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The Enlightenment Influence On The Constitution

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The United States Constitution is a document written to embody the fundamental laws of the United States. The first draft of the Constitution was called the Articles of Confederation, but the colonists quickly realized that the form of government the Articles of Confederation created was not going to work well. Consequently, the colonists held a Constitutional Convention, in 1787, the Constitutional Convention was held to amend the Articles of Confederation, they ended up drafting an entirely new Constitution. Some of the people who attended the Convention were Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and more. This new Constitution took a long time to construct, but eventually was ratified in 1788. The United …show more content…
The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement, many thinkers started to use reasons and science to explain things. One Enlightenment thinker was Jean Jacques Rousseau, he believed in the idea of popular sovereignty, this means that the people have the power. The idea he had was one of a social contract this meant that the people would give their consent to the king to be governed by him. Also if the king, that the people have consented to be ruled by started to act in a way that the people did not like Rousseau believed the people should be able to overthrow that monarch. The United States believed in many of the things that Rousseau said and incorporated his ideas of popular sovereignty into the Constitution. Popular sovereignty is found in article Ⅶ of the Constitution because it states that at least nine out of the thirteen states had to approve the Constitution before it could become the supreme law of the land. This is saying that the people of the United States had to approve the Constitution before it could be put into effect. This had the idea that the people had the power in that they had to approve the Constitution, and agree to be ruled by it. This was like an official social contract, which was what Rousseau thought was what a successful government needed. Two other Enlightenment thinkers were Voltaire and John Locke, they both believed in the principle of Individual Rights, this meant that people have freedoms that can be achieved without government interference. Locke believed in natural rights that were inalienable, this means the rights you are born with, life, liberty, and property cannot be taken away from you. Voltaire was a strong believer in personal freedoms such as freedom of speech and religion. Voltaire and John Locke believed in each person being born with natural rights, Americans adapted this into

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