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America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It
America's Revolutionary Mind is the first major reinterpretation of the American Revolution since the publication of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Gordon S. Wood's The Creation of the American Republic.
The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of the American mind; and, second, to shed light on what John Adams once called the "real American Revolution"; that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the fifteen years before 1776. The Declaration is used here as an ideological road map by which to chart the intellectual and moral terrain traveled by American Revolutionaries as they searched for new moral principles to deal with the changed political circumstances of the 1760s and early 1770s. This volume identifies and analyzes the modes of reasoning, the patterns of thought, and the new moral and political principles that served American Revolutionaries first in their intellectual battle with Great Britain before 1776 and then in their attempt to create new Revolutionary societies after 1776.
The book reconstructs what amounts to a near-unified system of thought—what Thomas Jefferson called an “American mind” or what I call “America’s Revolutionary mind.” This American mind was, I argue, united in its fealty to a common philosophy that was expressed in the Declaration and launched with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of the American mind; and, second, to shed light on what John Adams once called the "real American Revolution"; that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the fifteen years before 1776. The Declaration is used here as an ideological road map by which to chart the intellectual and moral terrain traveled by American Revolutionaries as they searched for new moral principles to deal with the changed political circumstances of the 1760s and early 1770s. This volume identifies and analyzes the modes of reasoning, the patterns of thought, and the new moral and political principles that served American Revolutionaries first in their intellectual battle with Great Britain before 1776 and then in their attempt to create new Revolutionary societies after 1776.
The book reconstructs what amounts to a near-unified system of thought—what Thomas Jefferson called an “American mind” or what I call “America’s Revolutionary mind.” This American mind was, I argue, united in its fealty to a common philosophy that was expressed in the Declaration and launched with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
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First published November 5, 2019
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About the author
C. Bradley Thompson
17 books37 followersC. Bradley Thompson is an American writer who is the BB&T Research Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He received his Ph.D. at Brown University where he studied under Gordon S. Wood. He was also a visiting scholar at Princeton and Harvard universities, and at the University of London. He also was a James Madison Program Garwood Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in 2004–05.
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December 5, 2019
This book may be the most important work of American history in generations. In fact, it may be the most important book of our time.
Hyperbole? Not in the least. Distinguished political philosopher and historian C. Bradley Thompson has marshaled extraordinary scholarship and a lucid, elegant style to present a new conception of the American Revolution -- one that challenges and is sure to change conventional interpretations and contemporary criticisms. Tracing the genesis and meaning of each premise of the Declaration of Independence, Professor Thompson demonstrates that the Founders were not motivated primarily by economic interests or even political ideology, but by a revolutionary new moral philosophy. The result is an exceptional history of American Exceptionalism -- and a magisterial defense of what Professor Thompson has referred to simply as "Americanism."
My proclamation of this book's singular importance is no exaggeration -- not when we consider how universally and relentlessly the foundations of "the American experiment" have been under attack. This assault is nothing new: Some of the earliest critics of the Founders' principles were antebellum apologists for chattel slavery, such as John C. Calhoun, who presciently saw the proclamation of universal individual rights in the Declaration of Independence as a threat to their odious subjugation of their fellow man. The onslaught against the fundamental ideas of the Declaration was continued by leftist historians of the Progressive Era, based largely on ad hominem arguments about the alleged motives of the Founders. The Founders' elevation of individualism, these critics argued, was merely an intellectual rationalization for their selfish economic interests; and the fact that some of them were themselves Southern slaveholders revealed hypocrisy, thus insincerity.
More recently -- and most notably since Howard Zinn's bestselling People's History of the United States vandalized American history with Marxist smears -- it has been Conventional Wisdom that the United States was not founded in noble principles of individual rights and equality under the law; rather, it was grounded in the oppression of blacks and indigenous peoples, and in the exploitation of the downtrodden for the benefit of the few. This neo-Marxist fairy tale has been propagated by the New York Times, whose much-touted "1619 Project" aims explicitly at rewriting the history of the United States as beginning not with the Declaration's seminal proclamation of inalienable individual rights, but with the arrival of the first slaves on our shores. That anti-American narrative is being taught to generations of impressionable young minds, who are coming to hate their own country and to despise its foundational principles -- without even grasping what they are.
America's Revolutionary Mind offers more than a counter-narrative to neo-Marxist smears against America; it is that counter-narrative. To muster his defense of the Founding generation, Professor Thompson has compiled massive, irrefutable evidence -- drawn from innumerable journal entries, private letters, public sermons, newspaper columns, speeches, pamphlets, books, and official resolutions from the years leading up to the Revolution itself.
His clever method of framing his case is to devote one chapter to each of the basic premises enunciated in the Declaration -- then to trace the history of that particular idea, citing the treasure trove of documents from the period. He shows that these were not the views of some isolated, self-serving elite; they were the "common sense" of the time, championed by simple farmers as well as sophisticated lawyers, by pastors as well as politicians, by humble shopkeepers as well as wealthy bankers. It is the chronicle of a rising popular movement that upheld -- with astonishing, explicit clarity -- an ethics of individualism, which in turn came to motivate a war for their individual rights to life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness.
Several decades ago, I reviewed Henry Steele Commager's The Empire of Reason -- his dazzling, inspiring history of how Enlightenment ideas, first imagined in Europe, were implemented in America. America's Revolutionary Mind tracks the intellectual odyssey of Enlightenment ideas farther and deeper: It shows specifically how they manifested themselves in a popular American ethos, and were enshrined in the documents that provided the founding framework for a new nation.
America's Revolutionary Mind is a masterful historic examination of the roots of "Americanism" -- and a ringing defense of America against its critics. It should become a fixture in the curricula of college history courses, to serve as a counterweight to the calumnies being spread against this great country. C. Bradley Thompson has given America the tribute it has so long deserved, and that those of us who love America have so long awaited.
Hyperbole? Not in the least. Distinguished political philosopher and historian C. Bradley Thompson has marshaled extraordinary scholarship and a lucid, elegant style to present a new conception of the American Revolution -- one that challenges and is sure to change conventional interpretations and contemporary criticisms. Tracing the genesis and meaning of each premise of the Declaration of Independence, Professor Thompson demonstrates that the Founders were not motivated primarily by economic interests or even political ideology, but by a revolutionary new moral philosophy. The result is an exceptional history of American Exceptionalism -- and a magisterial defense of what Professor Thompson has referred to simply as "Americanism."
My proclamation of this book's singular importance is no exaggeration -- not when we consider how universally and relentlessly the foundations of "the American experiment" have been under attack. This assault is nothing new: Some of the earliest critics of the Founders' principles were antebellum apologists for chattel slavery, such as John C. Calhoun, who presciently saw the proclamation of universal individual rights in the Declaration of Independence as a threat to their odious subjugation of their fellow man. The onslaught against the fundamental ideas of the Declaration was continued by leftist historians of the Progressive Era, based largely on ad hominem arguments about the alleged motives of the Founders. The Founders' elevation of individualism, these critics argued, was merely an intellectual rationalization for their selfish economic interests; and the fact that some of them were themselves Southern slaveholders revealed hypocrisy, thus insincerity.
