Quotes from C. Bradley Thompson

In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force," Jefferson wrote in an 1824 letter, "the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.

The concept "rights" is a deduction from the fundamental fact of self-ownership. The claim to property in one's own person is a moral claim to noninterference and exclusivity. No person has a claim on any other person's life (i.e., their body, mind, and actions).

The revolutionary generation believed, to a man, that freedom and reason are the necessary preconditions of truth.

According to Locke, "self-interest and the conveniences of this life make many men own an outward profession and approbation" of the moral laws of nature. The actions of rational and virtuous men "sufficiently prove that they very little consider the Law-giver that prescribed these rules, nor the hell he has ordained for the punishment of those that transgress them."49

The rewards and punishments of the moral laws of nature therefore require additional supports. Something else is needed, and that something else comes in two forms: first, there are social sanctions, or what Locke calls "the law of opinion or reputation"; and, second, there are civil sanctions that Locke designates as "civil law."52

Broadly speaking, the new moral history employed in this book is concerned with the nature of causation and agency in the course of human events. It attempts to explain behavior in given historical contexts by showing the relationship between principles and practice in the day-to-day actions and interactions of men and women in a social context.