American Enlightenment. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. Plan

Rationalism is the idea that humans are capable of using their faculty of reason to gain knowledge. This was a sharp turn away from the prevailing idea that people needed to rely on scripture or church authorities for knowledge.
Empiricism promotes the idea that knowledge comes from experience and observation of the world.
Progressivism is the belief that through their powers of reason and observation, humans can make unlimited, linear progress over time; this belief was especially important as a response to the carnage and upheaval of the English Civil Wars in the 17th century.
Finally, cosmopolitanism reflected Enlightenment thinkers’ view of themselves as actively engaged citizens of the world as opposed to provincial and close-minded individuals. In all, Enlightenment thinkers endeavored to be ruled by reason, not prejudice.
Ben Franklin, symbol of the Enlightenment
The Freemasons were members of a fraternal society that advocated Enlightenment principles of inquiry and tolerance. Freemasonry originated in London coffeehouses in the early 18th century, and Masonic lodges—local units—soon spread throughout Europe and the British colonies. One prominent Freemason, Benjamin Franklin, stands as the embodiment of the Enlightenment in British America.
Born in Boston in 1706 to a large Puritan family, Franklin loved to read, although he found little beyond religious publications in his father’s house. In 1718 he was apprenticed to his brother to work in a print shop, where he learned how to be a good writer by copying the style he found in the Spectator, which his brother printed. At the age of 17, the independent-minded Franklin ran away, eventually ending up in Quaker Philadelphia. There he began publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette in the late 1720s. In 1732 he started his annual publication Poor Richard: An Almanack, in which he gave readers much practical advice, such as “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

In this 1748 portrait by Robert Feke, a 40-year-old Franklin wears a stylish British wig, as befitted a proud and loyal member of the British Empire.
Robert Feke, portrait of Benjamin Franklin, 1748. Image credit: Figure 3 in "Great Awakening and Enlightenment" by OpenStaxCollege, CC BY 4.0.
Franklin subscribed to deism, an Enlightenment-era belief in a God who created but has no continuing involvement in the world and the events within it. Deists also advanced the belief that personal morality—an individual’s moral compass, leading to good works and actions—is more important than strict church doctrines. Franklin’s deism guided his many philanthropic projects. In 1731, he established a reading library that became the Library Company of Philadelphia. In 1743, he founded the American Philosophical Society to encourage the spirit of inquiry. In 1749, he provided the foundation for the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1751, he helped found Pennsylvania Hospital.
His career as a printer made Franklin wealthy and well-respected. When he retired in 1748, he devoted himself to politics and scientific experiments. His most famous work, on electricity, exemplified Enlightenment principles. Franklin observed that lightning strikes tended to hit metal objects and reasoned that he could therefore direct lightning through the placement of metal objects during an electrical storm. He used this knowledge to advocate the use of lightning rods: metal poles connected to wires directing lightning’s electrical charge into the ground, thus saving wooden homes in cities like Philadelphia from catastrophic fires. He published his findings in 1751 in Experiments and Observations on Electricity.
Franklin also wrote of his “rags to riches” tale—his Memoir—in the 1770s and 1780s. This story laid the foundation for the American Dream of upward social mobility.
The founding of Georgia
The reach of Enlightenment thought was both broad and deep. In the 1730s, it even prompted the founding of a new colony.
Having witnessed the terrible conditions of debtors’ prison, as well as the results of releasing penniless debtors onto the streets of London, James Oglethorpe—a member of Parliament and advocate of social reform—petitioned King George II for a charter to start a new colony.
George II, understanding the strategic advantage of a British colony standing as a buffer between South Carolina and Spanish Florida, granted the charter to Oglethorpe and 20 like-minded proprietors in 1732. Oglethorpe led the settlement of the colony, which was called Georgia in honor of the king. In 1733, he and 113 immigrants arrived on the ship Anne. Over the next decade, Parliament funded the migration of 2500 settlers, making Georgia the only government-funded colonial project.
Oglethorpe’s vision for Georgia followed the ideals of the Age of Reason. He saw Georgia as a place for England’s “worthy poor” to start anew. To encourage industry, he gave each male immigrant 50 acres of land, tools, and a year’s worth of supplies. In Savannah, the Oglethorpe Plan provided for a utopia: “an agrarian model of sustenance while sustaining egalitarian values holding all men as equal.”
Oglethorpe’s vision called for alcohol and slavery to be banned. However, colonists who relocated from other colonies—especially South Carolina—disregarded these prohibitions. Despite its proprietors’ early vision of a colony guided by Enlightenment ideals and free of slavery, by the 1750s, Georgia was producing quantities of rice grown and harvested by enslaved people.
What do you think?
Which of the Enlightenment ideals—rationalism, empiricism, progressivism, or cosmopolitanism—do you think was most important to its spread?
Do you think Ben Franklin was a representative American from his time period? Why or why not?
How did the colony of Georgia reflect the ideals of the Enlightenment? Why do you think white settlers rebelled against early strictures on alcohol and slavery?
