American Enlightenment Dbq Essay

Revolutions for Enlightenment
During the eighteenth century, people were angry and miserable. They sought for alternatives in the way they were living, and how they existed in society. Many minority groups revolted against their governments or people of authority because they felt as if they were being treated unfairly. In other words, the government was not treating everyone as equals. Not everyone had the right to own property, vote, and some did not have the right to freedom of speech. If you were the slave, rather than the slave owner, you were poor and very dependent on your owner for survival but worked in harsh conditions with little to no pay. New ideas of enlightenment eventually led to a society where equality became more apparent

For the superiors to remain high in the social hierarchy, their goal was to keep the citizens under their control. As a result, commoners usually had no choice but to stop in their tracks, for fear of imprisonment or death. During the Age of Revolution and European Enlightenment, individuals advocated for freedom and equality for all, but these ideas were not always executed or carried out as originally planned, as proven by the writers and leaders during this period. In document 22.2, author, Abbe de Sieyes claims that “freedom is not the consequence of privileges, but of the rights appertaining to all.” He thinks that just because the poor lacks privileges, does not mean they should lack freedom. To him, the Third Estate of France is everything. When saying this, he is comparing the Third Estate, which is comprised of the common people, to the privileged people of France. For instance, the common people did not have the proper representation. Usually, whoever represented them was, unfortunately, not appointed by them, so did not have their best interests in mind. Additionally, the Third Estate was always outvoted in the Estate General because their individual votes, which would have outnumbered the votes of the other two estates, were not counted, rather, each estate could claim one vote each. Of course, the privileged

Sieyes believed that “if the privileged order were abolished, the nation would not be something less but something more,” meaning his ideal society is one where the nation would benefit from the Third estate coming into power (Envisioning 22.2). The author trusts that the Third Estate, made up of merchants and farmers, are more equipped than priests and aristocrats, to run the government and make political decisions. Therefore, his goal during the French Revolution was for everyone to be under the same common law and representation. The French Revolution was fought so that the privileged stopped using their status as an advantage in society, without taking into account the needs of the people that they claimed were below