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The Making of the American Mind: The Story of our Declaration of Independence
The Making of the American Mind is the story of the making and meaning of the Declaration, of how in the summer of 1776 a band of iron men from thirteen separate colonies banded together and declared independence from—and declared war against—the most powerful nation in the world.
In following the historic events around them, and the great characters at its center—General Washington leading an army while John Adams pursues independence and a cautious John Dickinson seeks reconciliation—it places the Declaration in its immediate strategic and political context. By focusing on the drafting and editing of the Declaration—Thomas Jefferson called it “an expression of the American mind”—it explains how that mind, years if not decades in the making, came to be written down by Jefferson and expressed in the Declaration’s powerful words.
Rather than emphasizing one aspect or one person, as is usually the case, this work is a commentary on the Declaration as a whole, allowing its narrative, and its argument—about the Course of Human Events, self-evident truths, unalienable Rights, abuses and usurpations, sacred Honor—to unfold on its terms, as the Continental Congress intended in declaring independence. Abraham Lincoln said once that public opinion “always has a ‘central idea,’ from which all its minor thoughts radiate.” America’s central idea is the Declaration, and everything else radiates from that.
In following the historic events around them, and the great characters at its center—General Washington leading an army while John Adams pursues independence and a cautious John Dickinson seeks reconciliation—it places the Declaration in its immediate strategic and political context. By focusing on the drafting and editing of the Declaration—Thomas Jefferson called it “an expression of the American mind”—it explains how that mind, years if not decades in the making, came to be written down by Jefferson and expressed in the Declaration’s powerful words.
Rather than emphasizing one aspect or one person, as is usually the case, this work is a commentary on the Declaration as a whole, allowing its narrative, and its argument—about the Course of Human Events, self-evident truths, unalienable Rights, abuses and usurpations, sacred Honor—to unfold on its terms, as the Continental Congress intended in declaring independence. Abraham Lincoln said once that public opinion “always has a ‘central idea,’ from which all its minor thoughts radiate.” America’s central idea is the Declaration, and everything else radiates from that.
344 pages, Hardcover
First published December 2, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 21, 2026
Well done. Provides valuable context and background for the phrases in the Declaration, in a manner similar to how a theologian might approach a religious text. I learned quite a bit. 4.5 stars.
June 3, 2026
How did our national consciousness evolve? How did our perception of ourselves as Americans form, and from whence did it come? Argues historian Matthew Spalding, it came from the Declaration of Independence.
Before 1776, Americans did not think of themselves as Americans. They were British subjects who were members of their own colony: Virginians, New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians; each colony had its own leadership, its own predominant social class, be it the farmer of Massachusetts, the printer from Pennsylvania, or the Virginia aristocrat. They were brethren, yes, but they were not yet a people. When the immortal words “We hold these truths” were written from the Continental Congress, that all began to change: a new nation would form. By 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, declaring that "four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," the transformation was complete. For Lincoln, as for the founders, America was a nation, but not only a nation, not a mere nation; it was a nation founded upon an idea.
Spalding begins his work by discussing a term we have all heard mentioned: patriotism. Spalding writes that a true understanding of this term, which can mean so many things to so many people, “has always been the civic antidote to what C. S. Lewis called ‘the poison of subjectivism.’” Borrowing from Alexis de Tocqueville, the nineteenth-century French philosopher who toured America in its first couple of decades, Spalding posits that there are two types of patriotism: the first can breed the nationalism of Otto von Bismarck or the self-serving, self-interested geocentrism that has today gained a foothold in some of our governmental institutions. This is not a patriotism based on anything longstanding or permanent; it is mere loyalty, a sheer blind love based only on a sense of community and on nothing more. The second type of patriotism is the American brand: the type that allows soldiers to fight the Nazis on the beaches of Normandy and to plant the American flag on Iwo Jima. It is not because we hate what is in front of us, as Chesterton wrote, nor yet because we like what is behind us, or feel some sort of emotional attachment; it is because we understand that the principles for which we fight are longstanding, permanent, and true. It is because they are all these things that we can give our last full measure of devotion, as did the Union soldiers during the Civil War.