More recently -- and most notably since Howard Zinn's bestselling People's History of the United States vandalized American history with Marxist smears -- it has been Conventional Wisdom that the United States was not founded in noble principles of individual rights and equality under the law; rather, it was grounded in the oppression of blacks and indigenous peoples, and in the exploitation of the downtrodden for the benefit of the few. This neo-Marxist fairy tale has been propagated by the New York Times, whose much-touted "1619 Project" aims explicitly at rewriting the history of the United States as beginning not with the Declaration's seminal proclamation of inalienable individual rights, but with the arrival of the first slaves on our shores. That anti-American narrative is being taught to generations of impressionable young minds, who are coming to hate their own country and to despise its foundational principles -- without even grasping what they are.
America's Revolutionary Mind offers more than a counter-narrative to neo-Marxist smears against America; it is that counter-narrative. To muster his defense of the Founding generation, Professor Thompson has compiled massive, irrefutable evidence -- drawn from innumerable journal entries, private letters, public sermons, newspaper columns, speeches, pamphlets, books, and official resolutions from the years leading up to the Revolution itself.
His clever method of framing his case is to devote one chapter to each of the basic premises enunciated in the Declaration -- then to trace the history of that particular idea, citing the treasure trove of documents from the period. He shows that these were not the views of some isolated, self-serving elite; they were the "common sense" of the time, championed by simple farmers as well as sophisticated lawyers, by pastors as well as politicians, by humble shopkeepers as well as wealthy bankers. It is the chronicle of a rising popular movement that upheld -- with astonishing, explicit clarity -- an ethics of individualism, which in turn came to motivate a war for their individual rights to life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness.
Several decades ago, I reviewed Henry Steele Commager's The Empire of Reason -- his dazzling, inspiring history of how Enlightenment ideas, first imagined in Europe, were implemented in America. America's Revolutionary Mind tracks the intellectual odyssey of Enlightenment ideas farther and deeper: It shows specifically how they manifested themselves in a popular American ethos, and were enshrined in the documents that provided the founding framework for a new nation.
America's Revolutionary Mind is a masterful historic examination of the roots of "Americanism" -- and a ringing defense of America against its critics. It should become a fixture in the curricula of college history courses, to serve as a counterweight to the calumnies being spread against this great country. C. Bradley Thompson has given America the tribute it has so long deserved, and that those of us who love America have so long awaited.
February 29, 2020
An extremely deep dive into the thinking of the American Revolutionaries. Learned about the author from his interview on The Dennis Prager Show radio program.
August 16, 2020
America’s Revolutionary Mind — A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It
C. Bradley Thompson
© 2019
A short Book Report by Ron Housley
Think of it! — A whole book about what was in the minds of America’s revolutionary generation, not about what they did but about what they thought.
What a great topic --- just at a time when the NYT 1619 Project is not only sweeping America, is not only being integrated into the K-12 curricula nationwide, but is becoming entrenched in the minds of Americans everywhere.
I started reading Thompson’s accounting of American thought during the Black Lives Matters protests of 2020; right at the time when it was being popularly shouted that the American system of individual rights is fundamentally racist, “rotten to the core” as some current members of the U.S. Congress framed it; right at the time when college professors, The New York Times activists, politicians and journalists were all telling us that rather than being the keystone of liberty and prosperity, that individual rights were the source of white racial privilege. This is the 2020 messaging, in contrast to Thompson’s accounting of which intellectual discoveries caused which historical events.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Back in my school days, I struggled with John Locke’s famous “Second Treatise of Government,” which now features prominently in Thompson’s outline of how the ideas came about, ideas which animated the creation of America and of her founding Document.
In all the other histories and biographies I’ve digested over the years, in all the recounting of British injustices imposed upon the colonists, in all the movies and History Channel documentaries on the era, nowhere is there much attempt to show us how the ideas driving history coalesce together and directly cause actual historical events. This appears to be Thompson’s purpose: to show us those pivotal ideas, how those ideas came about, and how those ideas then translated into recordable actions.
What Thompson does is to point out how famous passages from John Locke’s “An Essay on Human Understanding” were used by colonialist intellectuals (e.g., Jefferson, et.al.) to determine that the entire onslaught of British impositions (e.g., Stamp Act, Intolerable Acts, Coercive Acts of 1774, etc.) were all offenses against moral law.
I thought it unique to see how history’s actors so explicitly brought their thinking to bear upon an issue. But the tone of this particular narrative is that the birth of America, and it’s independence from Great Britain, was “first and foremost, an intellectual and a moral revolution.” Thomas Paine inserted his own exclamation point: “Mankind are not now to be told they shall not think.” And, “despotism felt a shock, and man began to contemplate redress.” And, “a morning of reason rising upon man, on the subject of government, that has not appeared before.” (p. 44) I don’t recall learning it that way back in high school.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The early chapters go on to make much out of “the law of nature,” a phrase that embraces the gist of what 18th century thinkers had to say about what man required in order to flourish as man — which ultimately reduced down to “reason.” Man required “reason” if he was to flourish, if he was to live a life proper to mankind.
In recent years a new variety of anti-liberty sentiment has taken hold among Americans — the notion that we are supposed to be equal in our possessions, by force of law. The “Revolutionaries’ understanding of equality” (p. 111) as “equality of rights” (or, “equality before the law”) is today transformed to mean economic equality and even equality of opportunity.
Today’s younger generation is taught an entirely different meaning of “equality” than was understood at the time of the Revolution.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
SLAVERY V. THE WELFARE STATE
During the course of reading Thompson’s chapter, “Equality & Slavery,” it occurred to me that the Revolutionary era’s difficulty abolishing slavery from its midst parallels today’s difficulty in abolishing statism from our midst. Each of these evils is cured by applying the same principle: freedom.
For both slavery then and for statism now, a vast and immoral infrastructure had been deployed throughout the culture — such that freeing a slave was as painful, back then, as abolishing the welfare state, today. Abolishing slavery required freedom for the slave; abolishing the welfare-state requires freedom for everyone.
In both cases, a few elites are the beneficiaries — elites who persisted in promoting a wrong moral philosophy, one that has led only to misery, despair and death.
Today’s elites are corrupted by using the welfare state to buy votes and also to protect themselves from the sudden withdrawal of their “addiction” to spending money taxed from those who produced it. The slave owning elites were corrupted by the slavery lifestyle: “They were either morally weak or morally bankrupt (p. 144),” Thompson tells us, realizing that they could not “abolish slavery without creating massive social dislocations.”
