Democracy Roots in Colonial America

However, the social ideas were very powerful for the colonists and kept them motivated to win their independence. These ideas of John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, and Voltaire were called enlightenment ideas and these ideas helped shape America into what it has grown to be. John Locke believed in natural rights such as life, liberty, and property. He also believed in people having rights of revolution, and he supported limited government. The revolting colonists that wanted to be free and believed in a republic style of government shared John Locke’s ideas.

On the other side of the world, off in the United States, American intellectuals began to reason with these ideas as well. As a result, the influence on the profound of modern economic and political thought had a huge impact on the United States, resulting in one of the most important documents in known in American history; the Constitution. John Locke, one of the leading philosophers of the European Enlightenment was very important when it came to political thought in the United States. His ideas of the reasons, nature, and limits of the government became especially important in the development of the Constitution. In one of his most famous writings of that time, Two Treatises on Government (1689), Locke established a theory where personal liberty could coexist with political power ; meaning that the people would agree to obey the government and in return, the government would have the responsibility of respecting the people’s natural rights.

Independence movements in Latin America were inspired the successful revolution in the United States and the ideas of the enlightenment reaching them. People in the colonies wanted free trade and press as

Montesquieu states “government should be set up so that no man need be afraid of another”. From this doctrine American Political Philosophers derived the separation of powers into the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches. Montesquieu’s presentation of the branches of government were adopted into American political documents upon their creation. The idea that there wasn’t one governing body, but three was unheard of. Most occupants of the new “America” came from England a country ruled by a King.

Ideas from English history and the Enlightenment influenced the foundation of American democracy. Documents and events were two principles of English history that created lasting effects with its political ideas and changes in law. Enlightenment thinkers, such as John Locke, Baron De Montesquieu, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, developed key ideas about natural rights, balanced government, and the social contract. Both concepts impacted the foundation of the American democracy, as it was strongly portrayed in the document, the Declaration of Independence. In English history, ideas about political rights and good government were rooted in documents and events.

Roger Williams, the proprietor of Rhode Island, probably made an even larger contribution to this tradition by advocating and allowing complete religious freedom. William Penn also contributed to this idea in Pennsylvania, where the Quakers were tolerant of other denominations. In addition to the tradition of religious tolerance in the colonies, there was a tradition of self-government and popular involvement in government. Nearly every colony had a government with elected representatives in a legislature, which usually made laws largely without interference from Parliament or the king. Jamestown, the earliest of the colonies, had an assembly, the House of Burgesses, which was elected by the property owners of the colony.

Because colonial America displayed characteristics of a democratic society and, therefore, deviated from England’s monarchic ways, it was established as a democratic society. As more immigrants immigrated to the colonies and established lives in colonial America, the colonist began to incorporate their ideas of freedoms, rights and tolerance in legal documents. Some legal documents, such as Maryland’s Toleration Act, illustrate the colonists’ belief in freedom and rights often connected to democracy. Other official documents, for...

. The Virginia House of Burgesses, the Mayflower Compact, New England town meetings, and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were all early stepping stones toward a truly democratic government. These documents and organizations may not have been what we perceive, today, as being democratic, but they were a start. The first permanent English settlement was a trading post founded in 1607 at Jamestown in the Old Dominion of Virginia. Virginian colonists had the right, granted to them by The Virginia Company, to elect a colonial legislature, called the House of Burgesses.

As tension arose between the two parties, colonists began to change their outlook on what freedoms they should have. This resulted in famous documents like the Declaration of Independence. This document reflects the newly cultivated “American Dream” through its calls for individual rights and self-acclaimed success. During the Revolutionary movement, the American Dream emerged as upward mobility through logic, hard work, creativity, and curiosity; these concepts were illustrated in the Rationalist Movement and literature. The traits and dreams of people in the Revolutionary Period were reflected in the lives of influential leaders such as Benjamin Franklin.

The John Peter Zenger trial is a prime example of how a trial established a well-known statute of freedom of the press. The General School Act of 1647 was the origin of modern education laws and the Maryland Toleration Act was the basis for freedom of religion. These, however, were not the first step towards democracy. The Virginia House of Burgesses, the Mayflower Compact, New England town meetings, and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were all early stepping-stones toward a truly democratic government. The early governing bodies in the colonies such as the House of Burgesses were all based on a written constitution.