America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson

By Jon Hersey

New York: Encounter Books, 2019

584 pp. $32.99 (hardcover)

The history of the world cannot furnish an instance of fortitude and heroic magnanimity parallel to that displayed by the members, whose signatures affixed the Declaration of American Independence. —James Thacher, soldier in the Continental Army (335)

Each year, more than a million people travel fr…