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The Enlightenment in America (1978) Oxford University Press, US, ISBN 0-19-502367-6; the standard survey; May, Henry F. The Divided Heart: Essays on Protestantism and the Enlightenment in America (Oxford UP 1991) online; McDonald, Forrest Novus Ordo Seclorum: Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (1986) University Press of Kansas, ISBN 0 ...
The U.S. Constitution was a federal one and was greatly influenced by the study of Magna Carta and other federations, both ancient and extant. The Due Process Clause of the Constitution was partly based on common law and on Magna Carta (1215), which had become a foundation of English liberty against arbitrary power wielded by a ruler.
The American Enlightenment marked a departure in the concept of popular sovereignty as it had been discussed and employed in the European historical context. American revolutionaries aimed to substitute the sovereignty in the person of King George III , with a collective sovereign—composed of the people.
The Constitutional Convention voted to keep the debates secret so that the delegates could speak freely, negotiate, bargain, compromise and change. Yet the proposed Constitution as reported from the convention was an "innovation", the most dismissive epithet a politician could use to condemn any new proposal.
Storm points out that there are vastly different and mutually contradictory periodizations of the Enlightenment depending on nation, field of study, and school of thought; that the term and category of "Enlightenment" referring to the Scientific Revolution was actually applied after the fact; that the Enlightenment did not see an increase in ...
The period is noted for the change from absolutist monarchies to representative governments with a written constitution, and the creation of nation states. Influenced by the new ideas of the Enlightenment , the American Revolution (1765–1783) is usually considered the starting point of the Age of Revolution.
His writings considerably influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States, such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who participated in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 which drafted the Constitution. Some U.S. states did not observe a strict separation of powers in the 18th century.
The final draft of the Constitution was delivered by Gouverneur Morris on September 12, 1787. Written to correct the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution established the procedures and powers relating to Congress, the presidency, the courts, and how these offices related to the states.