Slavery persisted into the 19th century; today’s welfare state continues into the 21st century, as citizens cannot conceive of dismantling it without “massive social dislocations.”
Slavery became ever more harsh; the physical and mental torture of the slaves was beyond unspeakable; on the other side of the ledger, slavery drove down the price of labor in the South; the slaves themselves were the only group harmed more by slavery than the Southern white, unskilled poor; slavery suppressed general economic advancement everywhere it existed.
The welfare-state, similarly, has become ever more harsh; it has institutionalized the poor into poverty; it has become a means to drain the life-savings of honest citizens throughout the culture.
Dismantling slavery would require a new moral understanding about the right to one’s own life, in addition to requiring significant social changes. (If today’s welfare-state is ever to be dismantled, the exact same understandings will have to be re-discovered.)
The prospect of unwinding and dismantling slavery’s infrastructure was daunting and stood as an immovable obstacle until the Civil War finally put an end to it all (even though the War did not put an end to racism, that being a related but different issue).
Dismantling slavery, like dismantling the welfare state, absolutely required a moral-philosophic revolution; it is that revolution which Thompson’s book shows us.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Metastasizing throughout our culture today is the egregiously false narrative that the American Revolution was waged in the attempt to preserve slavery — a narrative which should have quickly died a natural death when facts about early abolition in northern states were re-examined.
“The great achievement of the American Revolution was to launch forces that would lead over time to the reconciliation of moral theory and moral practice (p. 140).” It was the public declaration that all men are created with equal rights which marked the “moment of America’s great moral awakening (p. 145).”
Slave-owning Founders were included among those who authored the teachings, writings, and philosophies which put an end to slavery for the first time in world history. The abolition movement was launched on the heels of the Declaration of Independence, the first time in world history that an actual anti-slavery movement was seen, even though slavery had existed in every culture on earth since before the Old Testament. The American Revolution marked, for the first time ever, the moral philosophy that would kill off slavery with its idea that “all men are created equal (before the law);” that’s what ultimately ended slavery.
A moral philosophy, articulated by America’s Founding Fathers, is what ultimately ended slavery in America. (I wonder why this message was never an explicitly part of my government high school history curriculum.)
I can’t help but suspect that “the moral state of mind that developed in America in the years before and after 1776” (p. 151) might be the same moral state of mind that will be necessary if we are to unwind today’s welfare-state before it crushes us all.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
In a lifetime of reading I have encountered few instances laying out a good case to demonstrate where individual rights come from. The idea of their being dictated by the nature of mankind itself has always seemed more credible than the contention that they come from the supernatural realm, or as permissions from legislatures or parliaments or Kings. Americans made rights to be declarations of liberties, but not necessarily from any of these sources.
Here is the chain of reasoning that Thompson offers us — IF man’s rational faculty is actually his essential and basic means of survival on earth; and IF coercion deployed against a man is the most basic way that this fundamental means of surviving can be thwarted, subverted or destroyed; THEN forbidding coercion to be deployed against a man is the most basic condition that man’s survival requires whenever he lives in a society.
Preventing people from coercing other people is what Individual Rights are all about: a right is a recognition that MAN’S NATURE requires him to be free of coercion, “free to choose and pursue those actions that are required to support his life.” (p. 166) For the American Revolutionaries, rights were to be “barriers protecting individuals from criminals and governments.” (p.168) — they were never to be entitlements to goods or services.
Colonial Americans viewed rights as a logical requirement of survival for any person living in a society; it was a logical outgrowth of NATURE having bestowed mankind with reason as the means to survive and prosper.
When the Founders contended that rights came from Nature, they were merely observing a perceptual connection between “man living in a society” and “man possessing rights” to allow him to use his naturally bestowed gift of reason for surviving. If someone took away a man’s ability to deploy his rational prerogative, it would be an existential threat to his life. The presence of the “perceptual connection” is what they meant by “self-evident:” they could SEE it.
And that’s what the Rev. Dan Foster meant when he wrote that the rights of man are “as capable of demonstration as any proposition of Euclid.” (p. 170)
Professor Thompson has clarified this understanding of rights to a new level! He makes a compelling case that rights are simply a necessary condition for man to survive while part of a society, when other men are a potential source of coercion to interfere with the free use of his fundamental means of survival, his reasoning mind. Taking it one step further: the securing of his individual rights is what is meant by the term, “liberty,” or “freedom.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Thompson has made the case that today we remember little, to nothing, of what our forefathers bequeathed to us when they warned: “Once liberty is lost, it is lost forever.” (p. 327)
Today’s generation does not integrate that profound thought, when we are so consumed with the notion that racism created slavery, drowning out our ability to see the broader issue: that the slavery of all of us, of all races, is mushrooming in front of our faces --- as we allow our government to arrogate ever more power, as individual rights are systematically voided. All the while, we encourage more amassing of power by our own government; and we tolerate or encourage the rioters and looters in the city streets. We are unable to hear John Dickinson’s words: “Slavery is ever preceded by sleep.” (p. 329) He wasn’t talking about chattel slavery; he was talking about all of us losing our liberty.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
FINAL CHAPTER — LIBERTY & REASON UNRAVELED
The final chapter in this book is a broad survey of the characters involved in the 19th and 20th century’s attack on reason and liberty.
If Professor Thompson would turn his full attention to this story in his next book, he could very well have a national bestseller on his hands.
It has confounded many of us how it came to pass that we have lost the liberty that the founders had hoped to pass down to us. And the story of how European intellectuals succeeded in crushing the American experiment by turning lose against us a discrete set of false philosophic ideas is a story of monumental importance.
Many of us know well some of the bits and pieces of that story; but few of us hold a thorough comprehension of what has happened right under our noses.
We will need someone with Thompson’s breadth of understanding to make that story come alive.
I contend that only by making that full story come alive in the minds of many will there ever be a return to the liberty which our culture is on the verge of losing forever.
Only by lighting on fire the flame of reason and liberty in the souls of enough of us will there ever be a way back from the cultural decay that darkens so much of our hope for a future of prosperity.
I, for one, am hoping that Professor Thompson will take up the mantle.
C. Bradley Thompson
© 2019
A short Book Report by Ron Housley
Think of it! — A whole book about what was in the minds of America’s revolutionary generation, not about what they did but about what they thought.
What a great topic --- just at a time when the NYT 1619 Project is not only sweeping America, is not only being integrated into the K-12 curricula nationwide, but is becoming entrenched in the minds of Americans everywhere.
I started reading Thompson’s accounting of American thought during the Black Lives Matters protests of 2020; right at the time when it was being popularly shouted that the American system of individual rights is fundamentally racist, “rotten to the core” as some current members of the U.S. Congress framed it; right at the time when college professors, The New York Times activists, politicians and journalists were all telling us that rather than being the keystone of liberty and prosperity, that individual rights were the source of white racial privilege. This is the 2020 messaging, in contrast to Thompson’s accounting of which intellectual discoveries caused which historical events.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Back in my school days, I struggled with John Locke’s famous “Second Treatise of Government,” which now features prominently in Thompson’s outline of how the ideas came about, ideas which animated the creation of America and of her founding Document.