The clarification of terms, such as patriotism, that Spalding does in the early pages of this work makes it easy to follow, yet not easy to skim. It makes you think, as great books do, yet does not cloud your judgment through vague terminology.
Quoting Augustine, Spalding makes clear from the start what the purpose of this book is. Nothing, according to the great theologian of the early church, can be truly loved unless the object of love is known. For us today, that means that for true patriotism, selfless in its purpose, determined in its cause to exist, we must understand exactly why the Declaration of Independence was written, how it was written, and what that changed.
The story of the Continental Congress is not new. Many books have been written on this critical period. The chapters that Spalding spends discussing the history of the Congress, the roles of its players, the international response, and its broader geopolitical place are clear in purpose but vague in accomplishment. For those well versed in American history, nothing illuminating will be gained from these chapters. Similarly, Spalding focuses a large part of his time on the particulars: what the complaints laid out in the Declaration were. This is, of course, important for a political historian, much less so for a philosophical one or for the average reader. Certainly, the validity of the claims made by Jefferson and others played a central role in their day, yet it becomes difficult to see how they could make any difference to ours.
The real strength of this book is its philosophy. Why is it that there are certain “unalienable rights”? What makes these “self-evident”? Who determines that among these are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? The answer takes us back into intellectual history. From the Greeks' understanding of reason (logos), which was then transmitted down to the Christian church, for proof, simply read John 1:1, came the realization that as human beings endowed with the imago Dei, we have the capacity, through our reason, to reach truths about our life, about the human condition, about our telos. From a Christian perspective, which the author shares, it is this knowledge that enables us to know the moral law in the first place, and then realize that we have transgressed against it, which in turn forces us to recognize our depravity and need for redemption. In the political arena, this means that the law can be known without being spelled out. Critically, before the Bill of Rights, there was already a bill of rights written in the universe. Before the Constitution, there was a constitution written on the mind. For this reason, the founders did not appeal to English common law, as some would have wished them to do. Jefferson understood that even without English common law, even without the Magna Carta or the Glorious Revolution, their cause would still be just; the universe would still have the same moral structure and natural law because it would have the same architect and the same lawgiver.
This understanding carries profound implications for modern political thought, especially in jurisprudence. We have come to see law as simply that which guarantees the greatest good for the greatest number; this utilitarianism would have been alien to the founders. We have also come to see government as the institution that preserves our rights. This is, of course, exactly what the founders intended, yet today, some carry it a step further; they reason, wrongly, that if government preserved the rights, then government gave the rights in the first place. Yet if government gave, government could take away. However, if they originate in nature and nature’s God, then government is subject to a higher tribunal, and the Supreme Court is not really the Supreme Court.
Jefferson’s ideas did not simply come from looking up at the sky and racking his own brain, using his own reason to determine that certain rights existed and were being usurped by Parliament and the King. He had come from a rich philosophical and theological tradition that dated back from Augustine and Aquinas, down through Algernon Sidney and John Locke. This was the more political side of philosophy. With natural law come natural rights. Unlike contemporary monarchical systems, which saw the monarch as the divinely appointed leader, the founders saw such a concept as flawed. They saw government as a servant of the people, and the people as servants of God. “But where, says some, is the King of America?” wrote Thomas Paine. “I’ll tell you, Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.”
The author dives into the theological background of the Declaration. The fact that the first entity mentioned in the Declaration is not the King of Britain, but the King of Heaven, at least signifies that these were writers who believed in a divine Providence. “As in its opening, the Declaration here appeals to a standard above and beyond human events to vindicate its cause. And the appeal, as before, is not to some overarching sense of history or to ‘the opinions of mankind.’ But it is also not to ‘the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,’ which man knows through reason. This appeal of the Declaration is to an omniscient God who not only knows all men but also knows the intentions of each man’s heart. While they declared their cause to the opinions of mankind, in the end the Continental Congress seeks a ruling from a higher court.” Spalding goes further, arguing that they had a specifically Christian understanding both of the role of government and of the role of man in relation to government. Writes Spalding: “Only a truly benevolent King, one who is divine and not subject to the passions of man, could be an absolute sovereign. And since governments are instituted among men and not angels, and no individual on this earth has the divine wisdom and authority to rule absolutely, the powers of government must be limited, divided, and checked to ensure the rule of law rather than the arbitrary reign of worldly men.” The Declaration’s signers were not all orthodox Christians; certainly the author, Jefferson, had some unorthodox beliefs, but they were all, down to the last man, versed in the basic presuppositions of Christianity that were predominant in the late eighteenth century, and it was these presuppositions that were basic in the writing, drafting, and approval of this document.
