The Signing of The Declaration of Independence, c. 1873, by Charles douard Armand-Dumaresq.(Public domain/Wikimedia)
No living historian has done more to illuminate the origins of our constitutional heritage in the Revolutionary era. His latest book adds to this record.
Legislators pandering to populist mobs, printing endless supplies of devaluing fiat currency. Lenders worried that rampant inflation will corrode their assets, diminishing their wealth through irregular means of de facto appropriation. Proliferation of legislation, each new act superseding the previous at such a pace that no one can understand the law, much less act upon it with confidence. A chronically divided Congress unable to agree upon a coherent, stable, and effectual foreign policy. Men of good taste and reputation politically sidelined by scurrilous demagogues. What could possibly rescue America from such a dire political crisis?
Framing and ratification of the United States Constitution, of course. To be clear, we are discussing the crisis of the 1780s what late-19th-century historian John Fiske termed The Critical Period of American History. Gordon Wood has devoted a prolific career to the better understanding of this era. As he began his undergraduate career in the early 1950s, economic historians typically agreed with Patrick Henrys assessment of American life in the Confederation period. The Anti-Federalist firebrand urged his fellow-delegates at the Virginia ratification convention to go to the poor man and ask him what he does. . . . He enjoys the fruits of his labor . . . in peace and security. Go to every other member of society you will find the same tranquil ease and content. How, then, to explain the dramatic transformation wrought in the constitutional framing? Following the thesis of Charles Beards Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, neo-progressive historians of that era tended to picture the move for a new national government as something of a conspiratorial fraud, as Wood puts it in Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution, his latest work on the early history of America.
In his influential The Whig Interpretation of History, English historian Herbert Butterfield warned against the distortive influence of culturally egocentric evaluative criteria: History is easily misunderstood when tendentiously presented as a glorious march leading upward to ourselves. This is sound advice for professional historians; it is for good reason that Butterfield is still assigned to graduate students. Unfortunately, this necessary corrective for uncritical chauvinism combined with Progressive economic determinism to discourage scholarly interpretation of the American founding as either unique or that dread word! good.
Bernard Bailyn, Woods graduate adviser at Harvard, was the first prominent American historian in decades to take the Founding generations political ideas seriously. In 1967s Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bailyn asserts that Patriot triumph introduced a new era in human history. From his encyclopedic survey of 17th- and 18th-century British and American colonial political literature, Bailyn concludes that the Revolutions leaders intended not the overthrow or even the alteration of the existing social order but the preservation of political liberty threatened by the apparent corruption of the constitution, and the establishment in principle of the existing conditions of liberty. Chapter one of Power and Liberty succinctly summarizes this American Whig view of British constitutionalism, and the revolutionary crisis it produced. The proper location of sovereignty this supreme lawmaking power, Wood writes, became the issue that finally broke up the empire. A more precise statement of the American Revolutions causes is impossible. To the British, representation meant Parliament. But by the 1760s, American colonials because of their different experiences . . . had come to believe in a very different kind of representation. To Americans, the process of election was not incidental. . . . People had to actually vote for their representative. If this seems an obvious truism, that is testament to the Revolutions epoch-making and ultimately world-shaping nature.
As the colonials appealed first to British law and their own written charters, they grew increasingly frustrated at Londons unwillingness to concede any portion of sovereign authority to their local assemblies. Finally, they despaired of trying to divide the indivisible, appealing rather in abstract terms to the peoples natural rights and locating sovereignty only in their directly elected representatives. The result of this gradual but precipitous evolution is best expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which Wood calls the most important document in American history.
We might call this neo-Whig understanding of the Revolutions constitutional ideology the BailynWood thesis. Power and Liberty is a masterfully succinct survey of that thesis. But Wood is not a triumphalist purveyor of hagiographic Founder-worship. He wrote in The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History that to understand the past in all its complexity is to acquire historical wisdom and humility and indeed a tragic sense of life. This is not a sad or pessimistic sense of life, rather a nuanced sense of . . . limitations. The American founders are not mythic giants, predestined to inexorable works of eternal greatness or at least, imagining them as such does little to help later Americans understand and utilize the institutions they bequeathed. Yet this generation brought about extraordinary and lasting progress. In chapter seven of Power and Liberty, Wood summarizes the transition from gentry-dominated government in a colonial world where power functioned as a private and often hereditary right, to a republican era of popular government circumscribed by private rights. For the Western world in general, Wood claims, this great demarcation, this sharpening of the difference between private and public marked the transition to modernity.
