The Enlightenment
Focus on Effects of the Politcal Part of the Enlightenment
The Seeds of the American Revolution
By 1776, the colonists had over 150 years of experience in self-government. Republican based governments were founded in Jamestown with the House of Burgesses in 1619, in Plymouth with the signing of the Mayflower Compact in 1620, and with the creation of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639).
Additionally, the colonists had considerable experience in framing rights doctrines including such landmarks as the Maryland Toleration Act (1649), Bill of Rights to the Virginia Constitution (1776), and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779).
The colonists aslo had other philosophical and religious beliefs that supported republican principles. For example, the Great Awakening (1730s-1740s) led many to question authoritarin religious leaders and, perhaps, authoritarian political leaders.
The Enlightenment
The thinkers of the Enlightenment were characterized by a focus and appeal to reason and logic and a search for governing bodies of laws. To some degree, many historians of the First Great Awakening see it as partially a response to the Enlightebment. The Great Awakening was characterized by a focus and appeal to religion and God, perhaps in a more emotional way than in the past.
Our focus is on a small political wing of the Enlightenment and the social contract and natural rights theorists. The theorists are John Locke (1632-1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), and the Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu (1689-1755).
John Locke and Natural Rights Theory
Natural Rights theorists pondered what rights humand had if left into a pure state of nature with no cities, no businesses, and no governments. The theorists suggested that those rights remained int act when humans left a state of nature.
For many Americans, John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1689) exemplifies natural rights theory and the impact of the European Enlightenment on the burgeonong United States.
Locke proposed that all people had the natural rights of "life, liberty, and property". In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson proposed that all humans had the unalienable rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".
Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Social Contract Theory
Thus for the Declaration of Independence, "...to secure these rights Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter it or abolish it..."
Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu - Separation of Powers
From these and other inputs James Madison helped to create a separation of powers complete with checks and balances between the branches of government.