Freedom and Liberty: The Founding Fathers' Enlightenment Ideals
This essay examines how the Enlightenment philosophy of John Locke shaped the American Founding Fathers' conception of freedom and liberty. It traces the influence of Locke's natural liberty doctrine on the founders' rejection of monarchical authority, while critically analyzing the glaring contradiction between their ideals and their practice of enslaving people of African descent. The paper also discusses the role of Black soldiers and freedom-seekers during the American Revolution, and concludes by arguing that the founders' failure to live up to their own principles makes it all the more necessary for modern society to extend those rights universally — including to groups historically excluded from full civic participation.
- Enlightenment Origins of American Liberty: Enlightenment philosophy roots of American founding ideals
- Locke's Natural Liberty and Self-Governance: Locke's doctrine against arbitrary monarchical authority
- The Contradiction of Slavery Among the Founders: Founders' hypocrisy as slave owners
- Black Americans and the Revolutionary War: Black soldiers and freedom-seekers during the Revolution
- Extending Founding Ideals to Modern Society: Applying founding principles to modern civil rights
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper makes strong use of a primary source — Locke's Second Treatise of Government — to ground its central claim before introducing the central contradiction.
- The transition from abstract political philosophy to the concrete reality of enslaved people is handled sharply, using specific historical details (Washington's 1775 recruitment ban, the 100,000 African Americans who fled to the British) to support the critique.
- The concluding paragraph effectively connects the historical analysis to a contemporary argument, extending the founders' logic to modern civil rights without overstating the case.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates ideological critique — taking the founders' own stated principles seriously and then measuring their conduct against those principles. Rather than simply dismissing the founders as hypocrites, it uses the tension between their ideals and their actions as an argument for expanding those ideals today. This technique shows how historical analysis can generate normative conclusions.
Structure breakdown
The essay moves in a logical arc: (1) establish the Enlightenment intellectual context, (2) introduce Locke's foundational argument, (3) expose the contradiction between liberty rhetoric and slavery practice, (4) document Black Americans' actual Revolutionary-era choices, and (5) draw a contemporary moral conclusion. Each section builds on the previous one, producing a short but coherent argument.
Enlightenment Origins of American Liberty
The Founding Fathers of the United States were products of the Enlightenment — the eighteenth century's attempt to break free from the self-imposed restrictions of traditional society and create something better (Rosner 2000, 251–253). Beginning with the writings of John Locke in the mid-1600s, a new idea had begun to take root: that man could, through the exercise of reason, create better social structures. In other words, humanity possessed the ability to form a more perfect government — one more closely aligned with the rights of the people. This idea, by its very nature, represents an attempt to transfer authority over society from a select few to the broader population. The vision of taking power away from kings and other rulers, and creating a governmental system responsible to the people, is precisely what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they spoke of freedom and liberty.
Locke's Natural Liberty and Self-Governance
John Locke stated in his Second Treatise of Government that "the natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man" (Locke, II, Sect. 22). This was a major influence on the Founding Fathers because it affirmed the right of ordinary people to create their own system of government, free from the arbitrary authority of a monarch. A system in which people have no say in their governance and are subject to arbitrary laws and punishments was, by this Enlightenment standard, considered a form of slavery.
The Contradiction of Slavery Among the Founders
This may seem a strange framework, especially given that many of the men who described the American colonists' relationship to Great Britain as akin to slavery were themselves owners of enslaved people. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were both slaveholders who considered the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and liberty inapplicable to those of African origin. While the majority of enslaved people did not have access to information about the American Revolution, its ideals, or the writings of the Founding Fathers, they did — when given the chance — flee to the British, who offered freedom. The British actively recruited enslaved people belonging to Patriot masters, and an estimated 100,000 African Americans escaped, died, or were killed during the American Revolution ("Africans in America").
References
Locke, John, and Peter Laslett (ed.). Two Treatises of Government. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988. Print.
Rosner, Lisa, and John Theibault. 2000. A Short History of Europe, 1600–1815. New York: M.E. Sharpe.
"Africans in America Narrative: Part 2, The Revolutionary War." PBS.org. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2narr4.html
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