By invoking the rights of all men, the Revolutions leaders unleashed a tidal wave of change. They aimed to create republican governments that would abolish the abuses of patronage . . . that had plagued the old society, creating in their place republican citizens who were equal and independent. Perhaps counterintuitively, the Revolutionaries assertion of the primacy of the public good over private interests . . . compelled them to conceive of state power in radically new ways. Soon, newly republican state governments carved out exclusively public spheres of action and responsibility where none had existed before. One unintended consequence was the emergence of a populist political style. Where colonial elites had made claims to public office based on their wealth and social standing, republican candidates flattered the great mass of farmers and artisans by affecting the common touch, often falsely. As Wood has detailed at greater length in The Radicalism of the American Revolution and Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, the Revolutions elite, gentry-class leaders unwittingly created a world with no place for men of their description.
But if the American Revolution brought about radical social change, how to account for the survival of and subsequent proliferation of that greatest of inequalities, slavery? Wood has publicly criticized the controversial 1619 Project, joining four other scholars in urging the New York Times to review factual oversights in its fundamental claims. In her introductory essay to the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones identified the preservation of slavery as a central motivation for Revolutionary leaders, at least in the southern colonies. Wood et al. responded emphatically that this is not true. If supportable, the allegation would be astounding yet every statement offered by the project to validate it is false.
Considering this public dispute, perhaps Power and Libertys sixth chapter, Slavery and Constitutionalism, will generate the greatest interest. Wood begins that chapter by observing that in colonial societies where half the population at any one moment were legally unfree . . . the peculiar character of lifetime, hereditary black slavery was not always as obvious. Critical race theorists might bristle at the comparison of black slavery to white indentured servitude, but Woods point is clear and fair. The radical rights-based language of the Revolution first swept away legal distinctions between classes of unenslaved people, all now theoretically equal citizens. Unfreedom could no longer be taken for granted as a normal part of hierarchical society, Wood writes. Before long . . . indentured white servitude disappeared everywhere in America. This made the continued enslavement of blacks stand out the more starkly. As Sean Wilentz has compellingly demonstrated in No Property in Man, the American Revolution inspired a sweeping anti-slavery politics unprecedented in human history. Within a generation, slavery was abolished in all states north of Delaware. Even in Virginia, then by far the greatest slave-holding state, there was serious criticism of the institution that seemed destined to end in abolition yet continued well into the 19th century. When Americans did finally abolish slavery tragically late and at immense cost in requiting blood drawn with the sword it was the Revolutions ideals to which abolitionists appealed.
But neither this concise book nor the wider corpus of Woods work is best understood as a narrow response to radical theorists of race relations. As Wood outlines in chapters two and three of Power and Liberty, the Revolution unleashed what constitutional reformers such as James Madison viewed with alarm as excessive democracy in the states . . . a problem the confederation, however amended, however strengthened, could not handle. Madison fretted in his Vices of the Political Systems of the United States (1787) that the multiplicity and mutability of [state] laws prove a want of wisdom, an unjust defect still more alarming . . . because it brings more into question the fundamental principle of republican government, that the majority . . . are the safest guardians both of public good and of private rights. This is the core dilemma of the American constitutional tradition. The manner of the Framers resolution of that dilemma is the purpose of Woods magnum opus, The Creation of the American Republic, published in 1969.
The Declaration of Independence asserts that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. In the American political tradition, legitimate consent is direct representation through the electoral process. How, then, to safeguard the private rights of individuals from potential abuse at the hands of democratic majorities? Through their colonial and English heritage of written charters, and their Revolutionary experience of resistance to overbearing and unelected government, Americans developed a new constitutional theory. In Britains imperial structure, central authority had restrained the local, and crown-appointed executives restrained the legislative. The American Revolution consciously threw off those restraints, only for the Framers to reimpose analogous mechanisms less than a decade later. As Pennsylvanias James Wilson claimed amid the ratification debate, this was no antidemocratic counterrevolution. Instead, the U.S. Constitution shrewdly avoided choosing between the federal government and the states, thus evading the conceptual dilemma that rent Britains empire asunder. Sovereignty in America, [Wilson] said, did not reside in any institution of government, or even in all the institutions of government put together. Instead, sovereignty, the final, supreme, indivisible lawmaking authority, remained with the people themselves, Wood writes. In striking upon this idea, Federalists could scarcely restrain themselves in drawing out its implications, chiefly that locating sovereignty in the people themselves makes possible the idea of federalism. Sovereign power is not divided against itself. Instead, each layer and branch of government is a mere instrument of the people empowered to some particular and limited purpose. Thus, written constitutions themselves are not external restraints upon the people but supreme expressions of the peoples own will. The constitution is then, in the words of George Washingtons Farewell Address, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, sacredly obligatory upon all.
