History Test

Jamestown

• birthplace of American Democracy

• first English settlement 1607

The first representative assembly in North America met at

a church in Jamestown on July 30, 1619

Social Contract

the belief that people agreed to form government to protect their

rights

John Locke

• British political thinker--book is Second Treatise on Government

• natural rights: life, liberty, property

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

French philosopher- book Social Contract (1762)

Francois Marie Arouet

(best known by his pen name- Voltaire)—argued in favor of

civil liberties such as freedom of speech and religion

Niccolo Machiavelli

• In his book Discourse on Livy (1513-17) made theory of a republic based on civic virtue.

• He argued that a republic could survive only so

long as its citizens actively participated in government and put the good of the republic before their own.

• For a republic to thrive, Machiavelli argued, it had to

represent the interests of three levels of society: the monarch (the one), the aristocracy (the few), and the people (the many).

William Blackstone

English legal scholar who wrote Blackstone’s Commentaries the Laws of England (1765-69), a comprehensive overview of English law that became the basis for law in the colonies and influenced the writing of the U.S. Constitution

Judeo-Christian influences

Judeo-Christian Religious heritage includes traditions common to both Judaism and Christianity. These religions see the law and individual rights as being of divine origin. Also, the Framers benefited from the Protestant Reformation, a sixteenth-century Christian reform movement whose leaders developed ideas about individual responsibility, the freedom of worship as one chooses, and self-government.