Inextricably linked to a Christian understanding of God is a Christian understanding of man, which the signers also had. These were Protestants, with the exception of Charles Carroll, but they were Protestants familiar and comfortable with the natural law beliefs and writings of Richard Hooker. Man was a rational animal, capable of understanding right and wrong, if not of actually choosing right and eschewing wrong. “It is by his reason, not by allowing the passions to rule or blindly following conventional mores, that man distinguishes between reality and myth, good and evil, the just and the unjust. Nature, as a structure of reality that is unchanging and permanent, and that can be accessed by reason, is the standard of right in making these distinctions. And as man seeks relationships with others to fulfill that nature, man is a political animal, as Aristotle famously observes, men come to live in communities based on agreed purposes and a common understanding of justice.” The author then makes an even more stunning, but likely accurate, claim: “This argument is the basis of Western thought about man and politics.”
Of course, reason is not the only reason. There is a place for faith; in fact, faith is necessary in a Christian society, though not necessarily in the way modern secular critics often imagine. Spalding’s discussion of human nature is especially enlightening in this regard; society today seems to oscillate between two extremes: the utopianism of Marx, Rousseau, and the Romantics, which assumes that human beings are fundamentally good and that social problems can be solved through proper institutions, and, on the other hand, sheer cynicism, such as that found in Thomas Hobbes, which sees humans as utterly depraved, needing a government to compel them to some form of social stability. Instead, Spalding writes, the founders had a diametrically opposed conception of man: “This is not Thomas Hobbes’s brutish world of man against man, violently seeking to avoid death, or of petty man constantly dominated by narrow self-interests and lowly desires. This is a sacred conception of man, altogether human yet willing to sacrifice and suffer for the highest of ends.”
Spalding demonstrates that the Founders understood liberty not as the freedom to do whatever one wishes, but as the freedom to do what one ought. Rights existed alongside duties; freedom existed alongside virtue. The American experiment depended not merely upon constitutional structures, but upon the character of the citizenry itself. People incapable of self-government could not remain free for long. A people who do not know what they love will not love it for long. Failing to understand where we came from will result in a failure to go where we ought.
Before 1776, Americans did not think of themselves as Americans. They were British subjects who were members of their own colony: Virginians, New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians; each colony had its own leadership, its own predominant social class, be it the farmer of Massachusetts, the printer from Pennsylvania, or the Virginia aristocrat. They were brethren, yes, but they were not yet a people. When the immortal words “We hold these truths” were written from the Continental Congress, that all began to change: a new nation would form. By 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, declaring that "four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," the transformation was complete. For Lincoln, as for the founders, America was a nation, but not only a nation, not a mere nation; it was a nation founded upon an idea.
Spalding begins his work by discussing a term we have all heard mentioned: patriotism. Spalding writes that a true understanding of this term, which can mean so many things to so many people, “has always been the civic antidote to what C. S. Lewis called ‘the poison of subjectivism.’” Borrowing from Alexis de Tocqueville, the nineteenth-century French philosopher who toured America in its first couple of decades, Spalding posits that there are two types of patriotism: the first can breed the nationalism of Otto von Bismarck or the self-serving, self-interested geocentrism that has today gained a foothold in some of our governmental institutions. This is not a patriotism based on anything longstanding or permanent; it is mere loyalty, a sheer blind love based only on a sense of community and on nothing more. The second type of patriotism is the American brand: the type that allows soldiers to fight the Nazis on the beaches of Normandy and to plant the American flag on Iwo Jima. It is not because we hate what is in front of us, as Chesterton wrote, nor yet because we like what is behind us, or feel some sort of emotional attachment; it is because we understand that the principles for which we fight are longstanding, permanent, and true. It is because they are all these things that we can give our last full measure of devotion, as did the Union soldiers during the Civil War.
