Gordon S. Wood (1933–2026)

THAT ENDING. WOW. Wood takes us through an entire description of how radical politicians tore down monarchy... and then adds a sarcastic, bitter, twist ending revealing that every founding father eventually came to hate the America they had created.

The American Revolution was a failure.

That is not the opinion of Wood. It was the opinion of the Revolutionaries. Looking back on what they had wrought, they were despondent over the gap between their ambition and their achievement.

“We are indeed a bebanked, a bewhiskied, and a bedollared nation,” said Benjamin Rush in 1812. Of the Constitution, he said, “I cannot meet a man who loves it.” The government had devolved to the “young and ignorant and needy part of the show more community.”

George Washington complained character was no longer a factor in politics.

John Adams, in 1813, asked “Where is now, the progress of the human Mind? … When? Where? And How? Is the present Chaos to be arranged into Order?”

Alexander Hamilton looked at a country he had helped birth on the battlefield and said “this American world was not made for me”.

Thomas Jefferson was not just speaking of personalities but also of revolutionary principles when he lamented in 1825, “All, all dead, and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who knows not us.”

And neither did I know them, not really, before reading this book.

What Wood shows is the aristocratic world the Revolutionaries rebelled against: a world of patronage and connection, the mixing of private and public interests, of dependency being key to advancement and not merit. He then shows the republican world they dreamed of: disinterested men of merit in charge, a natural aristocracy leading a nation of improving minds.

And then he shows the world they produced, the acid of an egalitarianism they unknowingly and unwillingly ushered in which destroyed the old ways families related to each other, created greater inequalities of wealth, substituted party patronage and politics for personal patronage, replaced Christian reason with evangelism, and brought about the beginnings of the modern bureaucratic American state and its ethnic politics.

The American Revolution certainly produced less bodies than the French Revolution or its heirs in Russia and China, but it, Wood convincingly argues, was even more radical in how it changed the way the “people” related to each other, what “commerce” was, what “equality” was. It literally redefined those words.

Wood details this progression in three parts: “Monarchy”, “Republicanism”, and “Democracy”. There is no specific timeline, no specific date the Revolutionary Republican dream dies. It’s hard to plot exactly in time how millions of minds and attitudes changed. However, he presents a surprisingly readable mixture of apt anecdote and quotation and statistics to document that change in the American mind.

For me, if not Wood, the book is another example of the failure of the Blank Slate idea the Enlightenment was so fond of. Even the wise and learned Revolutionaries had their hopes dashed on it. And Wood convincingly shows that the America many conservatives love is not the world the Founding Fathers had in mind even at its most basic social and political workings.

Wood concludes his work noting that, while they failed, the Founders’ revolution did not fail in typical ways but “succeeded only too well”. Wood argues that the price of the democracy the Revolutionaries unleashed on the world was vulgarity, materialism, rootlessness, and anti-intellectualism. But there were “real earthly benefits … to the hitherto neglected and despised masses of common laboring people”.

I will leave it as an exercise to the reader, though, to ponder whether the more than 20 years of American politics since this book was written have not, in a peculiar way, have seen a growing amalgamation of the worst of the aristocratic and democratic worlds. It is to Wood’s great credit that he has produced a history that educates us about the past and yet so pertinent to our world and conversations today. show less

Wonderful book that has been most enlightening -- and has served to adjust this reader's assessment, at least, of both Adams and Jefferson. -- The opening chapter, in which the author contrasts the backgrounds and character of his subjects is alone worth the price of admission, as it were: Adams, the son of a farmer/shoemaker, firmly New England middle class, aspired to the upper echelons of society, but always nurtured a sense of not belonging there -- this led to his irascibility, his show more insecurity as to his status and contributions to the American colonial cause, and his jealousy of others (Franklin/Washington/even Jefferson) -- but this was always leavened with an appealing streak of self-mockery. Jefferson, on the other hand, was born into Virginia planter society and, as a result, had a self-confidence and comfort within his own skin that forever eluded his elder comrade-in-arms. -- The bulk of the book bounces back in forth as the two men marry, raise families, find themselves involved in the Colonies' battles with England, and help to lead the new country forward. Wood is very good at underlining the reasons for Adams's and Jefferson's bitter estrangement. It is when he writes of their eventual reconciliation that he shines, however -- showing how Jefferson's natural good manners and desire to avoid conflict papered over provocations from the pen of Adams, how Jefferson gradually found himself alienated from the society the young United States was becoming (ironically, a society he had helped to form), and how Adams's lifelong pessimism actually helped him to accommodate himself to the changes in that same society. Wood concludes that Jefferson the visionary and optimist (however wrong he may have been about the outcome of the forces he helped set in motion), not Adams the somewhat cantankerous realist, is the one that our country values the more highly, even today. -- The book is an admirable exercise in historical writing -- demonstrating a mastery of original materials and thoroughly well-documented. Bravo! show less

