C. Bradley Thompson, BB&T Research Professor of Political Science, Clemson University

John Adams once wrote that the true American Revolution was in the “minds of the American people,” and Thomas Jefferson once described the Declaration of Independence as an “expression of the American mind.” This talk examines the moral history of the American Revolution and its relationship to the Declaration of Independence. In particular, Thompson examines how America’s leading revolutionaries discovered and developed the Declaration’s four self-evident truths during the years of the imperial crisis between Great Britain and her American colonies. The talk will emphasize how and why independence became a moral necessity for American Patriots.