The clarification of terms, such as patriotism, that Spalding does in the early pages of this work makes it easy to follow, yet not easy to skim. It makes you think, as great books do, yet does not cloud your judgment through vague terminology.
Quoting Augustine, Spalding makes clear from the start what the purpose of this book is. Nothing, according to the great theologian of the early church, can be truly loved unless the object of love is known. For us today, that means that for true patriotism, selfless in its purpose, determined in its cause to exist, we must understand exactly why the Declaration of Independence was written, how it was written, and what that changed.
The story of the Continental Congress is not new. Many books have been written on this critical period. The chapters that Spalding spends discussing the history of the Congress, the roles of its players, the international response, and its broader geopolitical place are clear in purpose but vague in accomplishment. For those well versed in American history, nothing illuminating will be gained from these chapters. Similarly, Spalding focuses a large part of his time on the particulars: what the complaints laid out in the Declaration were. This is, of course, important for a political historian, much less so for a philosophical one or for the average reader. Certainly, the validity of the claims made by Jefferson and others played a central role in their day, yet it becomes difficult to see how they could make any difference to ours.
The real strength of this book is its philosophy. Why is it that there are certain “unalienable rights”? What makes these “self-evident”? Who determines that among these are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? The answer takes us back into intellectual history. From the Greeks' understanding of reason (logos), which was then transmitted down to the Christian church, for proof, simply read John 1:1, came the realization that as human beings endowed with the imago Dei, we have the capacity, through our reason, to reach truths about our life, about the human condition, about our telos. From a Christian perspective, which the author shares, it is this knowledge that enables us to know the moral law in the first place, and then realize that we have transgressed against it, which in turn forces us to recognize our depravity and need for redemption. In the political arena, this means that the law can be known without being spelled out. Critically, before the Bill of Rights, there was already a bill of rights written in the universe. Before the Constitution, there was a constitution written on the mind. For this reason, the founders did not appeal to English common law, as some would have wished them to do. Jefferson understood that even without English common law, even without the Magna Carta or the Glorious Revolution, their cause would still be just; the universe would still have the same moral structure and natural law because it would have the same architect and the same lawgiver.
This understanding carries profound implications for modern political thought, especially in jurisprudence. We have come to see law as simply that which guarantees the greatest good for the greatest number; this utilitarianism would have been alien to the founders. We have also come to see government as the institution that preserves our rights. This is, of course, exactly what the founders intended, yet today, some carry it a step further; they reason, wrongly, that if government preserved the rights, then government gave the rights in the first place. Yet if government gave, government could take away. However, if they originate in nature and nature’s God, then government is subject to a higher tribunal, and the Supreme Court is not really the Supreme Court.
Jefferson’s ideas did not simply come from looking up at the sky and racking his own brain, using his own reason to determine that certain rights existed and were being usurped by Parliament and the King. He had come from a rich philosophical and theological tradition that dated back from Augustine and Aquinas, down through Algernon Sidney and John Locke. This was the more political side of philosophy. With natural law come natural rights. Unlike contemporary monarchical systems, which saw the monarch as the divinely appointed leader, the founders saw such a concept as flawed. They saw government as a servant of the people, and the people as servants of God. “But where, says some, is the King of America?” wrote Thomas Paine. “I’ll tell you, Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.”