In all the other histories and biographies I’ve digested over the years, in all the recounting of British injustices imposed upon the colonists, in all the movies and History Channel documentaries on the era, nowhere is there much attempt to show us how the ideas driving history coalesce together and directly cause actual historical events. This appears to be Thompson’s purpose: to show us those pivotal ideas, how those ideas came about, and how those ideas then translated into recordable actions.
What Thompson does is to point out how famous passages from John Locke’s “An Essay on Human Understanding” were used by colonialist intellectuals (e.g., Jefferson, et.al.) to determine that the entire onslaught of British impositions (e.g., Stamp Act, Intolerable Acts, Coercive Acts of 1774, etc.) were all offenses against moral law.
I thought it unique to see how history’s actors so explicitly brought their thinking to bear upon an issue. But the tone of this particular narrative is that the birth of America, and it’s independence from Great Britain, was “first and foremost, an intellectual and a moral revolution.” Thomas Paine inserted his own exclamation point: “Mankind are not now to be told they shall not think.” And, “despotism felt a shock, and man began to contemplate redress.” And, “a morning of reason rising upon man, on the subject of government, that has not appeared before.” (p. 44) I don’t recall learning it that way back in high school.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The early chapters go on to make much out of “the law of nature,” a phrase that embraces the gist of what 18th century thinkers had to say about what man required in order to flourish as man — which ultimately reduced down to “reason.” Man required “reason” if he was to flourish, if he was to live a life proper to mankind.
In recent years a new variety of anti-liberty sentiment has taken hold among Americans — the notion that we are supposed to be equal in our possessions, by force of law. The “Revolutionaries’ understanding of equality” (p. 111) as “equality of rights” (or, “equality before the law”) is today transformed to mean economic equality and even equality of opportunity.
Today’s younger generation is taught an entirely different meaning of “equality” than was understood at the time of the Revolution.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
SLAVERY V. THE WELFARE STATE
During the course of reading Thompson’s chapter, “Equality & Slavery,” it occurred to me that the Revolutionary era’s difficulty abolishing slavery from its midst parallels today’s difficulty in abolishing statism from our midst. Each of these evils is cured by applying the same principle: freedom.
For both slavery then and for statism now, a vast and immoral infrastructure had been deployed throughout the culture — such that freeing a slave was as painful, back then, as abolishing the welfare state, today. Abolishing slavery required freedom for the slave; abolishing the welfare-state requires freedom for everyone.
In both cases, a few elites are the beneficiaries — elites who persisted in promoting a wrong moral philosophy, one that has led only to misery, despair and death.
Today’s elites are corrupted by using the welfare state to buy votes and also to protect themselves from the sudden withdrawal of their “addiction” to spending money taxed from those who produced it. The slave owning elites were corrupted by the slavery lifestyle: “They were either morally weak or morally bankrupt (p. 144),” Thompson tells us, realizing that they could not “abolish slavery without creating massive social dislocations.”
Slavery persisted into the 19th century; today’s welfare state continues into the 21st century, as citizens cannot conceive of dismantling it without “massive social dislocations.”
Slavery became ever more harsh; the physical and mental torture of the slaves was beyond unspeakable; on the other side of the ledger, slavery drove down the price of labor in the South; the slaves themselves were the only group harmed more by slavery than the Southern white, unskilled poor; slavery suppressed general economic advancement everywhere it existed.
The welfare-state, similarly, has become ever more harsh; it has institutionalized the poor into poverty; it has become a means to drain the life-savings of honest citizens throughout the culture.
Dismantling slavery would require a new moral understanding about the right to one’s own life, in addition to requiring significant social changes. (If today’s welfare-state is ever to be dismantled, the exact same understandings will have to be re-discovered.)
The prospect of unwinding and dismantling slavery’s infrastructure was daunting and stood as an immovable obstacle until the Civil War finally put an end to it all (even though the War did not put an end to racism, that being a related but different issue).
Dismantling slavery, like dismantling the welfare state, absolutely required a moral-philosophic revolution; it is that revolution which Thompson’s book shows us.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Metastasizing throughout our culture today is the egregiously false narrative that the American Revolution was waged in the attempt to preserve slavery — a narrative which should have quickly died a natural death when facts about early abolition in northern states were re-examined.
“The great achievement of the American Revolution was to launch forces that would lead over time to the reconciliation of moral theory and moral practice (p. 140).” It was the public declaration that all men are created with equal rights which marked the “moment of America’s great moral awakening (p. 145).”
Slave-owning Founders were included among those who authored the teachings, writings, and philosophies which put an end to slavery for the first time in world history. The abolition movement was launched on the heels of the Declaration of Independence, the first time in world history that an actual anti-slavery movement was seen, even though slavery had existed in every culture on earth since before the Old Testament. The American Revolution marked, for the first time ever, the moral philosophy that would kill off slavery with its idea that “all men are created equal (before the law);” that’s what ultimately ended slavery.
A moral philosophy, articulated by America’s Founding Fathers, is what ultimately ended slavery in America. (I wonder why this message was never an explicitly part of my government high school history curriculum.)
I can’t help but suspect that “the moral state of mind that developed in America in the years before and after 1776” (p. 151) might be the same moral state of mind that will be necessary if we are to unwind today’s welfare-state before it crushes us all.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
In a lifetime of reading I have encountered few instances laying out a good case to demonstrate where individual rights come from. The idea of their being dictated by the nature of mankind itself has always seemed more credible than the contention that they come from the supernatural realm, or as permissions from legislatures or parliaments or Kings. Americans made rights to be declarations of liberties, but not necessarily from any of these sources.
Here is the chain of reasoning that Thompson offers us — IF man’s rational faculty is actually his essential and basic means of survival on earth; and IF coercion deployed against a man is the most basic way that this fundamental means of surviving can be thwarted, subverted or destroyed; THEN forbidding coercion to be deployed against a man is the most basic condition that man’s survival requires whenever he lives in a society.
Preventing people from coercing other people is what Individual Rights are all about: a right is a recognition that MAN’S NATURE requires him to be free of coercion, “free to choose and pursue those actions that are required to support his life.” (p. 166) For the American Revolutionaries, rights were to be “barriers protecting individuals from criminals and governments.” (p.168) — they were never to be entitlements to goods or services.
Colonial Americans viewed rights as a logical requirement of survival for any person living in a society; it was a logical outgrowth of NATURE having bestowed mankind with reason as the means to survive and prosper.
