Through such statements by Thoreau, the American public can see that he is trying to illustrate the corruption of man by the government that he wants to restore in more humane ways. The “nature of Thoreau's character was that he lived from his heart, from his intellect, and from what he believed to be the unimpeachable truth. [And] for America in those turbulent times of crisis when our nation struggled to define its true identity, Henry David Thoreau was the conscience of [our] Nation” (Bank). We can understand why Henry David Thoreau is such an important role model throughout American literature; His push for humanity and historical change during the nineteenth century brought new perspectives and ideas as a way to benefit our nation and establish more humane ways of living for the American public, which is why we consider his work so important in America.