Matthew Fielding Locke
After the war, Locke returned to Mississippi, and in 1849 married Elizabeth A. Biue. Shortly thereafter they moved to Upshur County, Texas. He established a plantation about 13 miles (21 km) northeast of present-day Gilmer and founded the nearby town of LaFayette (which he named after his son, LaFayette C. Locke, who was born in 1850). Locke began the first of two terms as a state representative in 1855 in the Sixth Texas Legislature. In the Seventh Legislature, Locke was elected Speaker of the House "pro tempore" on 26 December 1857 when Speaker William S. Taylor took ill. When Taylor resigned on 18 January 1858, Locke was elected Speaker over Reps. Isaac N. Dennis and John Henry Brown, 39 votes to 14 and 13, respectively.
American Revolution
John Locke's (1632–1704) ideas on liberty influenced the political thinking behind the revolution, especially through his indirect influence on English writers such as John Trenchard, Thomas Gordon, and Benjamin Hoadly, whose political ideas in turn had a strong influence on the American revolutionaries. Locke is often referred to as "the philosopher of the American Revolution" due to his work in the Social Contract and Natural Rights theories that underpinned the Revolution's political ideology. Locke's Two Treatises of Government published in 1689 were especially influential. He argued that all humans were created equally free, and governments therefore needed the "consent of the governed." In late eighteenth-century America, belief was still widespread in "equality by creation" and "rights by creation".