Where did the founders get their ideas when drafting the declaration of independence?

Question

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Answer 1

The popular notion that the Declaration was essentially an expression of Enlightenment ideas is seriously mistaken. It totally ignores several OTHER traditions the colonists were drawing on.

Now it is true that some Enlightenment ideas --above all John Locke's ideas about "natural rights" and the "social contract" theory of government, were familiar to and popular with the founders. But these ideas did NOT stand alone. They were not even necessarily the most important ideas to influence them.

In fact, if you look at the specific ideas and FORMS of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution you will find MUCH that continues long-developing British traditions. For example, language and arguments from the "English Bill of Rights of 1689" are echoed in the Declaration (not too surprising since that document ALSO was a public justification [by Parliament] of rejecting the rule of a British king), as well as in the Bill of Rights later incorporated in the U.S. Constitution.

We find that their ideas about their proper political rights as Englishmen had LONG roots. Locke may have helped them develop SOME of the arguments for the NATURE of these rights and WHY they existed, but the foundations rested on other traditions, and elements of their own (English) history. Indeed, throughout the 17th century, BEFORE any influence from Locke, colonists (esp in New England) had written up their understanding of the RIGHTS that were theirs as Englishmen.

In other words, Locke shaped SOME of the terms and arguments they used (e.g., "the right to life, liberty and property), and provided some of the arguments they used to support these ideas, esp. as expressed in the political pamphlets they wrote in the decades leading up to the Revolution. But when they came to write documents like the various Declaration-S of independence (including the many state declarations that preceded th national one), they drew MUCH of the language and the whole shape of the DECLARATION with its list of grievances from traditional historical forms that preceded Locke.

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A major source for exploring how the VARIOUS traditions influencing the revolutionaries all fit together --

A generation ago Bernard Bailyn, preparing a study of the political pamplets of the period leading up to the Revolution, wrote a long and BRILLIANT essay examining the VARIOUS sources and traditions that came together to shape the thinking expressed in these pamphlets, and later in the key founding documents of the U.S. He later expanded this into a separate book, *The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution* (Harvard University Press, 1967). Bailyn lays out a whole cluster of important traditions, chiefly the following

1) Works from classical antiquity (esp the political history of Rome)
2) Enlightenment ideas on government and natural rights (mainly Locke)
3) Traditions/the history of English Common Law, esp. as expounded by 17th century British authors.
4) Political and social theories of New England Puritanism, esp. ideas associated with covenant theology
5) The radical political and social thought of the English Civil War and Commonwealth period up to the Glorious Revolution -- that is 'opposition' authors of the late 17th and early 18th century

Bailyn argues that source #5 was critical in shaping and bringing together these various (and sometimes conflicting) traditions.

Another good source for studying the roots of the Declaration -- including the FORM it took -- check Paula Maier, *American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence*

You might wish to take a look at the English Bill of Rights see
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/england.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689

Answer 2

Most of the ideas came as a consensus of the representatives of the original colonies, based on what they didn't like about the monarchy and English rule over the new country. They were being treated unfairly by the King of England, and they were quite simply rebelling their current system and starting a new one, independent of the British.

The Declaration of Independence was created to break away from the British, and establish the means of how the new country called the United States of America would be run.

Answer 3

John Locke's Two Treatises on Government contained the essential ideas that, instead of monarchs ruling by "divine right" or the "will of God," government was essentially an agreement between the ruler and the ruled. He called it the social compact - we might say contract. In this social compact, the people give to government certain powers, and reserve to themselves certain liberties, and when they feel the government has violated the contract or is not sufficient to the tasks they have set for it, they change it. This change can be either peaceful or violent.

The French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau also theorized that people are by nature free (as opposed to the great Thomas Hobbes, who believed that life for humans in the "state of nature" was "nasty, brutish, and short"). He also used a term that translates as “social contract” to stand for the idea that rulers have power on the consent of those they govern.

I think you can see both of these directly in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, credited to Thomas Jefferson:

"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, -- That to secure these rights, Goverments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That wherever any Form of Government becomes desctuctive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...

Don’t neglect Voltaire’s rationalist disgust at monarchy. He likes the Constitution of the English state before the American revolution, which compared favorably to the absolute monarchy in France at the time.


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Answer 4

They got most of their ideas from two philosophers: John Locke from England, and Rousseau from France. Both championed the common man and said that governments rule at the will of those who elect them, and if the will of the people is being thwarted, the people may replace that government even by force if necessary. Revolutionary ideas at the time. Remember, European countries were ruled by monarchs who claimed they got their right to rule directly from God (the Divine Right of Kings).

Chow!!

Answer 5

From philosophers Locke, Hume and Moore.

Beyond this, however, one must always realize that when one seeks freedom from oppression, it doesn't take an example, The very spirit that we have within ourselves tells us that we must be free. It doesn't take some great scholar to instruct even the most uneducated individual that freedom is the natural state for humanity, and that includes freedom of choice and the freedom to choose leaders.

This is what Jefferson meant when he said in writing the Declaration ... "We hold these truths to be self evident ..." What he was saying was that this is obvious ...

Answer 6

Many philosophers inspired the founding fathers, especially John Locke. The quote about the unalienable rights of man, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," comes straight from Locke's own quote of "life, liberty, and the ownership of property."

Answer 7

Thomas Jefferson beleived in God but not in any religion. He was aided by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.

Answer 8

Some of it was from the tenets of the Iriquois Nation constitution... we didn't just steal the land from the Native Amricans/Indians

Answer 9

The bible's Ten Commandments. They were heavy religious freaks.