Abstract

Debates over whether the discourse used to justify resistance during the American Revolution was "liberal" or "republican" often obscure the more central question of why and how early American thinkers were able to combine strands of political thought that many modern scholars find contradictory. The arguments the Americans used to justify resistance are better understood as falling into four types that were not understood to be mutually exclusive: Lockean, Biblical, legal/historical, and republican. Locke's ideas often provided an organizing framework within which the other types of argument were used.