To understand the American Revolution, you need to understand the ancients who shaped the Founders’ minds. Thucydides wasn’t just a historian, he was a prophet of political decay. His warnings echo in the Constitution.

Let’s dive in. 🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev Thucydides didn’t tell tales to comfort.
He told them to warn. He showed how democracies fall, not from without, but from within: through moral decay, factionalism, and the lust for power. The Founders took these warnings to heart.

Before the Founders ever penned the Constitution, Pericles gave one of the most powerful speeches in history, honoring the fallen by reminding the living what a free republic demands. His voice helped shape the American Mind.

Let’s dive in. 🧵 #AmRev In the midst of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles stood before the people of Athens and delivered what became known as the Funeral Oration. Not just a eulogy, but a rallying cry for liberty, virtue, and civic excellence.

The American Revolution wasn’t won by a standing army. It was won by farmers, blacksmiths, and shopkeepers who picked up their muskets and answered the call. The Founders called them militias. We might call them neighbors.

Let’s dive in. 🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev The Founders didn’t trust standing armies. History had shown them that power concentrated in a permanent force leads to tyranny. The alternative? A citizen militia. Ordinary people, trained and armed, ready to defend liberty at home.

The early American Republic didn’t run on entitlements. It ran on self-reliance.
On farmers, craftsmen, and neighbors who built their own homes, raised their own kids, and led their own communities. This wasn’t just a lifestyle, it was a moral code.

Let’s dive in. 🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev To the Founders, liberty meant responsibility. A free man didn’t wait for permission or aid. He plowed his own field, taught his own children, and helped build the church, the schoolhouse, and the town hall.
Freedom and initiative were inseparable.

The Founders didn’t just launch a new government. They sparked a moral revolution. To them, politics wasn’t about power, it was about virtue. The American Republic was built on moral imagination.

Let’s dive in.🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev John Adams said the Revolution was in the “minds and hearts” of the people, long before a shot was fired. Why? Because liberty isn’t sustained by force. It’s sustained by character. The Revolution was a war for the soul.

The Declaration of Independence wasn’t just a founding document. It’s a moral thunderbolt. A call to liberty that shook the world.

Today, we break it down, line by line, with commentary to honor the courage and clarity of the American Mind.

Let’s dive in. 🧵🇺🇸📜 #AmRev “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary…”

The Founders don’t begin with rage. They begin with reason. This is a principled separation; not rebellion for its own sake, but a moral and political necessity.

Today isn’t just about fireworks.
It’s about fire. The kind that burned in the hearts of men who pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.”

Let’s step inside the mind of 1776, where the real revolution began. 🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev Before the shots rang out, a deeper war was raging, a war over truth. Were rights given by kings or by God? Was man born to obey, or to rule himself? In 1776, a group of farmers, printers, and philosophers answered: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

The American Revolution wasn’t just a war of muskets, it was a war of ideas. The Founders believed freedom could only last if the people were educated. Ignorance wasn’t just weakness, it was a threat to the Republic.

Let’s dive in.🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev John Adams wrote: “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.” To him, civic ignorance was tyranny’s gateway. The solution? Schools, libraries, newspapers; an educated citizenry ready to guard freedom.

To the Founders, owning land wasn’t just economics, it was freedom itself.
In the Old World, land meant power for the few. In the New World, it meant independence for the many.

Let’s explore how property shaped the American spirit. 🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev The Revolution wasn’t just political, it was agrarian. Most colonists were farmers. To them, liberty meant working your own land, feeding your family, and answering to no king, no lord, and no tax collector in London.

The American Revolution wasn’t just about rights, it was about duty. Duty to God, to neighbor, to family, and to country. The Founders believed liberty could only survive if Americans were worthy of it. Freedom was not given, it was earned.

Let’s dive in.🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev The Founders didn’t preach entitlement. They preached responsibility. Washington, Adams, Franklin; each believed that a republic demanded moral citizens. To be free, you had to be self-governed first. Virtue was the cost of liberty.

The Founders didn’t just rebel, they reasoned. They read Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, then fused their ideas with Scripture and virtue to craft a Republic built to last. This is the Enlightenment’s role in the American Mind.

Let’s dive in. 🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev John Locke’s Two Treatises laid the groundwork. He said governments exist to protect natural rights; life, liberty, property. Jefferson echoed this in the Declaration, adding a distinctly American twist: the pursuit of happiness.

To understand the American Mind, you must understand what shaped it. Our Founders didn’t invent liberty, they studied it. They looked to ancient Greece and Rome, where republics rose and fell. From those ruins, they forged something stronger.

Let’s dive in. 🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev The Founders devoured the classics. John Adams read Cicero. Jefferson quoted Tacitus. Washington acted like Cato. To them, virtue, sacrifice, and public service weren’t abstract ideals; they were essential to a republic’s survival.

Today is Flag Day , a holiday honoring the birth of the Stars and Stripes. But where did our iconic flag come from? Who designed it? And how did it evolve over time?

Let’s take a patriotic journey through history. 🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev The original resolution for the U.S. flag was passed on June 14, 1777 by the Second Continental Congress:

“Resolved, that the flag of the United States be 13 stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be 13 stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”

Before Jefferson wrote of liberty, before Washington took command, America was shaped in the pews. The Bible wasn’t just read, it was lived. It formed minds, inspired resistance, and helped forge the greatest republic in history.

Let’s dive in. 🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev From New England to the backcountry, colonial life was steeped in Scripture. The Geneva Bible was in every home. Sermons were political, fiery, and unflinching. To many colonists, resisting tyranny wasn’t rebellion, it was obedience to God.

Before the muskets fired, an idea was born: People, not kings, could govern themselves.

Welcome to a new series: Inside the American Mind. Let’s uncover the roots that made America the most badass nation in history.

Let’s dive in. 🧵🧠🇺🇸 #AmRev The Founders didn’t just write laws, they built a blueprint for greatness. They believed rights come from God, not government. From nature, not nobility. That radical belief gave rise to a nation for the people, by the people.

Before the Mexican-American War exploded, there was Texas. A frontier land of ambition, rebellion, and blood. The Texas Revolution lit the first fire between the U.S. and Mexico, and neither nation would be the same again.

Let’s dive in. 🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev In 1821, Mexico gained independence from Spain and welcomed Anglo-American settlers into its northern frontier, Texas. The goal? Create a buffer zone against hostile tribes and stabilize the region.

They didn’t expect 30,000 Americans to flood in within a decade.

In 1846, the United States and Mexico went to war over disputed territory, and by the end of it, half of Mexico’s land would change hands. This is the story of the Mexican-American War, a forgotten yet defining chapter in America’s rise.

Let’s dive in.🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev The roots of war go back to Texas. After winning independence from Mexico in 1836, Texas joined the U.S. in 1845. But Mexico had never recognized Texan independence, and considered annexation an act of war.

Before America had factories, it had fields, and before it had citizens, it had indentured servants. From the 1600s to the Revolution, tens of thousands of Europeans signed away years of their life for a shot at freedom in the New World.

Let’s dive in. 🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev The system was simple: work 4–7 years for a colonist, and in return you’d get passage to America, food, shelter, and one day, your freedom. For many, it was their only ticket out of poverty. A dangerous gamble. But one many were willing to take.

Before factories and freeways, before presidents and parties, there were settlers. They braved the unknown with a Bible, a musket, and grit. What united them? A fierce belief in self-sufficiency, local control, and faith in God.

Let’s dive in. 🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev Localism wasn’t a political slogan, it was a necessity. With no king nearby and no government to lean on, town halls and congregations became the center of civic life. Decisions were made by neighbors. Power stayed close to home.

By late 1621, Plymouth had survived its first brutal year. Now came the harder part: building a permanent home. The Pilgrims weren’t just surviving the wilderness, they were trying to build a godly society from the ground up.

Let’s dive in.🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev The heart of the colony was a single main street leading to the fort on Burial Hill, where the Pilgrims could defend against attack. Each family had a small one-room house, made of logs, thatched roofs, and clay-daubed walls.

In March 1621, as the last snow thawed and half the Pilgrims lay buried, a Native man walked into Plymouth and greeted the stunned settlers in English. His name was Samoset, and his arrival marked the beginning of an unlikely alliance.

Let’s dive in.🧵🇺🇸 #AmRev Samoset had learned English from fishermen off the Maine coast. But he wasn’t alone. A few days later, he returned with Tisquantum, better known as Squanto, a Patuxet man who spoke fluent English and would become the colony’s lifeline.