Question

Thomas Jefferson was influenced by what 2 enlightenment thinkers when writing the Declaration of Independence?

Answer 1

These two thinkers were Thomas Paine, who came to America to support the colonists' revolt against the British and who ended up writing a pamphlet called "Common Sense" in which he listed what Britain had done against the colonies and argued that the colonists should completely separate from the British Crown. The other Enlightenment thinker was John Locke, a philosopher who wrote about political philosophy and who came up with the idea that governments could only exist with the "consent of the governed", which Locke talked about in his book, Two Treatises of Government.