The American Revolution and the Enlightenment: Birth of a Republic

The story usually begins with the Boston Tea Party, or with the “shot heard round the world” at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, or with the Second Continental Congress’s adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. None of these is the actual beginning. The actual beginning is in the 1680s, when the colonial elites of British America — planters, lawyers, ministers, merchants — began to read Locke, Montesquieu, the Scottish moralists, and the Cato’s Letters essays of Trenchard and Gordon, and to develop a political vocabulary in which the rights of the colonists as Englishmen were understood in Enlightenment terms. By the time the crisis came, in the 1760s and 1770s, the intellectual preparation was largely complete. The Declaration of Independence is not a sudden invention; it is the public articulation of a political theory that had been developed over a century of pamphlet and sermon.

The American Revolution of 1775–1783 was the first great political event of the Enlightenment. It was a revolution fought in the name of universal rights, and it produced a series of founding documents that have shaped political thought ever since. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are among the great documents of modern political philosophy, and they are the basic reference points for the contemporary American political tradition. This article examines the origins, the course, and the legacy of the American Revolution, with particular attention to its relationship to the Enlightenment.

The origins of the American Revolution

The American Revolution was the result of a long and complex set of political, economic, and intellectual developments that converged in the 1760s and 1770s to produce a crisis of the British Empire in North America.

The colonial background

The thirteen British colonies in North America had been established in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and they had developed distinctive political, economic, and cultural institutions over the course of their existence. The colonial legislatures, the colonial courts, the colonial churches, and the colonial press had developed a strong sense of self-government and of the rights of the colonists as Englishmen. The colonial charters, issued by the Crown in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, were, in many cases, framed in the language of English constitutional liberty, and the colonial political practice was, in many cases, a working example of the principles of representative self-government that the English constitutional tradition had been developing since the thirteenth century.

The political thought of the colonial elites was deeply influenced by the British constitutional tradition and by the writings of the British and Continental Enlightenment. The colonial colleges — Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, the College of William and Mary, and the College of Philadelphia — taught the new philosophy alongside the old, and the colonial press published translations and discussions of the major works of the European Enlightenment. The transatlantic correspondence network that connected the American elites with their European counterparts was an important factor in the development of the colonial intellectual culture. The American elites read Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and the other major figures of the European Enlightenment, and they engaged in a vigorous debate about the proper foundations of political authority and the proper limits of governmental power.

The reading was not, however, passive. The American reading of Locke, in particular, was more radical than the English reading. The English Whigs had used Locke to defend the Glorious Revolution of 1688; the American Whigs used Locke to defend a much more thoroughgoing theory of resistance. The English Whigs had accepted the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty; the American Whigs developed the doctrine that the people were the source of all legitimate political authority. The English reading of Montesquieu had emphasized the mixed constitution; the American reading emphasized the separation of powers. The scholars are still arguing about whether the American reading was a faithful reading of the European originals, or whether the Americans transformed them in the process. Gordon Wood, in The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991), has argued that the Americans transformed them — that they developed a more radical political theory than anything the European Enlightenment had produced. The argument is persuasive, but the transformation was not, in fact, complete. The American constitutional order that emerged in 1787–1791 was a complex mixture of radical principle and pragmatic compromise.

The crisis of the British Empire

The immediate cause of the American Revolution was the crisis of the British Empire that followed the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), known in America as the French and Indian War. The war had left Britain with a vast new empire in North America but also with a massive national debt. To pay for the cost of imperial defense, the British government imposed a series of taxes and regulations on the American colonies — the Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767 — that the colonists had not previously been required to pay.

The colonial response drew heavily on Enlightenment political philosophy. The colonists argued, in language drawn from Locke and the British constitutional tradition, that the new taxes violated their rights as Englishmen. The slogan “no taxation without representation” became a rallying cry of the resistance. The colonial political writings — including James Otis’s The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (1764) and John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767–1768) — developed a systematic argument against the British policies. The Otis pamphlet of 1764 is, in some ways, the founding text of the American Revolution; it is the first major colonial writing in which the case against the British policies is developed in terms of the natural rights of the colonists as human beings, rather than in terms of their rights as Englishmen. The shift is significant. It is the shift from a constitutional argument to a revolutionary argument.

The intellectual preparation

The intellectual preparation for the American Revolution drew on a wide range of Enlightenment sources. The major influences included:

The political philosophy of John Locke, whose Two Treatises of Government (1689) provided a systematic defence of the natural rights of individuals, of the right of resistance against tyranny, and of the proper limits of governmental power.

The political philosophy of Montesquieu, whose Spirit of the Laws (1748) developed the theory of the separation of powers that would later become the basis of the American Constitution.

The political philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, including the works of Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith, which provided a framework for thinking about the moral and economic foundations of political life. The Scottish influence is sometimes underestimated, but it was substantial. Hutcheson, in particular, was widely read in the American colonies, and his moral philosophy — with its emphasis on the natural sociability of human beings and the natural basis of moral distinctions — was an important source of the American commitment to a moral foundation of political life.

