<P> The term "American Enlightenment" was coined in the post-World War II era . It was not used in the eighteenth century, when English speakers commonly referred to a process of becoming "enlightened ." </P> <P> Various dates for the American Enlightenment have been proposed, including the dates 1750--1820, 1765--1815, and 1688--1815 . One more precise start date proposed is the date a collection of Enlightenment books by Colonial Agent Jeremiah Dummer were donated into the library of the small college of Yale at Saybrook Point, Connecticut on or just after October 15, 1714 . They were received by a young post-graduate student Samuel Johnson, of Guilford, Connecticut, who studied them . He found that they contradicted all his hard learned Puritan learning . He wrote that, "All this was like a flood of day to his low state of mind", and that "he found himself like one at once emerging out of the glimmer of twilight into the full sunshine of open day". Two years later in 1716 as a Yale Tutor, Johnson introduced a new curriculum into Yale using the donated Dummer books . He offered what he called "The New Learning", which included the works and ideas of Francis Bacon, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Boyle, Copernicus, and literary works by Shakespeare, Milton, and Addison . Enlightenment ideas were introduced to the colonists and diffused through Puritan educational and religious networks especially through Yale College in 1718 . </P> <P> Enlightened Founding Fathers, especially Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington, fought for and eventually attained religious freedom for minority denominations . According to the founding fathers, the United States should be a country where peoples of all faiths could live in peace and mutual benefit . James Madison summed up this ideal in 1792 saying, "Conscience is the most sacred of all property ." </P> <P> A switch away from established religion to religious tolerance, was one of the distinguishing features of the era from 1775 to 1818 . The passage of the new Connecticut Constitution on October 5, 1818, overturned the 180 - year - old "Standing Order" and The Connecticut Charter of 1662, whose provisions dated back to the founding of the state in 1638 and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut; it has been proposed as a date for the triumph if not the end of the American Enlightenment:). The new constitution guaranteed freedom of religion, and disestablished the Congregational church . </P>

How did the enlightenment impact the united states