America's Revolutionary Mind

From one of America's most astute scholars comes an extraordinarily rich study of the ideas that propelled the United States into existence, and to greatness. C. Bradley Thompson understands not just that ideas have consequences, but that, a quarter of a millennium later, the revolutionary mind retains its relevance. -George F. Will, columnist and author of The Conservative Sensibility A bold new interpretation of the political and moral theory of the American Revolution. It is sure to be provocative. -Gordon S. Wood, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution Behind the American Constitution is the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln's 'apple of gold' in a 'picture of silver.' Brad Thompson here explains the apple of gold, the American revolutionary mind, and how to recover its moral power as well as its principles from the studied denigration current today. With strong argument, broad evidence, and shining clarity, this is a book that will last. -Harvey C. Mansfield, Kenan Professor of Government, Harvard University; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford Since Bernard Bailyn's and Gordon Wood's work a half century ago, no study has appeared that takes us on so fruitful a voyage of rethinking, at a deep level, the moral, civic, and cultural causes and meaning of the Revolutionary era. At once eloquent and erudite, this book argues for and exemplifies a refreshingly distinguished method, or way of practicing the historian's craft: 'the new moral history'-emphasizing the thinking, judging, choosing, and acting of individuals as the true moral agents of history, rather than large-scale social processes moved by unseen tidal forces. -Thomas Pangle, Joe R. Long Chair in Democratic Studies, University of Texas at Austin