Editing Jean-Jacques Rousseau (section)

===Effect on the American Revolution===
One of Rousseau's most important American followers was [[Noah Webster]] (1758–1843). In 1785, two years before America's constitutional convention, Webster relied heavily on Rousseau's ''[[The Social Contract|Social Contract]]'' while writing ''Sketches of American Policy'', one of the earliest, widely-published arguments for a strong central government in America. George Washington, James Madison, and likely other founders read it before the convention.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Harris |first=Micah |date=2024-09-01 |title=Noah Webster and the Influence of Rousseau on Education in America, 1785–1835 |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/732277 |journal=American Political Thought |language=en |volume=13 |issue=4 |pages=508 |doi=10.1086/732277 |issn=2161-1580}}</ref> Webster also wrote two "fan-fiction" sequels to Rousseau's ''[[Emile, or On Education]]'' (1762) and included them in his 1785 Reader for schoolchildren. Webster's 1787 Reader, and later Readers, also contain an idealized word-portrait of Sophie, the girl in Rousseau's ''Emile,'' and Webster used Rousseau's theories in ''Emile'' to argue for the civic necessity of broad-based female education.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Harris |first=Micah |date=2024-09-01 |title=Noah Webster and the Influence of Rousseau on Education in America, 1785–1835 |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/732277 |journal=American Political Thought |language=en |volume=13 |issue=4 |pages=508–509 |doi=10.1086/732277 |issn=2161-1580}}</ref>

According to some scholars, Rousseau exercised minimal influence on the [[Founding Fathers of the United States]], despite similarities between their ideas. They shared beliefs regarding the self-evidence that "all men are created equal," and the conviction that citizens of a republic be educated at public expense. A parallel can be drawn between the [[United States Constitution]]'s concept of the "[[Common good|general welfare]]" and Rousseau's concept of the "[[general will]]". Further commonalities exist between [[Jeffersonian democracy]] and Rousseau's praise of Switzerland and Corsica's economies of isolated and independent homesteads, and his endorsement of a well-regulated civic militia, such as a navy for Corsica,{{sfn|Li|2020}} and the militia of the Swiss cantons.<ref>{{Citation |first=Nathan |last=Schachner |title=Thomas Jefferson: A Biography |year=1957 |page=47}}</ref>

However, [[Will Durant|Will]] and [[Ariel Durant]] have opined that Rousseau had a definite political influence on America. According to them: {{Blockquote|The first sign of [Rousseau's] political influence was in the wave of public sympathy that supported active French aid to the American Revolution. Jefferson derived the [[United States Declaration of Independence|Declaration of Independence]] from Rousseau as well as from Locke and Montesquieu. As ambassador to France (1785–89) he absorbed much from both Voltaire and Rousseau...The success of the American Revolution raised the prestige of Rousseau's philosophy.{{sfn|Durant|Durant|1967|pp=890–891}}}}

Rousseau's writings perhaps had an indirect influence on American literature through the writings of [[William Wordsworth|Wordsworth]] and [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]], whose works were important to the New England [[transcendentalist]] [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], as well as on Unitarians such as theologian [[William Ellery Channing]]. ''[[The Last of the Mohicans]]'' and other American novels reflect republican and egalitarian ideals present alike in [[Thomas Paine]] and in English Romantic [[primitivism]].{{NoteTag | Cooper was a follower of Tom Paine, who in turn was an admirer of Rousseau. For the classical origins of American ideals of liberty, see also {{Citation |title=''Sibi Imperiosus'': Cooper's Horatian Ideal of Self-Governance in The Deerslayer |publisher=Villa Julie College |date=July 2005 |url=http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/suny/2003suny-tamer.html |access-date=12 March 2009 |archive-date=20 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171020023831/http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/suny/2003suny-tamer.html |url-status=dead }}.}}<ref>{{Citation |first=Mark J |last=Temmer |title=Rousseau and Thoreau |journal=Yale French Studies |number=28: Jean–Jacques Rousseau |year=1961 |pages=112–121 |doi=10.2307/2928950 |jstor=2928950}}</ref>