Enlightenment View Of Self Government

John Locke, the famous English Enlightenment thinker, once said: “The end of law is not to abolish and restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.” The founding fathers of the United States, rigorously following this principle, established a state whose laws were meant to safeguard and protect the rights and freedoms of citizens from the tyranny of the government. Following a brutal war of independence with Britain over the ideals of self-government and realizing the dangers of a strong government, their vision of America entailed a country with broad guarantees of rights, written into the Constitution, that would protect the citizens of America from a federal government that would balloon in size and infringe on the liberties of American

Indeed, the American Revolution was fought over these ideas, as the Patriots sought to free themselves from what they viewed as a government neglecting their needs because they were not represented in government. Facing these demands, the British responded with further government control, including the Quartering Act, which stationed British soldiers in the homes of American citizens, and closure of Boston Harbour in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party. These escalations resulted in much violence, as evidenced by the Boston Massacre, and culminated in the American Revolutionary War. The Second Continental Congress enshrined these Enlightenment ideals of government deriving its power from the consent of those governed and the social contract were placed in the Declaration of Independence, which claimed that “All men were created equal” and guaranteed the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In the aftermath of the failed Articles of Confederation government, when the need for a slightly stronger federal government was evident, the Constitution still contained many protections against federal overreach to ensure that state governments would not lose their power and protect individual liberties,

The Congress, filled with Radical Republicans as the South had been denied representation and was occupied by the Union military, pushed the Fourteenth Amendment through, prohibiting states from “depriving any citizens of life, liberty, or property without due process of law”, preventing them from denying any citizens equal protection of the law, and stated that any person born in the United States was a citizen of the United States and that state. In the aftermath of the Thirteenth Amendment, which officially banned slavery and overturned the Dred Scott v. Sandford case, the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship rights to all freedmen and was crucial in creating an equitable rule of law in the United States. In fact, the equal protection under the law clause has been the basis for many discrimination lawsuits and has resulted in many landmark cases granting more rights for all. In addition to the Fourteenth Amendment, the Republican Congress also pushed the Fifteenth Amendment through with Reconstruction, allowing all black males the right to vote. However, while this led to increased voting from African Americans, their voices were stifled by the Southern aristocrats that maintained their social status and power and intimidated into voting for the racist Democrats by the Ku Klux Klan. Although the Fifteenth Amendment gave