How Did The Enlightenment Impact The American Revolution

Jonathan Israel, author of a multi-volume series surrounding the Enlightenment, describes that the Enlightenment “constituted a great revolution in the history of mankind,” which in turn was linked to the revolutionary waves that spread to America. The advocacy and ideas fostered by the members of the Enlightenment significantly impacted the American Revolution. There was a manifestation of the enlightened ideas of freedom and toleration in the reasoning for the revolution and the new and independent America that the revolutionaries sought to construct. The American War of Independence was a time of political turmoil, which was provoked when Great Britain made attempts to tax the American colonists to help alleviate the burdens on the empire.

The American revolutionaries had a high degree of familiarity with the enlightened ideas that spread to England, which in turn prompted the revolutionaries to see great value in maintaining and protecting their very rights and freedoms that were promoted in the Enlightenment. Perhaps one of the most obvious influences come from John Locke, and his writings can easily be used to aid arguments on behave of liberty, property, and order. John Adams, a founding father and second President of the United States, used the ideas of Locke to shape his “doctrine of justified resistance” in his revolutionary efforts. Meanwhile, Thomas Jefferson had a strong reaction against the “many unwarrantable encroachments and usurpations, attempted to be made by the legislature of one part of the empire, upon those rights which God and the laws have given equally and independently to all.” In the initial draft of the Declaration of Independence (June 1776), Jefferson echoes and rephrases the familiar sacred trinity of “life, liberty, and property” from Locke’s Two Treatises of Government: “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Soon, Jefferson revised this

In Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, he argues that men, while in the state of nature, were in a “state of perfect equality.” It can be argued that this notion is the reasoning for implementing an elected head of state/head of government, rather than implementing a monarchy. The Bill of Rights itself is a consolidation of the rights of American citizens. These very rights are derived from Enlightened thinkers. The First Amendment declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceable to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” This amendment is the embodiment of the liberal freedoms advocated for by the philosophes: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. Censorship, particularly, was an obstacle and point of issue for the writers of the Enlightenment; thus, the First Amendment is a victory for all members of the Enlightenment. The First Amendment is a codification of the commitments that individuals such as Voltaire dedicated their lives to. Meanwhile, the Fifth Amendment states, “No person shall… be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The due process clause is of great importance because it establishes that an