A commonly held position in post-WWII American intellectual life was that
John Locke's Second Treatise of Government underpinned not only the
Declaration of Independence, but also the American Political Tradition more
generally. This might be wrong. Claire Rydell Arcenas's often surprising
new history of American engagement with Locke from the early eighteenth
century to the late twentieth suggests that successive generations of
American readers found different aspects of Locke thought to be
significant.
Claire Rydell Arcenas is associate professor of history at the University
of Montana.
