ABSTRACT
Just as popular and just as fallacious as the belief that the Enlightenment fathered nineteenth-century freedom is the belief that the American Revolution was based on the same principles as the French Revolution, and that it was actually its forerunner. The American Revolution was based on principles completely contrary to those of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In intention and effect, it was a successful countermovement against the very rationalist despotism of the Enlightenment which provided the political foundation for the French Revolution. The Thirteen Colonies would sooner or later have become independent as one nation in the normal course of events. Had America not revolted against Enlightened Despotism there would hardly have been any freedom in the Europe of the nineteenth century. It is not a new assertion that the basis for all nineteenth-century freedom lay in the conservative movement which overcame the French Revolution.