When the Founders contended that rights came from Nature, they were merely observing a perceptual connection between “man living in a society” and “man possessing rights” to allow him to use his naturally bestowed gift of reason for surviving. If someone took away a man’s ability to deploy his rational prerogative, it would be an existential threat to his life. The presence of the “perceptual connection” is what they meant by “self-evident:” they could SEE it.
And that’s what the Rev. Dan Foster meant when he wrote that the rights of man are “as capable of demonstration as any proposition of Euclid.” (p. 170)
Professor Thompson has clarified this understanding of rights to a new level! He makes a compelling case that rights are simply a necessary condition for man to survive while part of a society, when other men are a potential source of coercion to interfere with the free use of his fundamental means of survival, his reasoning mind. Taking it one step further: the securing of his individual rights is what is meant by the term, “liberty,” or “freedom.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Thompson has made the case that today we remember little, to nothing, of what our forefathers bequeathed to us when they warned: “Once liberty is lost, it is lost forever.” (p. 327)
Today’s generation does not integrate that profound thought, when we are so consumed with the notion that racism created slavery, drowning out our ability to see the broader issue: that the slavery of all of us, of all races, is mushrooming in front of our faces --- as we allow our government to arrogate ever more power, as individual rights are systematically voided. All the while, we encourage more amassing of power by our own government; and we tolerate or encourage the rioters and looters in the city streets. We are unable to hear John Dickinson’s words: “Slavery is ever preceded by sleep.” (p. 329) He wasn’t talking about chattel slavery; he was talking about all of us losing our liberty.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
FINAL CHAPTER — LIBERTY & REASON UNRAVELED
The final chapter in this book is a broad survey of the characters involved in the 19th and 20th century’s attack on reason and liberty.
If Professor Thompson would turn his full attention to this story in his next book, he could very well have a national bestseller on his hands.
It has confounded many of us how it came to pass that we have lost the liberty that the founders had hoped to pass down to us. And the story of how European intellectuals succeeded in crushing the American experiment by turning lose against us a discrete set of false philosophic ideas is a story of monumental importance.
Many of us know well some of the bits and pieces of that story; but few of us hold a thorough comprehension of what has happened right under our noses.
We will need someone with Thompson’s breadth of understanding to make that story come alive.
I contend that only by making that full story come alive in the minds of many will there ever be a return to the liberty which our culture is on the verge of losing forever.
Only by lighting on fire the flame of reason and liberty in the souls of enough of us will there ever be a way back from the cultural decay that darkens so much of our hope for a future of prosperity.
I, for one, am hoping that Professor Thompson will take up the mantle.
December 1, 2019
C. Bradley Thompson’s book was a surprising and wonderful revelation.
His thesis is that from roughly 1760 to 1776 the American colonists distilled a new, radical and even revolutionary political philosophy; that this philosophy was concisely and eloquently framed and set forth in the Declaration of Independence; that the Founders knew that they were inventing a new philosophy, they were self-aware and deliberate; and that this new political philosophy became the foundation of a completely new society, culture and government unlike any seen before in human history.
The Declaration was not just an eloquent document, written to justify the Revolution and stir people’s spirits; it was the final summation of a tremendous amount of thinking and writing that had gone before by many, many colonists. It is not a surprise that he attributes the essential premises of this revolution in thinking to John Locke. What is surprising, and what Thompson documents prodigiously, is how many colonists were completely and profoundly aware of where they were getting their ideas, and how thoroughly they had thought about them, and how clear they were about the interconnections of those ideas. If ever there were an exemplary illustration of the fact that ideas move the world, this is it.
I enjoyed this book tremendously.
His thesis is that from roughly 1760 to 1776 the American colonists distilled a new, radical and even revolutionary political philosophy; that this philosophy was concisely and eloquently framed and set forth in the Declaration of Independence; that the Founders knew that they were inventing a new philosophy, they were self-aware and deliberate; and that this new political philosophy became the foundation of a completely new society, culture and government unlike any seen before in human history.
The Declaration was not just an eloquent document, written to justify the Revolution and stir people’s spirits; it was the final summation of a tremendous amount of thinking and writing that had gone before by many, many colonists. It is not a surprise that he attributes the essential premises of this revolution in thinking to John Locke. What is surprising, and what Thompson documents prodigiously, is how many colonists were completely and profoundly aware of where they were getting their ideas, and how thoroughly they had thought about them, and how clear they were about the interconnections of those ideas. If ever there were an exemplary illustration of the fact that ideas move the world, this is it.
I enjoyed this book tremendously.
April 20, 2021
Thompson gives a very good exposition of the Declaration of Independence and its situation within the context of the Enlightenment. He shows a masterful grasp of John Locke and of American intellectuals and Revolutionaries.
That said, his writing is often repetitive and belabours the point. Moreover, the religious and theological context of the Revolution is wholly missing.
Nonetheless, as an analysis of the logical system within the Declaration and its dependence on Enlightenment ideas of certainty, human nature, and self-government, would recommend.
That said, his writing is often repetitive and belabours the point. Moreover, the religious and theological context of the Revolution is wholly missing.
Nonetheless, as an analysis of the logical system within the Declaration and its dependence on Enlightenment ideas of certainty, human nature, and self-government, would recommend.
September 30, 2020
This book is a masterpiece. It is absolutely one of the best books I have ever read. Thompson carefully traces the evolution of the ideas that led to the American Revolution, using the Declaration as his framework. He reaches back to the Enlightenment and forward to the Civil War and beyond. If you want to understand this country, as it was created but also as it is now, this book is a must-read.
March 17, 2020
I’m slightly biased, as I was able to study American History under Professor Thompson. Reading this book took me back to his lectures — especially his passion for understanding the political conflicts in terms of deeper intellectual and moral issues. In this book, Thompson argues that the American revolutionaries were men of the Enlightenment, influenced profoundly by the political and moral thought of John Locke. Their cause was not merely to sever ties with Great Britain, but to assert their new understanding of rights, the origins and limits of government power, and the moral justification for their revolution. Thompson does not shy away from the difficult issue of slavery and the American founding, offering an objective assessment of individual founders’ views and actions. I hope this book will become a fountainhead of new scholarship that defends the goodness of America.
March 20, 2024
This is an absolutely stunning intellectual history of the Declaration of Independence. Professor Thompson is meticulous in going through the foundations of the Declaration. He starts with a good discussion of the forebearers of the American Revolution who he cites as Francis Bacon, John Locke and Sir Isaac Newton - all creatures of the Enlightenment. He starts with a presumption that the Declaratory Act, in which parliament tried to claim that they had direct authority over the colonies, was a key focus of the colonists. It has always interested me that the Declaration is addressed to George III not parliament and Thompson provides a clear explanation of why that is so.
One of the most interesting discussions in the book is his consideration of the idea of equality which slavery seems to contradict. But he works his way through the arguments in a concise manner. Many modern scholars argue that the "all men are created equal" language belies the ideals in the document and Thompson works his way through how key figures dealt with the language. It should be noted that the colonists tried to adopt a measure abolishing slavery in the colonies only to have George III veto the measure.