The political philosophy of the English Whig tradition, including the works of John Trenchard, Thomas Gordon, and the other writers of Cato’s Letters (1720–1723), which developed a theory of the proper limits of governmental power and the importance of civic virtue. Cato’s Letters was, by the standard measures (number of editions, number of reprints, range of influence), the most widely read political work in the American colonies in the eighteenth century, and the influence on the American revolutionaries was substantial.

The political philosophy of the New England clergy, including the works of Jonathan Mayhew and other Congregationalist ministers, who developed a theory of resistance to tyranny that drew on both the Bible and the new political philosophy. The American Revolution was, in this respect, a particularly American synthesis. It combined the natural-rights philosophy of the European Enlightenment with the older Protestant tradition of resistance to tyranny, and the combination gave the American revolutionary position a moral force that the purely secular version would not have had.

The course of the Revolution

The American Revolution went through several distinct phases, each of which was marked by its own political dynamics, its own military campaigns, and its own characteristic forms of political action.

The Imperial Crisis (1763–1775)

The period from 1763 to 1775 was one of escalating crisis between Britain and the colonies. The British government, unable to find a solution to the financial problems of the empire, continued to impose new taxes and regulations on the colonies. The colonists responded with a series of resistance measures — the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, the Boston Tea Party of 1773, the Continental Congresses of 1774 — that gradually built up a movement for resistance and then for independence.

The political writings of the period — including Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776), Thomas Jefferson’s Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), and the various other pamphlets and declarations of the time — developed a systematic argument for the rights of the colonists and for the legitimacy of resistance to British authority. Paine’s Common Sense is the most famous of these, and it deserves its fame. The pamphlet was published in January 1776, sold 120,000 copies in the first three months, and reached, by the most conservative estimate, a quarter of the adult male population of the colonies. The argument — that the proper basis of government is the consent of the governed, that the British constitution is a manifest failure, and that the colonies should declare independence — was made with a directness and force that had not been seen before in the colonial writing. The pamphlet is, in a sense, the document that turned the colonial resistance into a revolutionary movement.

The War of Independence (1775–1783)

The war began with the battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, and it continued for eight years until the Treaty of Paris of 1783. The war was a long, difficult, and uncertain struggle. The British Empire, despite its early setbacks, was the most powerful state in the world, and the Americans had to fight with determination, luck, and substantial foreign assistance to win their independence.

The French alliance, concluded in 1778, was decisive. French money, French supplies, and ultimately French troops and naval power made the difference. The French government was motivated by a combination of revenge for the defeats of the Seven Years’ War and a genuine sympathy for the American cause. The Marquis de Lafayette, who became a major general in the American army at the age of nineteen, was the most famous French volunteer. The French participation was a substantial military and financial commitment; the final bill, never fully paid, was around 1.3 billion livres.

The war produced a new generation of American political leaders. George Washington, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, established a model of republican leadership that has shaped American political culture ever since. His resignation of his commission in 1783, after the war was over, was one of the most striking acts of republican virtue in modern history. The veterans of the war — Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and many others — would go on to lead the new nation through its difficult early years.

The Constitutional Founding (1787–1791)

The period after the war was one of political experimentation and constitutional development. The Articles of Confederation, which had governed the United States from 1781 to 1789, created a national government that was too weak to govern effectively. The Constitutional Convention, which met in Philadelphia in 1787, was called to address the weaknesses of the Articles and to design a more effective system of government.

The Constitution of the United States, drafted at the Convention and ratified in 1788, established a system of government with three branches — legislative, executive, and judicial — each with its own powers and each subject to the checks of the others. The system of separation of powers, the system of checks and balances, the federal structure, and the various other features of the Constitution were all influenced by the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, and especially by the works of Locke and Montesquieu.

The Bill of Rights, added to the Constitution in 1791, provided a catalogue of fundamental rights that have become a basic feature of American constitutional law. The first ten amendments — protecting freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, the right to a fair trial, and other basic rights — were a direct expression of the natural-rights tradition of the Enlightenment. The amendments were, in many cases, drafted in the specific context of the abuses of the British government against the colonies; the Third Amendment’s prohibition of the quartering of soldiers, for example, is a direct response to the Quartering Acts of 1774.

The founding documents

The founding documents of the American Republic are among the great works of modern political philosophy, and they are a basic reference for the contemporary debate about the proper foundations of political life.

The Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776, was the founding document of the new American nation. Drafted primarily by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration was a model of Enlightenment political rhetoric. The Declaration opens with a statement of natural-rights political theory: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It then goes on to argue that governments are instituted to secure these rights and derive their powers from the consent of the governed. When a government becomes destructive of these ends, the people have the right to alter or abolish it.

