Horne’s good. I do think the counter revolution of 1776 over plays its hand a little bit though. To me the revolution is more about settler colonial revolt over conceptions of freedom Ala Aziz Rana’s the two faces of American freedom, of which a key part is anxiety over slavery law, but not the principle component (and there is no principle component it’s a mixture of several).
People also literally forget that DSA formed out of two groups merging. One kinda reformist Marxist/ some social democrats in DSOC, and the other NAM (New American Movement), which was a couple thousand communists who left CPUSA for how shit it was. The reason the demcent clause in the constitution is actually a legacy from the ex-CPUSA communists who joined, due to both their experiences of the absolute wrecking that occurred in New Communist Movement orgs and SDS, and the atrocious way democratic centralism was practiced by CPUSA in the 60s and 70s. The other founder of DSA that is always overshadowed is Dorothy Healey, who was one of the most prominent American communists in California in the 40s to 60s.