Framing Freedom

Age of Enlightenment

Locke
John Locke, age 65

Liberalism

  • Ideology of SELF (autonomy)
  • 18th-century:  Property (“pursuit of happiness”) and Natural rights
  • 19th-century:  Interests (markets) and Human rights (abolitionists)

Republicanism

  • Ideology of SELF-GOVERNMENT (democracy)
  • 18th-century:  virtue, disinterest, separation of powers
  • 19th-century:  partisanship and reform

KEY DATES

1688 // Glorious Revolution

1775 // American Revolution

TEXT

Declaration of Independence (1776)


Slavery

  • Chattel (property)
  • Servitude (forced labor)

KEY DATES

1619 // First record of Africans sold in Virginia

1772 // Somerset case (Lord Mansfield) in Great Britain

TEXT

Phillis Wheatley, “On Being Brought from Africa” (1773)