At the end of the book Thompson has an extended discussion of the critiques of the Declaration including those by the historicists - like John Dewey, Herbert Crowley, Woodrow Wilson and William James. Those "thinkers" argued that the Declaration's principles of natural rights was only a concept relevant in the 18th century. Several of those writers argued for no discoverable rights except in the context of the current world. The new thinking involved a social coercion which would supersede the rights of individuals for the collective good. Thompson goes through some of the defenders of slavery around the civil war who used the same kind of logic to defend slavery. I've always found the arrogance of writers like Wilson, Dewey and Crowley to be absurd - but it was interesting to me that they link so closely to the defenders of slavery (Wilson was a virulent racist so at least in that instance the apple did not fall far from the tree).
The Declaration has always been an inspiring document to me. The language is lofty and the principles were not realized in their original form but Thompson offers a wonderful explanation of the foundations and intent of the document.
One of the most interesting discussions in the book is his consideration of the idea of equality which slavery seems to contradict. But he works his way through the arguments in a concise manner. Many modern scholars argue that the "all men are created equal" language belies the ideals in the document and Thompson works his way through how key figures dealt with the language. It should be noted that the colonists tried to adopt a measure abolishing slavery in the colonies only to have George III veto the measure.
At the end of the book Thompson has an extended discussion of the critiques of the Declaration including those by the historicists - like John Dewey, Herbert Crowley, Woodrow Wilson and William James. Those "thinkers" argued that the Declaration's principles of natural rights was only a concept relevant in the 18th century. Several of those writers argued for no discoverable rights except in the context of the current world. The new thinking involved a social coercion which would supersede the rights of individuals for the collective good. Thompson goes through some of the defenders of slavery around the civil war who used the same kind of logic to defend slavery. I've always found the arrogance of writers like Wilson, Dewey and Crowley to be absurd - but it was interesting to me that they link so closely to the defenders of slavery (Wilson was a virulent racist so at least in that instance the apple did not fall far from the tree).
The Declaration has always been an inspiring document to me. The language is lofty and the principles were not realized in their original form but Thompson offers a wonderful explanation of the foundations and intent of the document.
December 27, 2020
A spectacular tour de force, stuffed with so much research and scholarship. I don’t think a single page went by without something being underlined. What a work.
September 12, 2024
Brilliant.
May 1, 2020
C. Bradley Thompson has written a great book. This is a book that should be read by anyone who wants to understand the intellectual founding of America. Many books have documented the historical events leading up to the American Revolution and the events that followed leading to the civil war and those proceeding after it. As far as I know, this is the only book on the founding of America that fully identifies the meaning of the principles as Jefferson stated them in the Declaration of Independence and the history of the development of these ideas from the events which occurred during the period between about 1760 and 1776, known as the imperial crisis.
I believe that this book should be read by every student of American history to understand the exceptional nature and truth of the principles stated in the Declaration, that it is a unique historical achievement in the history of civilization.
This book exhibits a certain perfection in that it is a history of events and a history of the development of philosophic ideas at the same time. This is culminated, as identified by Abraham Lincoln, in the Declaration of Independence as not merely the statement of our separation from Great Britain, but the statement of a timeless moral abstract principle that underlies the separation, that “all men are created equal.” The story of this principle in the founding of the greatest country that ever existed is well worth taking the time to understand and C. Bradley Thompson explains it eloquently.
I believe that this book should be read by every student of American history to understand the exceptional nature and truth of the principles stated in the Declaration, that it is a unique historical achievement in the history of civilization.
This book exhibits a certain perfection in that it is a history of events and a history of the development of philosophic ideas at the same time. This is culminated, as identified by Abraham Lincoln, in the Declaration of Independence as not merely the statement of our separation from Great Britain, but the statement of a timeless moral abstract principle that underlies the separation, that “all men are created equal.” The story of this principle in the founding of the greatest country that ever existed is well worth taking the time to understand and C. Bradley Thompson explains it eloquently.
July 18, 2024
I got into reading (in cheapskate non-subscriber mode) C. Bradley Thompson's substack, The Redneck Intellectual a few months ago. That, and his articles I've noticed at other sites, encouraged me to grab this book via the Interlibrary Loan service of the University Near Here. It is a detailed analysis of the first part of the Declaration of Independence, discussing the origins of its political and moral assertions.
It's a scholarly work (Professor Thompson may be a redneck, but he's also a professor at Clemson), but also a straightforward piece of advocacy for the "self-evident" truths claimed in the DoI.
Chapters examine, in minute detail, each revolutionary claim: the source of our rights in our human nature; what it means for a truth to be "self-evident"; what it meant for men to be "created equal", and how that could be reconciled with slaveholding (spoiler: poorly); what's meant by the triad of natural rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"; why governments exist; what "consent of the governed" means.
And, of course, why it's a people's right and duty to "throw off" a government that runs roughshod over those principles.
Thompson set me straight on one issue: for years, I thought claiming that a truth was "self-evident" meant that trying to argue against such a proposition unavoidably led to self-contradiction. There's no support for that bright idea in this book.
The book is long, and dense. Along the way, I got the impression of repetitiousness: didn't he already say this a few times before? Well, yes: I think I was kind of missing the point. The DoI was not simply a dashed-off Jeffersonian diatribe; Thompson's main effort is to show that its underlying philosophy was ubiquitous throughout the American colonies in the 1760s and 1770s. This involves going through a lot of essays and pamphlets of the era. And, yup, the DoI sentiments, were indeed widely promulgated and advocated by a wide range of American thought leaders. And, bless them, that involved saying a lot of things over and over again.
A final section deals with the post-Revolution challenges to the DoI's philosophy of individualism, liberty, equality, limited government, etc. The first coming from apologists for slavery; Thompson deftly details their Hegel-inspired arguments, drawing fair comparison with developing arguments made for socialism and Marxism around the same time.
Hegel?! Who knew?
After the pro-slavery argument was defeated via violence, the next challenge (still being promulgated today) was that of progressivism, the denial of the DoI's timeless and universal truths. Advocates included William James, John Dewey, Herbert Croly, Carl Becker, and (boooo) Woodrow Wilson.
July 3, 2023
Brilliant book. Despite some parts being repetitive and other parts dry, I found Thompson's work to deliver exactly what it promises: a history of the _ideas_ that animated the colonists to not only fight for their independence, but for a new, untried way of living. Too often history books present a linear sequence of events that happened: battles, redrawn borders, heated political exchanges. But that rarely illuminates why the people involved actually wanted to do those things.
Thompson brings to bear a wealth of source materials to expose what the people gearing up for the Revolution thought and talked about. All of this serves as an excellent background to explain their thinking--and the values inscribed into the Declaration--which isn't as simple to grok as many would think.