The whole genius of this constitutional heritage is perhaps nowhere more aptly stated than in Abraham Lincolns first inaugural: A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, . . . changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. No living historian has done more to illuminate the origins and emergence of that tradition in the Revolutionary era; I can imagine no better or more potently concise introduction to that historians work than Woods own Power and Liberty.
If you valued reading this article, please consider joining our fight by donating to our Fall Webathon. Your contribution makes it possible for us to continueour mission of speaking truth and defending conservative principles.
Read more here:
Power and Liberty and Gordon Wood - National Review
- Student-Led Working Group to Abolish GUPD Calls for Greater Community Involvement - Georgetown University The Hoya - April 10th, 2024 [April 10th, 2024]
- Nobel Peace Prize - Wikipedia - January 10th, 2023 [January 10th, 2023]
- Albanese government neuters ABCC ahead of abolition - The Australian Financial Review - October 28th, 2022 [October 28th, 2022]
- 3 Good Reasons You Should Learn More About Angela Davis - Because of Them We Can - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Eradication of forced labor -- striking example of political will - The Korea Herald - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Intrusion impending: what contractors need to know about proposed abolition of the ABCC - Lexology - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- What Does It Mean To 'Abolish the Family'? - ArtReview - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- UN experts call for complete abolition of death penalty as 'only viable path' - UN News - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Opinion | Social justice work must continue - UI The Daily Iowan - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Rank-and-file action committees independent of IG Metall union needed to defend all jobs at all sites - WSWS - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Japan plans to abolish health insurance cards in fall 2024 | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis - - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Are you buying the copaganda? - mlk50.com - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- 'Crown Jewel of Criminal Justice System': Voters In Five States Will Address Legal Loophole That Still Allows Slavery - Atlanta Black Star - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- TUPD aims to connect with Tufts community over coffee - Tufts Daily - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Ex-condemned prisoner relives 11-year wait for hangmans noose - The Herald - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- The Ongoing Fight Against Femicides and Violence Against Women in the Caribbean - Rolling Stone - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- At Tate Britain, Hew Locke Powerfully Reckons with Colonialist Histories and Their Lingering Aftereffects - ARTnews - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Presentation of the Annual Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights - World - ReliefWeb - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Sanitation staff on strike over salary delay in Delhi - The New Indian Express - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Human Rights Watch Submission to the Universal Periodic Review of Burundi - Human Rights Watch - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- UN experts warn of associated torture and cruel punishment - OHCHR - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- How Lead Belly twice won freedom from prison through his music - Far Out Magazine - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Why don't Popes ever win the Nobel Peace Prize? - Crux Now - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Hunting: Where the end began - Reaction - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Greece is committed to reforming its mass media and protecting personal data - Hellenic News of America - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Standing against war and nuclear catastrophe: lessons from Port Kembla - Red Flag - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Liz Truss warned tax cuts like hers could lead to 'boom and bust' in unearthed 2018 clip - The Mirror - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Opinion | The Puppets and the Puppet Masters - Common Dreams - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Intersecting Drug Policy and Abolition: A Conversation - TalkingDrugs - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Rival parties to lock horns over Gender Ministry in government organization reform plan - The Korea Herald - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Reforms, roll-outs and freezes in the tax and benefit system | Institute for Fiscal Studies - ifs.org.uk - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Kwasi Kwarteng to bring forward planned fiscal statement in another U-turn as it happened - The Guardian - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- IR35 reforms repeal: How it stands to benefit the tech sectors SMEs and contractors - ComputerWeekly.com - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- The Future of Truth - Portsmouth Daily Times - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Governor Hochul Names Canal Corporation Vessel in Honor of the Inspirational Life and Legacy of Harriet Tubman - ny.gov - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Tory MPs hit back after threats issued to those opposing 45p tax rate abolition - The Guardian - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- John Hood: Don't That Just Beat All? Neuse News - Neuse News - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Scrapping inheritance tax is a terrible idea - The Spectator - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Reeves: