What does Thoreau conclude about freedom while he is in jail?

In his essay “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau writes about his overnight jail experience in paragraphs 25-34. He talks about the idea of freedom immediately, in paragraph 25:

I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. … I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was...

In his essay “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau writes about his overnight jail experience in paragraphs 25-34. He talks about the idea of freedom immediately, in paragraph 25:

I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. … I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

Here he is playing around with our standard views of freedom, jails, and thick stone walls. Putting a person in jail doesn’t put an end to his freedom to think and to believe in whatever he wishes, Thoreau says. He also sees the townspeople outside as living in a kind of jail of their own choosing, being tied to the duties of daily life and unable to get free from these chains. This is why he uses the metaphor of the wall between them and him, in addition to the granite wall he is now locked up behind. He believes he now, ironically, has more freedom than they do. For a short time, he doesn’t have to make any daily-life decisions.

Later in the essay, in paragraph 40, Thoreau says: “If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-free … unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him.”  He concludes that the concept of freedom is a matter of perspective and mind-set. Of course, Thoreau was immersed in his new writing life at the time. He had grown used to being able to call up thoughts and emotions on his own, in order to write about them. Maybe this contributed to the sense of freedom he felt as he sat in the county jail.