I would recommend this to anyone trying to get a better understanding of the values and thinking that were present at the creation of the United States. It's a great help in understanding everything that happened afterwards. I'm looking forward to Thompson's book about the Constitution.
I would also warmly recommend that anyone who gets to the epilogue read Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies. A bit of a spoiler: Thompson, in the Epilogue, goes on to describe the rise of Southern pro-slavery intellectualism and how it negated everything described in the Declaration--inalienable rights, equality about all, etc.--using the philosophy of the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. That's the same Hegel to whom Popper attributes the spread of Plato's historicist ideas, which would later inspire Marx, and even later--20th century's poisonous totalitarian ideologies. Thompson and Popper together trace and fill in the history and evolution of totalitarian thought that reaches well into our times.
Thompson brings to bear a wealth of source materials to expose what the people gearing up for the Revolution thought and talked about. All of this serves as an excellent background to explain their thinking--and the values inscribed into the Declaration--which isn't as simple to grok as many would think.
I would recommend this to anyone trying to get a better understanding of the values and thinking that were present at the creation of the United States. It's a great help in understanding everything that happened afterwards. I'm looking forward to Thompson's book about the Constitution.
I would also warmly recommend that anyone who gets to the epilogue read Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies. A bit of a spoiler: Thompson, in the Epilogue, goes on to describe the rise of Southern pro-slavery intellectualism and how it negated everything described in the Declaration--inalienable rights, equality about all, etc.--using the philosophy of the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. That's the same Hegel to whom Popper attributes the spread of Plato's historicist ideas, which would later inspire Marx, and even later--20th century's poisonous totalitarian ideologies. Thompson and Popper together trace and fill in the history and evolution of totalitarian thought that reaches well into our times.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 31, 2021
Thompson does an excellent job of tying the concretes of the American Revolution - the people, the places and the events - to the overall philosophic ideas that underpinned this time in history. And he does so without making any large leaps in logic or rationalizations. Before I read this book, I was an amateur in my understanding of the American Revolution, and was tainted by the modern cynical interpretations of the motivations behind it. Thompson has left no stone unturned with this book though; he provides such a comprehensive amount of context and evidence that no one who even skims this book could turn a blind eye to the real philosophical motivations behind the Revolution.
Some of my favourite parts in the book are the findings about slavery that surprised me - for instance, when discussing the role of slavery in the Revolution and in the 19th century, Thompson points out that the intellectual defenders of slavery were actually explicit socialists, of a sort of pre-Marxist collectivist variety - not the supposed "capitalists" of the South that modern intellectuals tend to think.
I enjoyed reading this book and will have to read it again. There's a lot of great stuff to think about.
Some of my favourite parts in the book are the findings about slavery that surprised me - for instance, when discussing the role of slavery in the Revolution and in the 19th century, Thompson points out that the intellectual defenders of slavery were actually explicit socialists, of a sort of pre-Marxist collectivist variety - not the supposed "capitalists" of the South that modern intellectuals tend to think.
I enjoyed reading this book and will have to read it again. There's a lot of great stuff to think about.
April 19, 2021
America's Revolutionary Mind looks at the "self-evident" truths of the Declaration of Independence, dedicating a chapter to each. Thompson considers the logic, principles, and significance of these lines as embodying the American mind, even shedding light on the "real American Revolution" that occurred in the minds of the colonists in the years preceding 1776. Importantly, he devotes an entire chapter- as well as comments throughout the book- to the issue of slavery and its uneasy relationship with the self-evident truths outlined in the Declaration.
C. Bradley Thompson did a remarkable job combing through an astonishing variety of primary sources for this book. Generally, I think this book models a corrective to some current historiography related to America's founding.
One odd issue with the book: Thompson seems to go out of his way to avoid talking about religion in general and Christianity in particular. Considering the worldview of the colonists, and his attention to the primary sources of the "great men" and the common man, this is a glaring omission. It comes across as intentional, but I do not understand his reasons for avoiding it.
C. Bradley Thompson did a remarkable job combing through an astonishing variety of primary sources for this book. Generally, I think this book models a corrective to some current historiography related to America's founding.
One odd issue with the book: Thompson seems to go out of his way to avoid talking about religion in general and Christianity in particular. Considering the worldview of the colonists, and his attention to the primary sources of the "great men" and the common man, this is a glaring omission. It comes across as intentional, but I do not understand his reasons for avoiding it.
May 30, 2020
What an excellent book. The premise of the book is that, during the 15 years before the first shot was fired at Lexington, many American colonists went through a change in moral philosophy that not only made them incomprehensible to both officials in England and Tories in America, but also made breaking away from England and establishing a new country unavoidable. A stronger example of how ideas have consequences doesn't exist.
This is the second book by Mr. Thompson that I have read, the other being "John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty". What keeps me coming back is Mr. Thompson's writing style. Although both books are extensively footnoted, they don't read like dry academic works. The ideas that Mr. Thompson conveys seem to go directly from our eyes to our understanding. There are plenty of things that I can research further, but I'm so happy not to have to struggle to understand what his point is on any given issue or event.
This is the second book by Mr. Thompson that I have read, the other being "John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty". What keeps me coming back is Mr. Thompson's writing style. Although both books are extensively footnoted, they don't read like dry academic works. The ideas that Mr. Thompson conveys seem to go directly from our eyes to our understanding. There are plenty of things that I can research further, but I'm so happy not to have to struggle to understand what his point is on any given issue or event.
November 5, 2024
Fascinating. I read this as part of a class analyzing the effects of the Enlightenment on Christian thought and political practice, but I didn't expect to enjoy Thompson's dialectic as much as I did. Essentially, the author contends that rather than merely viewing American Revolutionary history as a series of vacuous cause and effects, the honest historian must observe the moral shift that took place in the mind of the founding generation. To accomplish this, he simply walks through the Declaration and unpacks the intellectual history that landed the signers in that context. Thompson clearly glorifies Enlightenment thought way too much. You will notice it. But this book will give you a better appreciation for real moral struggles that American colonists faced, and perhaps a deeper understanding of why they took the steps they did to secure their liberties and found a new nation. 1st time read. 4/5.
December 1, 2020
A thorough scholarly overview of the philosophical thinking underlying the American revolution, which was based on major enlightenment thinkers, Bacon, Newton and especially John Locke published from 1620-1689. We see how this thinking propagated through the colonies and became embedded in the decision for revolution and the Declaration of Independence, culminating in Thomas Paine's immensely influential Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence.
May 30, 2023
I am very much a scholar of the Revolutionary period but I encountered many new ideas here. A moral history, as the author said, is quite new. Very much a book on philosophy which made the first half of the book quite deep, making for slow going. But in the back half he puts the philosophy with the actions and it became very hard to put down. Excellent book but a good knowledge base is necessary, I think, before it can be tackled. Highly recommend!
