The Ancient and Modern Influences that Shaped the American Founding  

 

Late in his life, Thomas Jefferson had an opportunity to reflect upon the purpose of the Declaration of Independence and the influences upon it. He told a correspondent that he and the Continental Congress did not seek to discover new and original principles but rather the “common sense of the subject.” Jefferson explained that the ideals of the Declaration were widely held and accepted as an “expression of the American mind.” The sentiments of the document could be found in many different places among the revolutionaries: conversations, public debates, essays, letters, and important books.  

Jefferson was not claiming originality. He acknowledged that he and the other Founders did not invent the ideas and principles of the Declaration. Instead, they drew their inspiration from several different strains of thought. These various traditions all sought to understand human nature: what it means to be human, and how humans interact with each other. Those traditions also sought to discern the best forms of government based on their understanding of human nature. The four major influences were ancient thought, Enlightenment philosophy, the English tradition, and Protestant Christianity.  

First, the Founders studied ancient history and philosophy. They learned about the difficulties of maintaining self-government from studying Greek democracy and the Roman republic. The failures of the ancient world and the lessons transmitted by ancient thinkers taught the Founders a lot when constructing the American republic.  

Second, the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century was the “age of reason” in which many European thinkers, such as John Locke and Montesquieu, developed ideas about rights, republican government, and constitutional principles. Locke wrote a book called Second Treatise of Government, stating that humans have natural rights and form a “social contract,” or agreement among the people, to form a government to protect those rights. In his book The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu discussed the need for local self-government in a small republic and the need for a system of separation of powers and checks and balances to prevent tyranny. Like other Enlightenment thinkers, both supported the idea that the people should rule themselves through a limited government in order to protect natural rights and secure the liberties of the people.  

Third, the American colonists were part of the British empire and subject to the rule of the king and Parliament. Even though the relationship between the colonies and the empire was fraught, the British tradition had strong roots in constitutional liberties and limits on government. The Magna Carta (1215), Petition of Right (1628), and English Bill of Rights (1689) all protected basic rights, such as a right to trial by jury, property rights, and no taxation without consent. They also limited the power of the government, specifically the monarchy. 

Fourth, the writings associated with the reformers of the Protestant Reformation emphasized individual liberty from civil and religious oppression. Most Americans at the time of the Founding were members of some denomination of Protestant Christianity—especially after the First Great Awakening, the revival movement of the 1730s and 1740s. Protestant ideas of resistance against tyranny were generally consistent with the other three strains of republican thought and shaped thinking when they were preached from the pulpit and written about in religious pamphlets. 

The Founders were influenced by these different-but-related ways of thinking about self-government during the 1760s and 1770s, when they argued for no taxation without representation. They wrote the Declaration of Independence with these ideas in mind. These ideas also guided the Founders when they created governing documents including the Articles of Confederation (1781) and the U.S. Constitution (1787).  

The Founders created a “new order for the ages.” They learned from the wisdom of history and philosophy in order to craft their own form of self-government. They had a realistic view of human nature but believed that humans had the reason and virtue necessary for self-government. They thought that people have the capacity for self-governance. In a world of monarchy and despotism, the Founders set out to discover whether Americans could create a government, in Alexander Hamilton’s words in Federalist #1, by “choice and reflection” rather than “accident and force.” They launched an experiment in liberty whose outcome rested on their own shoulders in the past—and whose outcome rests on our shoulders today.