The Declaration was a radical document, not only because it justified revolution but also because it appealed to universal principles. The claim that “all men are created equal” was a claim that transcended the particular circumstances of the American colonies, and it provided a basis for the later extension of rights to groups that had been excluded by the original revolutionaries. The gap between the abstract claim and the practice of slavery is one of the great moral scandals of the founding period, and the gap was the subject of substantial criticism even at the time. The fact that the gap was there, and that the founders knew it was there, and that the founders wrote the Declaration anyway, is the source of the most important argument in American political history — the argument that the Declaration is best read as a set of aspirations to be progressively realized, rather than as a set of commitments to be enforced at once. The argument is well established. The gap is real.

The Constitution

The Constitution of the United States, drafted at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 and ratified in 1788, was a masterpiece of Enlightenment political engineering. The framers drew directly on the political philosophy of Montesquieu and Locke, and on the practical experience of the colonial and early national governments. The Constitution established a system of government with three branches — legislative, executive, and judicial — each with its own powers and each subject to checks by the others. It provided for a federal system in which powers were divided between the national government and the state governments. It included a Bill of Rights, added in 1791, that catalogued the fundamental rights of citizens.

The Federalist Papers, written by Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay in 1787–1788, provided the most systematic theoretical defense of the new Constitution. Madison’s contribution, in particular, drew on the political science of the Enlightenment to argue that the new system would control the “violence of faction” and protect the rights of minorities. Federalist No. 10 is the founding text of modern republican constitutional theory.

The Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, was added in 1791 in response to concerns about the potential for governmental abuse of the new powers granted by the Constitution. The amendments protect a range of fundamental rights, including: the freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition (First Amendment); the right to keep and bear arms (Second); the prohibition of the quartering of soldiers in private homes (Third); the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures (Fourth); the protection against self-incrimination and double jeopardy, and the guarantee of due process of law (Fifth); the right to a speedy and public trial, the right to counsel, and the right to confront witnesses (Sixth); the right to a jury trial in civil cases (Seventh); the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and excessive bail (Eighth); the reservation of unenumerated rights to the people (Ninth); and the reservation of non-delegated powers to the states or the people (Tenth).

The Bill of Rights has become a basic feature of American constitutional law, and the various Supreme Court decisions interpreting the amendments have established a rich body of jurisprudence on the proper limits of governmental power. The contemporary American debate about the proper scope of the rights — about, for example, the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, or the proper scope of the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom — is, in many ways, a continuation of the debate that the founders began.

The legacy of the American Revolution

The American Revolution had a profound and lasting influence on the political life of the modern world. The political institutions of the American Republic — the written constitution, the separation of powers, the federal system, the Bill of Rights — have become a basic reference for contemporary constitutional thought. The American example has been an inspiration to democratic movements throughout the world, and the founding documents of the American Republic have become basic texts of modern political philosophy.

The American political tradition

The American political tradition is, in important respects, the political tradition of the American Revolution. The principles of the Declaration — the equality of all persons, the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the consent of the governed, the right of revolution against tyranny — have remained the basic principles of the American political tradition. The contemporary American debate about the proper meaning of these principles — about the proper scope of the rights, the proper limits of governmental power, the proper relationship between the national government and the states — is a continuation of the debate that the founders began.

The global influence

The American Revolution had a profound influence on the political life of the world. The French Revolution of 1789 was directly influenced by the American example, and the various constitutional projects of the revolutionary period drew on the American model. The Latin American independence movements of the early nineteenth century, the European revolutions of 1848, the various democratic movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — all were, in important respects, descendants of the American Revolution.

The contemporary spread of democracy, the development of constitutional government in many parts of the world, the various international covenants and conventions that protect the basic rights of the citizens — all are, in important respects, descendants of the American Revolution. The American example has been an inspiration to democratic movements throughout the world, and the founding principles of the American Republic have become basic principles of modern democratic thought. The debt is not always acknowledged. The 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man was modeled in important ways on the American Declaration; Lafayette, in drafting the document, kept the Virginia Declaration of Rights on his desk. The debt was paid back, in 1848, when the French Revolution of that year helped to inspire the democratic movements of the European continent.

The continuing significance

The American Revolution remains one of the central events of modern history, and its legacy continues to shape the political life of the contemporary world. The basic principles of the Revolution — popular sovereignty, the rights of man, the rule of law, the separation of powers, the protection of minority rights — have become the basic principles of modern democratic politics, and they are embodied in the constitutional systems of countries throughout the world.

The contemporary challenges to the legacy of the American Revolution are different from those faced by the founders. The contemporary challenges include the proper relationship between universal rights and cultural diversity, the proper balance between individual liberty and the common good, the proper response to the new forms of inequality produced by the global economy, and the proper management of the environmental and technological challenges that the contemporary world faces. The founders could not have imagined these problems. They wrote the founding documents, however, in a way that has proved capable of being adapted to problems they could not have anticipated. Whether the founding documents can be adapted to the problems of the twenty-first century is, of course, a question that the constitutional tradition is still working out.