The Anatomy of a Smear: A Response to Ken I. Kersch

Abstract

In 2019 I published America’s Revolutionary Mind (ARM), subtitled “AMoral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It” (Thompson 2019b). The book is the first in what is hoped to be a three-volume study of America’s revolutionary and founding periods. ARM explores the nature, causes, andmeaning of the AmericanRevolution. The book’s general purpose is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of what I referred to as America’s revolutionary mind; and second, to shed light on what John Adams called the real American Revolution—that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the 15 years before 1775. More specifically, ARM uses the Declaration of Independence as a kind of ideological roadmap bywhich to chart the intellectual andmoral terrain traveled by American revolutionaries as they searched for new moral principles to deal