Americans cherish the Declaration of Independence as a historic landmark and as a proclamation of political principles. The core of the Declaration lies in its famous second sentence: “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.” In a recent book, historian and popular biographer Walter Isaacson describes this opening statement as “the greatest sentence ever written.” Isaacson has a point. Jefferson’s powerful sentence acts as a philosophical argument for, and justification of, the American Revolution.
“An expression of the American mind”
Jefferson later explained that he did not attempt to create original political principles. Instead, he intended the Declaration’s opening sentence to be “an expression of the American mind.” At that time, Enlightenment ideas of reason and natural rights shaped the intellectual minds of Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and other founders of the American republic.
The Enlightenment was an eighteenth-century intellectual movement led by a group of English and French thinkers and writers. Ships carried their books and essays throughout the Atlantic world. The British North American colonies formed a key part of this trans-Atlantic print network. Taken together, Enlightenment writers in Europe and America formed a cosmopolitan “republic of letters.”
“We”
We is the first word in Jefferson’s famous statement and it is also the first word in the U.S. Constitution. This is not an accident. Enlightened thinkers opposed monarchical governments based upon the divine right of kings. Instead, they based America’s new government upon a social contract in which government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.
“Self-evident truths”
Enlightened thinkers lived in European countries plagued by intolerance, bigotry, and superstition. In contrast, the Enlightenment stressed reason as a way for rational humans to understand an individual’s place in the world.
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
Human reason could discover natural laws such as gravity that regulated the universe. At the same time it could also promote laws regulating human society. This led Jefferson to conclude that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are specific “inalienable” natural rights. These common rights became a unifying creed that inspired and unified a diverse people to demand and then fight for independence.
So why should you remember the Enlightenment? APUSH test writers expect students to know that Britain’s North American colonies formed an integral part of the trans-Atlantic economy. This trading system included a print network that spread Enlightenment books and ideas to leading colonial thinkers. You should also know that the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment offered contrasting sets of ideas. The Great Awakening stressed emotion as a way to understand the world. In contrast, the Enlightenment stress reason. Although they differed, both the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment undermined and challenged the authority of the British Crown. And finally, a knowledge of the Enlightenment will enable you to add complexity to LEQ and DBQ questions asking how ideas of self-government influenced American resistance to British imperial authority.