Answer: Slaves did not need to read since they were only laborers.
Answer:
The ideas of the Enlightenment influenced American colonists like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson because they read the works of Enlightenment thinkers and adopted similar views on politics and society. Political philosophers of the Enlightenment believed that using reason will guide us to the best ways to operate in order to create the most beneficial conditions for society. This included a conviction that all human beings have certain natural rights which are to be protected and preserved. The Enlightenment ideal was that individual freedom and equal rights and opportunity for all would be promoted and protected. Each individual's well-being (life, health, liberty, possessions) should be served by the way government and society are arranged. The American founding fathers accepted these Enlightenment views and acted on them.
Further detail / example:
John Locke, in his Second Treatise on Civil Government (1690), had expressed the idea of natural rights in the words that follow. Notice the similarities to what was later stated in the American colonists' <em>Declaration of Independence</em> (1776).
- <em>The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions… (and) when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.</em>
In his book, A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn cites examples from US colonial history of the gap between rich and poor in colonial life.
A key study cited by Zinn examined tax registers from Boston, showing that the top 1% of the population held 25% of the wealth in 1687, and that by 1770, the top 1% of property owners in Boston owned 44% of the wealth. The study also noted that the bulk of Boston's population were not property owners. The percentage of adult males in Boston who owned no property doubled between 1687 and 1770 (from 14% to 29%).
Zinn cited additional items, regarding overcrowding of poorhouses (giving a notable example from New York) and a general increase throughout the colonies of the "wandering poor" who had no real means of support. He also cited examples of workers' strikes against employers in the colonies because of low wages.