Enlightened Founding Fathers, especially Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington, fought for and eventually attained religious 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 the Connecticut 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" and The Connecticut Charter of 1662, whose provisions dated back to the founding of the state in 1638 and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. The new constitution guaranteed freedom of religion and disestablished the Congregational church.
Intellectual currents[edit]
Thomas Paine (left), Benjamin Franklin (middle), and Thomas Jefferson (right) were three of the most important intellectual leaders of the Enlightenment in the thirteen American colonies.
The American Enlightenment on the one hand grew from works of European political thinkers such as Locke, Michel de Montaigne, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, who derived ideas about democracy from admiring accounts of American Indian governmental structures brought back from European travelers to the New World in the 16th century. Concepts of freedom and modern democratic ideals were born in "Native American wigwams” and found permanence in Voltaire's Huron.[13] While between 1714 and 1818, an intellectual change took place that seemed to change the British Colonies of America from a 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 home grown.[14] America saw a consensus on a "pursuit of happiness" based political structure based in large part 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 toward deism among some major political leaders of the age.
A non-denominational moral philosophy replaced theology in many college curricula. Yale College and the College of William & Mary were reformed. Even Puritan colleges such as the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and Harvard University reformed their curricula to include natural philosophy (science), modern astronomy, and mathematics. Additionally, "new-model" American style colleges were founded, such as King's College New York (now Columbia University), and the College of Philadelphia (now University of Pennsylvania).
What Is Literary Realism? Definition and Examples of the Realism Genre in Literature
The realism art movement of the nineteenth century was a dramatic shift from the exotic and poetic Romanticism that dominated the art world in the decades prior. Literary realism, in particular, introduced a new way of writing and a new generation of authors whose influence can still be seen in American literature and English literature to this day.
European sources[edit]
See also: Age of Enlightenment
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 including James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, the Viscount Bolingbroke, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon (especially the two's Cato's Letters), and Joseph Addison (whose tragedy Cato was extremely popular). A particularly important English legal writer was William Blackstone, whose Commentaries on the Laws of England served as a major influence on the American Founders and is a key source in the development Anglo-American common law. Although Locke's Two Treatises of Government has long been cited as a major influence on American thinkers, historians David Lundberg and Henry F. May demonstrate that Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding was far more widely read than were his political Treatises.[15]
The Scottish Enlightenment also influenced American thinkers. David Hume's Essays and his History of England were widely read in the colonies,[16] and Hume's political thought had a particular influence on Madison and the drafting of the U.S. Constitution.[17] Francis Hutcheson's ideas of ethics, along with notions of civility and politeness developed by the Earl of Shaftesbury, and Addison and Richard Steele in their Spectator, 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 were Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws and Emer de Vattel's Law 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 famous Speller. The writings of German Samuel Pufendorf were commonly cited by American writers.
Science[edit]
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; and Cadwallader 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.
Republicanism and liberalism[edit]
American republicanism emphasized consent of the governed, riddance of the aristocracy, and resistance towards corruption. It represented the convergence of classical republicanism and English republicanism (of 17th century Commonwealth men and 18th century English Country Whigs).[18]
J. G. A. Pocock explains the intellectual sources in America:[19]
The Whig canon and the neo-Harringtonians, John Milton, James Harrington and Sidney, Trenchard, Gordon and Bolingbroke, together with the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance masters of the tradition as far as Montesquieu, 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.
Since the 1960s, historians have debated the Enlightenment's role in the American Revolution. Before 1960 the consensus was that liberalism, especially that of John Locke, was paramount; republicanism was largely ignored.[20] The new interpretations were pioneered by Pocock who argues in The Machiavellian Moment (1975) that, at least in the early 18th century, republican ideas were just as important as liberal ones. Pocock's view is now widely accepted.[21] Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood pioneered the argument that the Founding Fathers were more influenced by republicanism than they were by liberalism. Isaac Kramnick, on the other hand, argues that Americans have always been highly individualistic and therefore Lockean.[22]
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.[23] Pocock explains the intellectual sources in the United States:
The Whig canon and the neo-Harringtonians, John Milton, James Harrington and Sidney, Trenchard, Gordon and Bolingbroke, together with the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance masters of the tradition as far as Montesquieu, 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.[24]
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.[25] 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.[26]
The United States Declaration of Independence, which was primarily written by Thomas Jefferson, was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The text of the second section of the Declaration of Independence reads:
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.
Many historians[27] 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."[28] Others suggest that Jefferson took the phrase from Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England.[29] Others note that William Wollaston's 1722 book The Religion of Nature Delineated describes the "truest definition" of "natural religion" as being "The pursuit of happiness by the practice of reason and truth."[30]
The Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was written by George Mason and adopted by the Virginia 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 the authoritarianism, irrationality, and obscurantism 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 was deism, the philosophical belief in a deity based on reason, rather than religious revelation or dogma. It was a popular perception among the philosophes, 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.[31] The most articulate exponent was Thomas Paine, whose The 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 the 1800 election, Democratic-Republican politicians took pains to distance their candidate from Paine.[32] Unitarianism and Deism were strongly connected, the former being brought to America by Joseph Priestley. Samuel Johnson called Lord Edward Herbert the "father of English Deism".