The author dives into the theological background of the Declaration. The fact that the first entity mentioned in the Declaration is not the King of Britain, but the King of Heaven, at least signifies that these were writers who believed in a divine Providence. “As in its opening, the Declaration here appeals to a standard above and beyond human events to vindicate its cause. And the appeal, as before, is not to some overarching sense of history or to ‘the opinions of mankind.’ But it is also not to ‘the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,’ which man knows through reason. This appeal of the Declaration is to an omniscient God who not only knows all men but also knows the intentions of each man’s heart. While they declared their cause to the opinions of mankind, in the end the Continental Congress seeks a ruling from a higher court.” Spalding goes further, arguing that they had a specifically Christian understanding both of the role of government and of the role of man in relation to government. Writes Spalding: “Only a truly benevolent King, one who is divine and not subject to the passions of man, could be an absolute sovereign. And since governments are instituted among men and not angels, and no individual on this earth has the divine wisdom and authority to rule absolutely, the powers of government must be limited, divided, and checked to ensure the rule of law rather than the arbitrary reign of worldly men.” The Declaration’s signers were not all orthodox Christians; certainly the author, Jefferson, had some unorthodox beliefs, but they were all, down to the last man, versed in the basic presuppositions of Christianity that were predominant in the late eighteenth century, and it was these presuppositions that were basic in the writing, drafting, and approval of this document.
Inextricably linked to a Christian understanding of God is a Christian understanding of man, which the signers also had. These were Protestants, with the exception of Charles Carroll, but they were Protestants familiar and comfortable with the natural law beliefs and writings of Richard Hooker. Man was a rational animal, capable of understanding right and wrong, if not of actually choosing right and eschewing wrong. “It is by his reason, not by allowing the passions to rule or blindly following conventional mores, that man distinguishes between reality and myth, good and evil, the just and the unjust. Nature, as a structure of reality that is unchanging and permanent, and that can be accessed by reason, is the standard of right in making these distinctions. And as man seeks relationships with others to fulfill that nature, man is a political animal, as Aristotle famously observes, men come to live in communities based on agreed purposes and a common understanding of justice.” The author then makes an even more stunning, but likely accurate, claim: “This argument is the basis of Western thought about man and politics.”
Of course, reason is not the only reason. There is a place for faith; in fact, faith is necessary in a Christian society, though not necessarily in the way modern secular critics often imagine. Spalding’s discussion of human nature is especially enlightening in this regard; society today seems to oscillate between two extremes: the utopianism of Marx, Rousseau, and the Romantics, which assumes that human beings are fundamentally good and that social problems can be solved through proper institutions, and, on the other hand, sheer cynicism, such as that found in Thomas Hobbes, which sees humans as utterly depraved, needing a government to compel them to some form of social stability. Instead, Spalding writes, the founders had a diametrically opposed conception of man: “This is not Thomas Hobbes’s brutish world of man against man, violently seeking to avoid death, or of petty man constantly dominated by narrow self-interests and lowly desires. This is a sacred conception of man, altogether human yet willing to sacrifice and suffer for the highest of ends.”
Spalding demonstrates that the Founders understood liberty not as the freedom to do whatever one wishes, but as the freedom to do what one ought. Rights existed alongside duties; freedom existed alongside virtue. The American experiment depended not merely upon constitutional structures, but upon the character of the citizenry itself. People incapable of self-government could not remain free for long. A people who do not know what they love will not love it for long. Failing to understand where we came from will result in a failure to go where we ought.
May 23, 2026
For America's 250th anniversary as a self-governing nation, this is the definitive book to read that details the creation of the Declaration of Independence, the concepts of which were not a new idea.
Thomas Jefferson proclaimed: "With respect to our rights and the acts of the British government, there was but one opinion on this side of the water...it [the Declaration of Independence] was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion."
Thus the author (historian from Hillsdale College), analyzes the declaration line by line grammatically, historically, philosophically, politically, and theologically, with every term defined in true classical fashion.
Not boring at all, it reads as the document itself, like a beautiful orchestral piece...because he even explains how the declaration was purposely written in this very way.
At many museums I often hear that John Adams estimated that America was split by thirds during the American Revolution: 1/3 for Independence, 1/3 against Independence, and 1/3 on the fence.
In this book I learned otherwise which I further researched. Instead, John Adams made that 1/3 assessment not during the American Revolution, but long before, during the Stamp Act of 1765, when Britain first imposed taxes without representation upon the colonies. While Patrick Henry cried "Caesar has his Brutus", Americans were apparently 1/3 split in opinion.
