On pages xv-xvi, Mansfield says of Thomas Jefferson's January 1, 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists (emphasis is mine):

It did not matter that Thomas Jefferson wrote this letter some fourteen years after the First Amendment became law. It did not matter that Thomas Jefferson was not even in the country during the convention that drafted the First Amendment. ...

This is even worse than the jacket text. Fourteen years after the First Amendment became law??? The First Amendment, drafted by the first Congress in the summer of 1789, didn't become law until December 15, 1791. This, of course, would make Jefferson's writing of his letter to the Baptists almost exactly ten years after the amendment became law, not fourteen years. And, again, Mansfield calls the body that drafted the amendment "the convention."

On page 65 of his book, Mansfield not only gets this wrong again, but isn't even consistent with the version in his introduction, in this case indicating that he not only doesn't know that the amendment was written by the first Congress, but doesn't realize there was a two year gap between its writing and its becoming law. According to Mansfield:

Also, he wrote the Danbury letter nearly a decade and a half after the First Amendment was written. ...

Remarkably, in other places in his book, Mansfield does have the first Congress drafting the First Amendment, as if he copied this information without it even dawning on him that it contradicts his other statements and timeline.

But, wait...it gets better. Mansfield apparently doesn't understand that the Constitutional Convention and the Continental Congress were two separate bodies, with the Congress continuing to meet in New York while the Convention was taking place in Philadelphia. This is blatantly apparent in his description of how the Northwest Ordinance, also written in the summer of 1787, came about. On page 14, he has Manasseh Cutler pitching his Ohio Company proposals to the Constitutional Convention.

On July 13, 1787, when the Constitutional Convention was but seven weeks along in its great task, a Massachusetts war hero, medical doctor, and clergyman named Manasseh Cutler asked the Convention to approve a plan for establishing a colony in the Ohio Territory. ...

Even a person with a rudimentary knowledge of this period of American history, let alone a person passing themselves off as an authority by writing a book on it, should certainly be expected to know that the Constitutional Convention's sole purpose and work was the Constitution, and that the regular business of the country was simultaneously proceeding at the Congress in New York, which, of course, is where Cutler took the proposals for the Northwest Ordinance. Mansfield makes David Barton, whose masterpiece of historical revisionism, Original Intent, is listed in the bibliography of Ten Tortured Words, almost seem by comparison to be the real historian he claims to be.

On pages143 to 148 of his book, Mansfield presents a list of twenty quotes, the purpose of which is to argue against the idea that, while many of the founders were personally religious, the government they created was secular. Some of these quotes are accurately presented, but most are either out of context, complete fabrications, or in some other way deceptive. One of the twenty even appears on David Barton's "Unconfirmed Quotations" list. For those unfamiliar with this list, these are quotes that even a history revisionist as bad as David Barton urges his minions to refrain from using.

I'll be writing much more over the next few weeks about the numerous instances of Christian nationalist revisionism found in Ten Tortured Words, but will end for now with a striking example of Stephen Mansfield's own brand of word torturing, in the form of the following Madison "quote," found on page 146.

Religion is the basis and foundation of government. -- JAMES MADISON

Where does this quote come from? Well, according to Mansfield's note, Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments. Here is the untortured paragraph from that document, with the words assembled by Mansfield to create his quote in bold.

15. Because finally, "the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his Religion according to the dictates of conscience" is held by the same tenure with all his other rights. If we recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consider the "Declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Virginia, as the basis and foundation of government," it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis.