Resistance to Civil Government ('Civil Disobedience,' in Aesthetic Papers)

No UK edition and no precedence contest: this is an American-only first appearance, and the true first of the text is the periodical appearance in Aesthetic Papers (1849), not a separate book. The census claim is confirmed. Note the title trap the census correctly flags — in 1849 the essay is titled "Resistance to Civil Government"; the now-familiar title "Civil Disobedience" appears only posthumously in A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866), whose text differs only slightly from 1849 and whose authorial sanction scholars still debate. A copy titled "Civil Disobedience" is by definition not the first appearance.