3.4

• Colonial attitudes about government changed in the years right before the American Revolution
• Colonial delegates met for the Stamp Act Congress in 1765 to petition the British Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act
• The delegates in the Stamp Act Congress petitioned Parliament as loyal subjects to country and crown, they just wanted what was due to them as British citizens
• Delegates from every colony but Georgia met for the Continental Congress in 1774 and agreed the colonies needed to resist further violations of their liberty at the hands of Parliament, but revolution was not their answer
• The king and Parliament refused to negotiate with the colonies, arguing they were rebelling against their rightful authority
• John Locke's ideas that influenced the colonial leaders


  • Legitimate government can only exist by the consent of the governed
  • Human beings are endowed with natural rights by the Creator, not granted by government
  • The path to liberty is self-rule through elected representatives
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea of the social contract


  The people agree to willingly give up some of their power to a government as long as that government agrees to protect the people's natural rights
• Baron de Montesquieu's idea of the best form of government


  A republican form of government with three branches (executive, legislative, judicial) that can check and balance each other's power
• With Enlightenment ideas and the spiritual enthusiasm of the Great Awakening, Americans began to see themselves as a people blessed with liberty, and any threat to that liberty was a threat to their very life
• As late as 1774, the delegates at the Continental Congress opened their session by raising their glasses to toast King George, they still wanted to be British citizens and revolution was not on the table
• Thomas Paine's pamphlet "Common Sense"


  Used everyday language to powerfully argue for independence from Britain, drawing on Enlightenment ideas
• Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" caught up the minds of the colonists into the blaze that had thus far only taken hold in the minds of the elite
• John Adams thought Paine's "Common Sense" was too pedestrian and simplistic to communicate the gravity of the Enlightenment ideas
• The Second Continental Congress in 1776 passed a formal resolution for independence, and Thomas Jefferson was tasked with composing the Declaration of Independence which was also shot through with Enlightenment ideas