December 18, 2020
This was an excellent book about a people's transformation from servitude to a king to the formation of the freest country the world has ever created. The author goes into great detail as to the meaning of the words and what the authors of the Declaration of Independence actually thought and meant when they presented that ultimatum to the king of England.
November 25, 2021
Excellent deep dive into the thinking and philosophy prominent in America at the time of the founding, and that led to the Declaration of Independence and the US constitution. It is truly remarkable how thoroughly moral the American revolution was and how deep the philosophical ideas ran. Little of this was taught to me in school.
March 25, 2021
This book is very heady and a lot to soak in. If you enjoy a deep study of the epistemology and syntax behind the Declaration of Independence and the thought of Revolutionary America, this is a book for you.
January 18, 2024
Wanted to give this 5 stars because it has so much great material, but I felt some of the chapters could have used a little paring down so as not to be repetitive in their points. Still, would definitely recommend.
July 25, 2022
I was continuously moved, awed, and fascinated throughout my reading of this book. It may be one of the most important books I’ve read this year.
September 4, 2023
DNF. I think this is a great history book that every teenager should read. It did not hold any new information for me. It reads like a history text book.
Want to read
October 19, 2023973.31 Tho
November 27, 2023
Simply put - one of the most important books you will ever read on American thought and principles. Excellent book.
May 21, 2024
This was a pleasure to read. I appreciate how academic and well researched it was.
November 21, 2023
“America’s revolutionary mind is virtually synonymous with John Locke’s mind.”
“The great achievement of the American Revolution was to launch forces that would lead over time to the reconciliation of moral theory and moral practice."
Bradley Thompson philosophically takes apart the Declaration of Independence, clause by clause, showing how it reflected America's Enlightenment-influenced culture, to thoroughly demonstrate how the minds of Americans 250 years ago were very different, and considerably more liberal (at least in some ways), than those of today. Readers may sense some parts as repetitive and wish for a faster pace, and it’s true the author might have made a more accessible book if he’d not been as comprehensive and not included as many well-researched quotes. Yet Thompson’s thoroughness, his presenting the manifold manifestations of the Declaration’s philosophic ideas in the culture of the revolutionary era, leaves a strong impression in my mind, brightly clarifying the connections between ideas, culture, and actions which transformed the world.
The chapter (plus other sections) on slavery are particularly revelatory, and these include a discussion of the strong parallels between proslavery advocates and postmodern intellectuals. Thompson concludes:
"The American Revolution was, from beginning to end, an antislavery revolution in the broadest sense – a revolution for equal rights and against arbitrary power. Slavery and arbitrary power come in many forms, and the principles of the Revolution, once unleashed, inspired Americans to ameliorate and abolish all forms of injustice, arbitrary power, tyranny, dependency, and slavery over time and wherever it existed in America. This was the promise of the Declaration of Independence.
"The birth and growth of an American antislavery movement was not possible without a standard or benchmark by which to condemn a universal institution virtually as old as human civilization. That benchmark was the natural-rights philosophy articulated by the American Revolution and expressed in the Declaration of Independence. There could be no antislavery movement—then or now—without the universal principle of individual, natural rights. It was the lodestar of emancipation."
I give the book 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.
“The great achievement of the American Revolution was to launch forces that would lead over time to the reconciliation of moral theory and moral practice."
Bradley Thompson philosophically takes apart the Declaration of Independence, clause by clause, showing how it reflected America's Enlightenment-influenced culture, to thoroughly demonstrate how the minds of Americans 250 years ago were very different, and considerably more liberal (at least in some ways), than those of today. Readers may sense some parts as repetitive and wish for a faster pace, and it’s true the author might have made a more accessible book if he’d not been as comprehensive and not included as many well-researched quotes. Yet Thompson’s thoroughness, his presenting the manifold manifestations of the Declaration’s philosophic ideas in the culture of the revolutionary era, leaves a strong impression in my mind, brightly clarifying the connections between ideas, culture, and actions which transformed the world.
The chapter (plus other sections) on slavery are particularly revelatory, and these include a discussion of the strong parallels between proslavery advocates and postmodern intellectuals. Thompson concludes:
"The American Revolution was, from beginning to end, an antislavery revolution in the broadest sense – a revolution for equal rights and against arbitrary power. Slavery and arbitrary power come in many forms, and the principles of the Revolution, once unleashed, inspired Americans to ameliorate and abolish all forms of injustice, arbitrary power, tyranny, dependency, and slavery over time and wherever it existed in America. This was the promise of the Declaration of Independence.
"The birth and growth of an American antislavery movement was not possible without a standard or benchmark by which to condemn a universal institution virtually as old as human civilization. That benchmark was the natural-rights philosophy articulated by the American Revolution and expressed in the Declaration of Independence. There could be no antislavery movement—then or now—without the universal principle of individual, natural rights. It was the lodestar of emancipation."
I give the book 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.
August 1, 2021
The book provides a comprehensive and detailed overview of the enlightenment ideals that shaped the founding of America. The author provides a thorough accounting of how the politicals ideals of John Locke (and a few others, but the focus is really on Locke) was an essential force in creating America.
The book is unique in that rather than just focusing on a handful of well known names (Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, etc), the author shows just how influential Locke's ideas were at various strata of early American society. Everyone from a simple farmer in one state to a Calvinist minister in another is familiar with and in basic agreement with the Lockean notion of natural rights and how this ought to shape the citizen's relationship to government. By beginning much earlier than 1760, you really get a sense that when 1776 arrives, a revolution was a necessity - the conflict between what the American's wanted vs. what the British were willing to do had become too great.
The book is long. If I had to guess, some of the material might be a transcription of what would be presented in a 300 level history class. It's the kind of writing that probably is easier to listen to than it is to read. That nit aside, it's great material, but be prepared for lots of reading - and its a lot of detailed reading as the author "comes with receipts".
The only depressing part of the book is that when you return to the modern culture, you can see just how much of an understanding of the Lockean world has been lost.
The book is unique in that rather than just focusing on a handful of well known names (Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, etc), the author shows just how influential Locke's ideas were at various strata of early American society. Everyone from a simple farmer in one state to a Calvinist minister in another is familiar with and in basic agreement with the Lockean notion of natural rights and how this ought to shape the citizen's relationship to government. By beginning much earlier than 1760, you really get a sense that when 1776 arrives, a revolution was a necessity - the conflict between what the American's wanted vs. what the British were willing to do had become too great.
The book is long. If I had to guess, some of the material might be a transcription of what would be presented in a 300 level history class. It's the kind of writing that probably is easier to listen to than it is to read. That nit aside, it's great material, but be prepared for lots of reading - and its a lot of detailed reading as the author "comes with receipts".
The only depressing part of the book is that when you return to the modern culture, you can see just how much of an understanding of the Lockean world has been lost.
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