Reason and Revolution 1750-1800

Representative Government The idea of representative government was in keeping with the long-standing English traditions of limiting royal power.

Natural Rights The writings of British philosopher John Locke profoundly influenced America's founding fathers and 18th century thought. Locke justified limiting royal authority and proposed that all human beings have natural rights and are entitled to political and economic freedom regardless of birth.

Freedom Many early immigrants to the American colonies left Europe hoping for religious, political and economic freedoms.

Separation of Church and State The ideas of separation of church and state owe much to the writings of Voltaire, the leading philosopher of the French Enlightenment.

American Identity With the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, England's factory owners sought raw materials and markets for their goods, both of which they felt the American colonies should provide. The colonists objected to laws that discouraged factories in America.

A National Literature After French and Indian war, the mother country expected colonies to pay for their own protections and instituted taxes for this purpose. The colonists objected, feeling that England's constant quarreling with France was not their fight.

Thomas Paine - Common Sense Heated language increased growing demand for separation from England. Pointed the way to the Declaration of Independence Most literature in 18th century was political - through newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, broadsides (sheets of paper covered with anonymous poems, songs and essays that could be tacked up aruond the city, left on doorsteps or even read to groups on street corners)- written by people whose lives were touched by events. Language was the source of growing American power.

Age of Reason Thomas Jefferson's belief in progress, common sense, and the pursuit of happiness is called the Age of Reason. People believed in the possibilities of reason. Enlightenment believes that people could discover truth by the light of reason alone. They shed the light of reason on the darkness of ignorance, superstition, social injustice and political tyranny - all in a quest to build the perfect society. Through science and rational government, they thought order could be established in the world. Americans began to rely on power of their own minds to shape their own destinies and the power of their OWN LANGUAGE to express what that destiny should be.

Poets Corner Americans express themselves on the subjects of liberty, government, law reason adn individual and national freedom. Weekly Poet's Corners never lacked locally written poems, songs and satires. Broadsides disseminated - protest events and public outcries. Non literate people began to express their feelings Negative protests turned into positive - "taxation without representation" more and more Americans started calling for more self-government Paine's pamplet Common Sense sold an extraordinary 100,000 coies in 3 months. Declaration of Independence carries voice not of an individual but of whole people. More than writing of the period; it defined the meaning of the Revolution.

National Literature 18th century literature - ballads, skits, broadsides, newspapers, poems, editorials, essays, private and public letters, satires, pamphlets, - written by people of every social class and almost every degree of skill. Joel Barlow - mock-epic poem, Hasty Pudding Phillis Wheatley - former slave, first book by a black American Philip Freneau - Poet of the American Revolution Composer - William Billings Painter - John Singleton copyley music and art could flourish in America

Independence - American's unique voice Noah Webster, nationalist and scholar, who standardized American spelling and wrote the American Dictionary quote: "America must be as independent in literture as she is in politics, as farmous for the arts as for the arms". Two unique subjects no European had experienced: The natural wilderness and the Revolution. Awe-inspiring landscape provide a setting to be basis for great literature. Revolution provided stories of great human experience beginning of American mythology. Invention of an American self, society and and identity, greatest imaginative creation of this period.