Now as has been covered before, throughout the latter half of the seventeenth century and pretty much the entirety of the eighteenth century, Europe was in the grips of something which became known by all sorts of high falutin names, the Age of Reason and the Great Enlightenment being the most humble of them. Now aside from some fairly pompous asshats enjoying the smell of their own farts a little bit too much, the Great Enlightenment was a pretty damn big deal in that it applied the scientific method to all parts of life, which began to bring up all sorts of interesting ideas previously not considered. People began to ask all sorts of interesting questions, such as are people born with certain God given rights, why do we treat some people like shit while not others, who really gets to claim they are speaking for God, and why the hell is the aristocracy in charge? It was from these questions that a large part of what we now call western civilization developed, including the separation of church and state, democracy, a focus on data driven research, universal rights, civil rights, and capitalism.
Of course, being beholden to Britain and whatnot, these new ideas of course spread to the Thirteen Colonies via books and various pamphlets, which thanks to the ridiculously high levels of literacy for the time there, were available to a significant part of the population. In many ways the Thirteen Colonies were the most open to the new ideas of the Great Enlightenment given in many ways they were already living them. The colonies all contained a multitude of people of different backgrounds and religions, with most protecting the rights of individuals to live their lives as they preferred. Wealth and power in the colonies was held by the merchant class rather than an entrenched aristocracy, meaning no matter what station in life you were born into you had a chance to become somebody, as long as you somehow managed to accumulate enough money. Each colony was largely run by an elected assembly, which thanks to the wide availability of land was voted on by a significant portion of the property owning male population. Though theoretically under the power of a royal governor and the laws and royal edicts of Britain, thanks to distance and the British government really not giving two shits, these elected assemblies were largely allowed to run each colony as they saw fit.
Throughout the Thirteen Colonies, there was a more general willingness to think about the world differently and to try something new. Many of those who had immigrated had done so because the Old World either treated them like shit or gave zero opportunity for improvement. The New World not only provided the opportunity to do away with both problems, it also put them in direct contact with societies and cultures with different norms, both via Europeans from different countries and religions, but also the vastly different Native American cultures. The Algonquian and Iroquoian cultures they first encountered, with their more egalitarian societies, greater gender equality, and more localized and democratic politics, stood in stark contrast to the more European way of doing things and greatly influenced the development of what was becoming a separate American culture.
Though most pronounced at first in the middle colonies, the ideas of what became known as the American Enlightenment quickly spread into the southern and New England colonies. The most pronounced early shift in this expansion was the ending of the Puritanical theocracies which for so long dominated the New England colonies. Though there was a last burst of Puritanical zealotry via a spate of witch trials in the 1690s, laws limiting rights based upon religious belief were almost entirely revoked by the start of the eighteenth century. Another change was a shift in the culture of universities in the colonies. Originally founded as religious institutions and trade schools, they shifted to a more non-secular curriculum, with a greater focus on scientific research, history, and the study and development of the arts.
In many ways, the development of the principles of the Great Enlightenment took hold faster in the Thirteen Colonies than they did back in Britain and Europe. As the divide widened over time, discontent with being held back by a political system half a world away began to grow. For those born in the colonies, most had never been to Europe, and felt less connection to it with each new generation. For those immigrating, the entire point was to find something new. Though far from the only cause of the eventual revolution, this growing divide was certainly a part of what made the separation later seem inevitable.
