This was a part of the Enlighten age.
In the 1770's Voltaire and other free thinkers led the critic denis Diderot and published the Encyclopé
The Encyclopedists were intensely interested in the American Revolution, which broke out in the same decade that they were collaborating. The interest was mutual. Many of America's rebels were Enlightenment thinkers — especially Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Signed in 1776, it contained phrases such as "We hold these truths to be self-evident" (rationalism) and 'certain unalienable Rights" (which sounds inspired by Locke and Rousseau).