However, after years of struggle with Britain, "Adams later estimated that two-thirds of the population supported the American Revolution."
Upon receiving a copy of the Declaration of Independence on July 9th, General Washington had the Declaration of Independence read aloud to his "several brigades" (one brigade consists of 3,000 to 5000 soldiers...he was at the time commanding about 20,000 men).
After three Huzzas from the troops upon hearing the declaration, the George III equestrian soldier was torn down on the Bowling Green.
This is a rousing terrific book that I have found to be one of my favorite ways to celebrate America's 250th this year!
Thomas Jefferson proclaimed: "With respect to our rights and the acts of the British government, there was but one opinion on this side of the water...it [the Declaration of Independence] was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion."
Thus the author (historian from Hillsdale College), analyzes the declaration line by line grammatically, historically, philosophically, politically, and theologically, with every term defined in true classical fashion.
Not boring at all, it reads as the document itself, like a beautiful orchestral piece...because he even explains how the declaration was purposely written in this very way.
At many museums I often hear that John Adams estimated that America was split by thirds during the American Revolution: 1/3 for Independence, 1/3 against Independence, and 1/3 on the fence.
In this book I learned otherwise which I further researched. Instead, John Adams made that 1/3 assessment not during the American Revolution, but long before, during the Stamp Act of 1765, when Britain first imposed taxes without representation upon the colonies. While Patrick Henry cried "Caesar has his Brutus", Americans were apparently 1/3 split in opinion.
However, after years of struggle with Britain, "Adams later estimated that two-thirds of the population supported the American Revolution."
Upon receiving a copy of the Declaration of Independence on July 9th, General Washington had the Declaration of Independence read aloud to his "several brigades" (one brigade consists of 3,000 to 5000 soldiers...he was at the time commanding about 20,000 men).
After three Huzzas from the troops upon hearing the declaration, the George III equestrian soldier was torn down on the Bowling Green.
This is a rousing terrific book that I have found to be one of my favorite ways to celebrate America's 250th this year!
April 8, 2026
This book is fantastic! An excellent look at basically every part of the Declaration. Wonderful insight into what all the verbiage meant at that the time. The declaration was a speech-act. It was a locution that accomplished something. So what were the Founders seeking to do? Spalding spells it out (sorry, couldn't help myself).
Superb discussions, for example, about where rights come from, what the "pursuit of happiness" means, why the Declaration addresses the King and not Parliament, and more. I couldn't think of a better book to read in 2026. Maybe people will finally stop calling it a "revolution" and start calling it the "war for independence."
Superb discussions, for example, about where rights come from, what the "pursuit of happiness" means, why the Declaration addresses the King and not Parliament, and more. I couldn't think of a better book to read in 2026. Maybe people will finally stop calling it a "revolution" and start calling it the "war for independence."
March 28, 2026
Upon receiving an email from Hillsdale College regarding this book, I quickly pre-ordered and anxiously awaited its release. As someone who had studied the Founding Fathers and Declaration on many occasions, I must admit that this book introduced new concepts and ideas I had never heard or thought. I have been taking it page by page and researching the documents and people mentioned. If you love learning about the American Founding this book is for you!
June 7, 2026
Great book. Gives good historical background and insight over the time period and why the Declaration was needed and then launches into a commentary on the text of the document
June 10, 2026
Iron men.
January 21, 2026
This is a very good book on the writing of the Declaration of Independence. I have read a lot, an awful lot, over the years on the Revolutionary period, and Spalding brought to bear many events that were new to me.
The book is not a "light" read, it is somewhat academic and goes very deep in bringing together the many philosophers the Founding Fathers called upon to form their own ideologies, perspectives, and actions. It is done is such a way that resulted in framing the writings and thoughts of the Founding Fathers in modern day events, conversations, social media, etc.
The book is not a "light" read, it is somewhat academic and goes very deep in bringing together the many philosophers the Founding Fathers called upon to form their own ideologies, perspectives, and actions. It is done is such a way that resulted in framing the writings and thoughts of the Founding Fathers in modern day events, conversations, social media, etc.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews