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Notes -
Sure, no strong disagreement here, and there were of course periods of higher liberty in the more distant past. I don't think though that it would be controversial to argue that the enlightenment spurred a pretty significant expansion of individual rights, or at least of movements trying to advance those rights against the oppression of their ruling regimes.
America's founding certainly didn't perfect egalitarianism, and enshrined slavery to our shame, but still offered a uniquely higher level of protected liberties than other societies at the time or for centuries prior. The later movements to abolish slavery and expand civil rights were done in the name of the ideology established in the Declaration and articulated by the Founding Fathers.
As a slave society, antebellum America offered a lower level of protected liberties than non-slave societies, of which several existed in 1776. You can argue that Jefferson was a hypocrite who believed that "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights" while whipping niggers for fun and profit, and that America deserves the credit for his good intentions, but we know that most of the Southern elite from which Washington and Jefferson were drawn did in fact believe that some men were born with saddles on their backs and others with spurs to ride them, and were willing to say so explicitly. This is, of course, what the French revolutionaries and their enemies said they were fighting over (and I believe them), and what the Americans said they were fighting over in the 1860's (and I believe them too).
I have always assumed that one of the reasons America was spared the bloodshed of the French revolution and associated upheavals was that the Founding Fathers carefully fudged the question of whether all men really were created equal. As it turned out, the fudge only lasted 80 years and the bloodshed was postponed and not prevented.
In the UK, we put our fudge in place with the Restoration in 1660 and the Glorious Revolution in 1688, and somehow made it stick all the way to the present day when Charles III is crowned By Grace of God, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and his other Realms and Territories, Defender of the Faith and only spergs and left-idiotarians complain that this is incompatible with democracy. I assume part of the reason we were able to do this is that the English Civil War and the depradations of Cromwell's major-generals was a fair warning of what would happen if you actually tried to give a straight answer to the equality question.
Both Washington and Jefferson wrote that they believed slavery was evil even as they personally profitted from it, explicitly ended America's participation in the international slave trade, and seemed to expect its end in the near term future. None of this absolves them of their hypocrisy but I don't know what I could say here that I didn't say in the parent comment - America's Bill of Rights and founding principles represented a new high point in civil liberties for their citizens but failed to extent those liberties to the existing pre-revolutionary slave population.
I have no serious disagreement with the idea that the American Revolution was not singularly about advancing liberty, and that instead it helped solidify some heirarchical power structures - I'm even considering an effort post on it. But arguing that the American Revolution is not a central example of an enlightenment-based movement that expanded individual rights is silly.
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