There are quite a few good books on rigging out there - but I'm not sure whether they can be had for $25.00. Two that would be highly relevant to this particular project are Eighteenth-Century Rigs and Rigging, by Karl Heinz Marquardt (I hope I haven't misspelled his name) and The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War, by James Lees. (It's reasonable to assume that, in general, American sailing ship rigging followed British practice during this period.) Several contemporary sources also are available in reprint form. D'Arcy Lever's The Young Officer's Sheet Anchor and David Steel's Elements of Rigging and Seamanship are excellent sources, though obviously not aimed directly at the modeler.
You're lucky in one important respect: the rigging diagrams in the Revell 1/96 Constitution kit are simplified a bit, but in terms of representing the leads of the lines they're generally pretty good. If you ever do tackle the Heller Victory, your first step should be to throw the rigging diagrams in the trash. The people responsible for them had no idea how rigging actually works.
I'll take the liberty of recommending three other books (all paperbacks, to be had for reasonable prices). George Campbell's Neophyte Shipmodeler's Jackstay is an old, low-priced classic introduction to the hobby. It's primarily geared toward solid-hull wood kits, but contains a great deal of solid, basic information about such things as rigging and the evolution of the ship. Anybody who memorized everything in that little book would be well on the road toward understanding the technology of the sailing ship. Ben Lankford's How To Build First-Rate Ship Models From Kits is a larger, more recent work with about the same target audience - though the author makes references to plastic kits too. He knows what he's talking about, and the book is full of sound, practical advice. And Wolfram zu Mondfelt's Historic Ship Models is a remarkably comprehensive overview of the whole hobby, with hundreds of good drawings and sound suggestions. Many modelers make it their first book acquisition - and they're smart to do so. I do have a couple of small reservations about the Mondfelt book. One - it's extremely European in its approach; many of the tools and materials he refers to are hard to find in the U.S., and there are some vocabulary problems. (The "walnut" Mondfelt refers to is European walnut, which is quite a bit different from the walnut most American lumber dealers sell.) Two - simply because of the breadth of its coverage, it can't go into great depth about any one topic. But it's an excellent - and reasonably priced - introduction to scale ship modeling.
The decision to keep or replace the kit's deadeye/lanyard assemblies obviously has to rest with the individual modeler, but I'm a little confused by the connection between deadeyes and adhesives. Some aftermarket blocks and deadeyes (notably Bluejacket's, my personal favorites) are cast in britannia metal; others are wood. The lower deadeyes on the lower masts would indeed have to be fastened in place somehow, and if you use an adhesive for the purpose CA ("superglue") would be appropriate. (Epoxy would create a mess.) But there are plenty of ways to do it that wouldn't rely on adhesive to take any significant stress.
There have been stories about the alleged weakness of CA adhesive ever since it was introduced. I have yet to see any real, honest-to-goodness scientific evidence on the subject. But I do have some practical experience to report.
I built a model of H.M.S. Bounty when the first CA glues (I remember the brand name: Aron Alpha) were appearing in the hobby shop where I worked. By the time I finished it, several of the current brand names (Zap, Hot Stuff, etc.) were on the market. I was fascinated with them, and used them on that model for more applications than I probably would today. (I used it for metal-to-metal, plastic-to-plastic, metal-to-plastic, wood-to-wood, wood-to-metal, and just about every other kind of joint. I also used it extensively in the rigging.) The model, having been kept in a plexiglas case out of direct sunlight ever since I finished it, literally looks as good as new; none of the CA joints in it has shown even the slightest tendency to come loose, discolor, or otherwise cause any problem. I finished that model in 1979. I've got several other models on which I used CA, between the late 70s and the present. None of the CA joints in question has shown any tendency to deteriorate.
If a chemist or physicist tells me there's some chemical or physical reason to distrust CA adhesives, I won't argue. And I'll certainly listen to any modeler who's actually had trouble with it. But in about 25 years of using the stuff I personally have never had any problems whatever with it (beyond getting it stuck to various portions of my anatomy).
There are plenty of things to be considered when deciding whether or not to replace the kit's blocks and deadeyes, but the availability of adhesives doesn't need to be one of them.
Regarding mold release - that one isn't worth losing sleep over. I'd been building plastic models for at least twenty years (let's not talk about what they must have looked like) before I ever heard of mold release. Washing the parts in detergent is a good idea, but by no means is it an absolute necessity. If you're having frequent problems getting acrylic paints to stick to styrene, something else is probably wrong.
On another website we had an interesting discussion of hobby paints, and a chemist contributed some information that I found interesting. It seems that acrylic and solvent-based paints behave differently when they dry. Solvent-based paints (e.g., enamels) dry from the inside out; acrylics dry from the outside in. As a result, the modeler gets the impression that acrylic is dry before it really is. For quite some time after it's applied, acrylic paint is dry to the touch - but hasn't actually "grabbed" the surface. During that period (which may last hours, days, or even a week or two, depending on the brand of paint, the nature and size of the painted surface, the thickness of the paint layer, and atmospheric conditions) it feels like it's dry but can be rubbed off relatively easily. Have faith. Modern acrylic hobby paints are excellent; they just take a while to "grab." Removing any vestiges of mold release underneath them certainly won't hurt, but I have yet to be convinced that it's really essential.
Good luck. It's a great hobby.