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Franklin would be the portal through which many of these foreign fighters found their way to the new United States. It helped that representing the United States abroad in foreign governments, mostly operating out of Paris, was the wily and savvy Benjamin Franklin. Many of them wanted to be part of the historical moment. These individuals, some with a military pedigree, were excited and energized at the possibilities for humankind that the new United States offered to the world. Locke’s philosophy of the “social contract” greatly influenced Thomas Jefferson and its themes can be found throughout the Declaration of Independence.īut Locke’s philosophy and the works of other Enlightenment thinkers also influenced many noblemen and men of privilege living in Europe in 1776. The most influential European philosopher on the American Revolution was Englishman John Locke, who at the end of the 17th century expanded the notion of the social contract between those governed and those governing. In many respects the American Revolution was the progeny of the Enlightenment, that 17th century intellectual movement in Europe that sparked new ideas about humanity, science, government, and reason.