| American Enlightenment | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1732–1845 | |||
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 TheUnited States Declaration of Independence, written byThomas Jefferson inPhiladelphia in June 1776, and ratified by theSecond Continental Congress, on July 4, 1776, one of the most important and influential documents of the American Enlightenment | |||
| Including | American philosophy | ||
| Leader(s) | Thomas Paine,Benjamin Franklin,Thomas Jefferson,James Madison, andGeorge Washington | ||
TheAmerican Enlightenment was a period of intellectual andphilosophical fervor in the BritishThirteen Colonies in the 18th to 19th century, which led to theAmerican Revolution and the creation of theUnited States. The American Enlightenment was influenced by the 17th-and 18th-centuryAge of Enlightenment movement and byAmerican philosophy. According toJames MacGregor Burns, the spirit of the American Enlightenment was to give Enlightenment ideals a practical, useful form in the life of the nation and its people.[1]
Anon-denominational moral philosophy replacedtheology in many college curricula. Some colleges reformed their curricula to include natural philosophy (science), modern astronomy, and mathematics, and "new-model" American-style colleges were founded. Politically, the age is distinguished by an emphasis uponconsent of the governed,equality under the law,liberty,republicanism andreligious tolerance, as clearly expressed in theUnited States Declaration of Independence.
Among the foremost representatives of the American Enlightenment were presidents of colleges, includingPuritan religious leadersJonathan Edwards,Thomas Clap, andEzra Stiles,Presbyterian minister and college presidentJohn Witherspoon, andAnglican moral philosophersSamuel Johnson andWilliam Smith. Leading political thinkers wereJohn Adams,James Madison,Thomas Paine,George Mason,James Wilson,Ethan Allen, andAlexander Hamilton, and polymathsBenjamin Franklin, andThomas Jefferson.
The term "American Enlightenment" was coined in the post-World War II era and was not used in the 18th century when English speakers commonly referred to a process of becoming "enlightened."[2][3]
Various dates for the American Enlightenment have been proposed, including 1750–1820,[4] 1765–1815,[5] and 1688–1815.[6] One more precise start date proposed is 1714,[7] when a collection of Enlightenment books byJeremiah Dummer were donated to the library of the college ofYale University in Connecticut. They were received by a post-graduate studentSamuel Johnson, who studied them. He found that they contradicted his Puritan learning. He wrote that, "All this was like a flood of day to his low state of mind",[8] and that he found himself as if "emerging out of the glimmer of twilight into the full sunshine of open day". Two years later in 1716 as a tutor, Johnson introduced a new curriculum into Yale using Dummer's donated Enlightenment books. Johnson offered what he called "The New Learning",[9] which included the works and ideas ofFrancis Bacon,John Locke,Isaac Newton,Robert Boyle,Copernicus, and literary works byShakespeare,John Milton, andJoseph Addison. Enlightenment ideas were introduced to the colonists and diffused throughDissenter educational and religious networks in America.[10]
EnlightenedFounding Fathers, especiallyBenjamin Franklin,Thomas Jefferson,James Madison andGeorge Washington, fought for and eventually attainedreligious freedom for minority denominations. According to the Founding Fathers, the United States should be a country where peoples of all faiths could live in peace and mutual benefit. Madison summed up this ideal in 1792 saying, "Conscience is the most sacred of all property."[11]
A switch away from established religion to religious tolerance was one of the distinguishing features of the era from 1775 to 1818. The ratification of theConnecticut Constitution in 1818 has been proposed as a date for the triumph if not the end of the American Enlightenment.[12] That new constitution overturned the 180-year-old "Standing Order" andThe Connecticut Charter of 1662, whose provisions dated back to the founding of the state in 1638 and theFundamental Orders of Connecticut. The new constitution guaranteed freedom of religion and disestablished theCongregational church.
