Monday, February 23, 2015

John Locke's Influence on Thomas Jefferson


            When Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, he did not develop a new concept of liberty in a war against tyranny, but he simply articulated in writing the predominant thoughts of Englishmen toward their county and king. Jefferson penned the “expression of the American mind…harmonizing sentiment of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.”[1] Locke was indeed a great influence on Jefferson’s writings considering his statement that “Bacon, Locke and Newtwon…I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived.”[2]
            Locke’s philosophy and argument was that the power rested in the people. With sovereignty placed within the people’s own hands, the people were equal and had natural rights. Jefferson shared in this philosophical thought process and witnessed England’s actions as hostile to arbitrary power. The similar train of thought can be seen when elements of the two documents are compared. Locke wrote on the subject:
[b]ut if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they be under, and see wither they are going; it is not to be wondered, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavor to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was first erected.[3]

            Jefferson would later write:
[b]ut when a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a distinguished period and pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce the [people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.[4]

            Jefferson, the great statesman, was well read and educated in various fields. When it came time to write the Declaration of Independence, he looked to men like Locke to help formulate his words to justify the people’s natural rights to the revolution. Thus it is no surprise that Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government and the Declaration of Independence would have some similarities.

Bibliography

Borgmann, Albert. Crossing the Postmodern Divide. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Maxifield, Richard M. The Real Thomas Jefferson. Washington D.C.: National Center for Constitutional Studies, 1983.

Uviller, H. Richard and Merkel, William G. The Militia and the Right to Arms, Or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.



[1] Richard M. Maxifield, The Real Thomas Jefferson, (Washington D.C.: National Center for Constitutional Studies, 1983), 71.
[2] Albert Borgmann, Crossing the Postmodern Divide, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 25.
[3] H. Richard Uviller and William G. Merkel, The Militia and the Right to Arms, Or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 173.
[4] Ibid. 

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