A fascinating look at the early period of the formation of America government. The central theme from which the title derives is the tradeoff between power (enabling those in government) and liberty (the rights of individuals). Wood lays this out in chapters that review the debate over separating from England, how the States paved the way for self-government in the form we have today through their own constitutions, and how the resulting “democracy gone wild” led to a conservative shift show more and the increased Federal power in the Constitution of 1787 that we now revere. Getting his insights into how this played out over time, when the Revolutionary period is all too easily lumped together in one’s mind, was wonderful. He goes on in further chapters to address slavery, the rise of power in the Judicial branch, and the debate between public and private spheres, which set the context for each in startling ways, as well as an epilogue that focuses on the wild (yet productive) state of Rhode Island as a case study. As any form of government has its flaws, and as Wood deftly represents the framework for the government in Great Britain, it’s a work that really made me think, and all the more so because of the relevance of these same debates in the present day.

Jefferson and Madison, while they differed on the proper amount of Federal authority, both saw with great frustration what democracy was in the first decade of America. Wood writes, “Such men [the elected representatives] rarely had any concern for public honor or honesty and always seemed to have a ‘particular interest to serve’ regardless of the needs of the whole state or the nation. They made a travesty of the legislative process and were reluctant to do anything that might appear unpopular with their constituents. They postponed taxes, subverted debts owed to the subjects of Great Britain, and passed, defeated, and repassed bills in the most haphazard manner.” Madison realized that “too many Americans could not see beyond their own pocketbooks or their own neighborhoods.” Sound familiar? This is what led to the Constitutional Congress, and the ensuing debate between all-Federal authority, essentially demolishing the States, and allowing States some authority without creating an “imperium in imperio,” an empire within an empire. Wood’s description of its formation and the compromises along the way is excellent.

Wood probably should have included content on how the Constitution notably did not allow its states to secede from the Union, since this would be the drama that would play out in the 19th century. That said, he summarizes the viewpoints and debates without apparent bias, simply trying to present truth and historical accuracy, which I appreciated. He lauds the achievements of the early American government, noting how many of its aspects were unprecedented in the world, while at the same time, makes it clear that American democracy was not without its drawbacks, and that its leaders struggled with where to place power.

The formation of the electoral college was another fascinating passage. “…how would the people in such a huge nation know who were the best men qualified to be president?” Wood writes. “Finally after much discussion and many votes, the Convention decided to create an alternative Congress composed of notables who would know who was competent to be president; it would have one function: to elect the president every four years. … Many expected the electoral college to work as a nominating body in which no one normally would get a majority of electoral votes; therefore, most elections would take place in the House of Representatives among the top five candidates, with each state’s congressional delegation voting as a unit.” It’s just fascinating to ponder the original intention vs. the usage of this body today.

Wood is not without the occasional clunker, however. Early on he states that because Americans come from a wider set of cultures, “other nations are having greater problems with immigrants than we are,” completely overlooking America’s long history of persecuting successive waves of immigrant groups, to the present day. I’m also not sure quoting Charles Beard’s treatise from 1913 on the Constitution was such a great idea, given his “specific arguments and proofs have been eviscerated and were too crudely presented to be persuasive today.” Overall, though, this is a good read, and certainly insightful in many more areas beyond the points I’ve mentioned here. show less