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Concepts of freedom and modern democratic ideals were born in "Native Americanwigwams” and found permanence inVoltaire'sHuron.[13]
Between 1714 and 1818, an intellectual change took place in theThirteen Colonies that changed them from a largely distant backwater into a leader in various fields, moral philosophy, educational reform, religious revival, industrial technology, science, and, most notably, political philosophy, the roots of this change were homegrown.[14] America saw a consensus on a "pursuit of happiness" based political structure based in large part[dubious –discuss] on Native sources, however misunderstood. Attempts to reconcile science and religion sometimes resulted in a rejection of prophecy, miracle, and revealed religion, resulting in an inclination towarddeism among some major political leaders of the age.[citation needed]
A non-denominational moral philosophy replaced theology in the college curricula at the nation's three leading colleges at the time. Yale College, nowYale University, and theCollege of William & Mary were reformed. The Presbyterian College of New Jersey, nowPrinceton University, andHarvard University, reformed their curricula to include natural philosophy (science), modernastronomy, andmathematics.
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Sources of the American Enlightenment are many and vary according to time and place. As a result of an extensive book trade with Great Britain, the colonies were well acquainted with European literature almost contemporaneously. Early influences were English writers includingJames Harrington,Algernon Sidney, theViscount Bolingbroke,John Trenchard andThomas Gordon (especially the two'sCato's Letters), and Joseph Addison (whose tragedyCato was extremely popular). A particularly important English legal writer wasWilliam Blackstone, whoseCommentaries on the Laws of England served as a major influence on the American Founders and is a key source in the development Anglo-Americancommon law. Although Locke'sTwo Treatises of Government has long been cited as a major influence on American thinkers, historians David Lundberg andHenry F. May demonstrate that Locke'sEssay Concerning Human Understanding was far more widely read than were his politicalTreatises.[15]
TheScottish Enlightenment also influenced American thinkers.David Hume'sEssays and hisHistory of England were widely read in the colonies,[16] and Hume's political thought had a particular influence on Madison and the drafting of theU.S. Constitution.[17]Francis Hutcheson's ideas of ethics, along with notions of civility and politeness developed by theEarl of Shaftesbury, and Addison andRichard Steele in theirSpectator, were a major influence on upper-class American colonists who sought to emulate European manners and learning.
By far the most important French sources to the American Enlightenment wereMontesquieu'sSpirit of the Laws andEmer de Vattel'sLaw of Nations. Both informed early American ideas of government and were major influences on the U.S. Constitution. Voltaire's histories were widely read but seldom cited.Noah Webster used Rousseau's educational ideas of child development to structure his famousSpeller. The writings of GermanSamuel Pufendorf were commonly cited by American writers.
Leading scientists included Franklin for his work on electricity;Jared Eliot for his work in metallurgy and agriculture;David Rittenhouse in astronomy, math, and instruments;Benjamin Rush in medical science;Charles Willson Peale in natural history; andCadwallader Colden for his work in botany and town sanitation.[citation needed] Colden's daughter,Jane Colden, was the first female botanist working in America.Benjamin Thompson was a leading scientist, especially in the field of heat.
After 1780, theFederal style ofAmerican Architecture began to diverge from theGeorgian style and became a uniquely American genre. In 1813,Ithiel Town designed the firstGothic-style church in North America,Trinity Church on the Green inNew Haven, Connecticut, predating the EnglishGothic revival by a decade. In the fields of literature, poetry, music, and drama some nascent artistic attempts were made, particularly in pre-war Philadelphia, but American (non-popular) culture in these fields was largely imitative of British culture for most of the period.
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American republicanism emphasized consent of the governed, riddance of thearistocracy, and resistance towards corruption. It represented the convergence ofclassical republicanism and English republicanism (of 17th centuryCommonwealth men and 18th centuryEnglish Country Whigs).[18]
In the decades before the American Revolution (1776), the intellectual and political leaders of the colonies studied history intently, looking for guides or models for good (and bad) government. They especially followed the development of republican ideas in England.[19] Pocock explains the intellectual sources in the United States:
The Whig canon and the neo-Harringtonians,John Milton,James Harrington andSidney,Trenchard,Gordon andBolingbroke, together with the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance masters of the tradition as far asMontesquieu, formed the authoritative literature of this culture; and its values and concepts were those with which we have grown familiar: a civic and patriot ideal in which the personality was founded on property, perfected in citizenship but perpetually threatened by corruption; government figuring paradoxically as the principal source of corruption and operating through such means as patronage, faction, standing armies (opposed to the ideal of the militia), established churches (opposed to the Puritan and deist modes of American religion) and the promotion of a monied interest—though the formulation of this last concept was somewhat hindered by the keen desire for readily available paper credit common in colonies of settlement. A neoclassical politics provided both the ethos of the elites and the rhetoric of the upwardly mobile, and accounts for the singular cultural and intellectual homogeneity of the Founding Fathers and their generation.[20]
The commitment of most Americans to these republican values made inevitable the American Revolution, for Britain was increasingly seen as corrupt and hostile to republicanism, and a threat to the established liberties the Americans enjoyed.[21]Leopold von Ranke, a leading German historian, in 1848 claims that American republicanism played a crucial role in the development of European liberalism:
By abandoning English constitutionalism and creating a new republic based on the rights of the individual, the North Americans introduced a new force in the world. Ideas spread most rapidly when they have found adequate concrete expression. Thus republicanism entered our Romanic/Germanic world... Up to this point, the conviction had prevailed in Europe that monarchy best served the interests of the nation. Now the idea spread that the nation should govern itself. But only after a state had actually been formed on the basis of the theory of representation did the full significance of this idea become clear. All later revolutionary movements have this same goal... This was the complete reversal of a principle. Until then, a king who ruled by the grace of God had been the center around which everything turned. Now the idea emerged that power should come from below... These two principles are like two opposite poles, and it is the conflict between them that determines the course of the modern world. In Europe the conflict between them had not yet taken on concrete form; with the French Revolution it did.[22]
TheUnited States Declaration of Independence, which was primarily written by Thomas Jefferson, was adopted by theSecond Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The text of the second section of the Declaration of Independence reads:
We hold these Truths to beself-evident, thatall Men are created equal, that they are endowed by theirCreator with certainunalienable Rights, that among these areLife, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Many historians[23] find that the origin of the famous phrase "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" derives from Locke's position that "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."[24] Others suggest that Jefferson took the phrase from Blackstone'sCommentaries on the Laws of England.[25] Others note thatWilliam Wollaston's 1722 bookThe Religion of Nature Delineated describes the "truest definition" of "natural religion" as being "The pursuit of happiness by the practice of reason and truth."[26]
TheVirginia Declaration of Rights, which was written byGeorge Mason and adopted by theVirginia Convention of Delegates on June 12, 1776, a few days before Jefferson's draft, in part, reads:
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights ... namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
Both the moderate Enlightenment and a radical or revolutionary Enlightenment were reactions against theauthoritarianism, irrationality, andobscurantism of the established churches. Philosophers such as Voltaire depicted organized religion as hostile to the development of reason and the progress of science and incapable of verification. An alternative religion wasdeism, the philosophical belief in a deity based on reason, rather than religious revelation or dogma. It was a popular perception among thephilosophes, who adopted deistic attitudes to varying degrees. Deism greatly influenced the thought of intellectuals and Founding Fathers, including Adams, Franklin, perhaps Washington and especially Jefferson.[27] The most articulate exponent wasThomas Paine, whoseThe Age of Reason was written in France and soon reached the United States. Paine was highly controversial; when Jefferson was attacked for his deism in the1800 election,Democratic-Republican politicians took pains to distance their candidate from Paine.[28]Unitarianism and Deism were strongly connected, the former being brought to America byJoseph Priestley.Samuel Johnson calledLord Edward Herbert the "father of English Deism".