Government instincts in mini-Budget were to cut taxes for wealthiest - LabourList - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- The Biggest Exhibitions To See In London And Beyond: Autumn 2022 - Londonist - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Actually, Black Mermaid Folklore Has Been Around Long Before Disneys The Little Mermaid - Yahoo Life - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Build solidarity with rail workers fight! Help strengthen, expand the labor movement! The Militant - The Militant - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- The Most Absolute Abolitionnew book explores abolition and lives of escaped slaves - Socialist Worker - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Democracy Cant Be Reduced to Voting in 2022 We Must Build the Future We Want - Truthout - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Christophe Ferrari denounces the announced abolition of the CVAE - US Sports - US Sports - - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Child labour: Nashik tribals struggle to survive, give kids to goatherds for Rs 10K - The New Indian Express - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Library Takeover Returns: Submit Your Application! | City of Madison - City of Madison, Wisconsin - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Do Britain and the world really need a king? - People's World - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Soka Gakkai International's Nuclear Abolition Work - Tricycle - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Clinton nonprofit funneled $75,000 to 'defund the police' group: report - New York Post - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Cops and Prosecutors Truly Work the Same Side: Ingrid Raphal and Melissa Gira Grant on their FOV Doc They Wont Call It Murder - Filmmaker Magazine - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- The Iran Man Behind the Nuclear Curtain Jewish Policy Center - Jewish Policy Center - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Dorothy Roberts Tried to Warn Us - New York Magazine - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Hear Me Now: The Black Potters Of Old Edgefield, South Carolina - Antiques And The Arts Weekly - Antiques and the Arts Online - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- The Spin | Zimbabwe's upset win should spur England to be good global citizens - The Guardian - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Letter of the week: The Proms deserve better - The New Statesman - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Why We Should Abolish the Family Current Affairs - Current Affairs - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- On the Need for Honest Abolitionists. | Jeff Hood - Patheos - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Chile rejects a progressive constitution with big changes - NPR - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Where Solidarity, Abolition, and Queer History Meet - The Nation - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Addressing the sugar crisis long term - Manila Bulletin - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Experts react: The United Kingdom has a new prime minister. What should the world expect from Liz Truss? - Atlantic Council - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Explained Books | An eminent cardiac surgeon's account of his work, and of Kashmir - The Indian Express - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Formerly incarcerated women of color face worse health in later life | OUPblog - OUPblog - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it - The Register - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Kenya: William Ruto's triumph, By Reuben Abati - Premium Times - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- What shall we do with the climate refugees? - Trinidad & Tobago Express Newspapers - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- Digitisation of records, land reforms turn 'Naya J&K' hi-tech - Rising Kashmir - September 6th, 2022 [September 6th, 2022]
- What year was slavery abolished in the US? - Fox News - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- The United Nations Human Rights Council met for its 50th Regular Session from June 13 to July 8, 2022. - WCADP - World Coalition Against the Death... - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Special Tax Regimes for Mobile Individuals and Their Impact on the EU's Single Market - Bloomberg Tax - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Undergraduate Summer Research Highlights - Newsroom | University of St. Thomas - University of St. Thomas Newsroom - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- A safe and healthy working environment is now a human right - Workplace Insight - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Haryana dismisses alleged abolition of teachers post as baseless - The Statesman - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- New book explores wicked problems facing peace studies scholars and practitioners // Department of Political Science // University of Notre Dame -... - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Universities Are Plundering Cities. How Can This Relationship Change? - Truthout - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Edinburgh should apologise for role in slavery and colonialism, says academic - STV News - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- The inside story of the CIA v Russia from cold war conspiracy to 'black' propaganda in Ukraine - The Conversation Indonesia - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Radical gender theory has now made its way into more than 4,000 US schools - Home - WSFX - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- Infanticide: Excitement as 5-year-old reunites with family in FCT - Blueprint Newspapers Limited - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]