The Radicalism of the American Revolution

The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991) is a non-fiction book written by American historian and Brown University professor Gordon S. Wood. Most revolutions are an act of violence that result in deaths, property destruction, and a world turned upside down. Americans do not see the American Revolution this way. The American founding fathers were educated men who wrote pamphlets and spoke openly in legislative halls. As the story goes, they were gentlemen, not radicals. However, Wood argues in his book that a closer look at the social transformations that took place before, during, and after the Revolution show that the American Revolution and its leaders were as radical as any others in history. Wood is the recipient of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Radicalism of the American Revolution. In 2010, President Barack Obama presented Wood with the National Humanities Medal.

This guide utilizes the first Vintage Books edition, March 1993, Kindle e-book version.

Content Warning: This book contains references to the US chattel slavery system.

Summary

In The Radicalism of the American Revolution, historian Gordon S. Wood examines the lives of American colonists in comparison to their English counterparts to show how the actions of the American forefathers were more radical than they’ve previously been given credit for. Wood begins by examining how the English monarchy was structured in the early to mid-18th century and how that formed the society that developed in the American colonies. The colonies began as small communities, often consisting of one or two families that intermarried, creating communities in which privacy was rare, and the government focused on personal issues as often as it did larger, social problems. There was a limited number of aristocrats in the colonies and few titles. For this reason, a class of nobility developed who were called gentlemen and distinguished by their education, manner of dress, and independence. To truly be called a gentleman, one had to separate oneself from labor and be financially independent.

Common men were viewed as persons who were uneducated and worked only to provide for themselves. These people focused purely on their own needs and nothing more. They were considered inconsequential to the overall character of the nation, a group of childlike people who needed the monarchy to care for them. Gentlemen were leaders of this society, volunteering their time and money for the greater good.

The Enlightenment brought to England values of republicanism that stemmed from the study of Roman writers such as Virgil and Cicero. These ideals of liberty and independence began to infuse themselves into English society and spread to the colonies. While the colonists often emulated their counterparts in England, they were not as highly influenced by the monarchy as their counterparts. Therefore, republican ideals influenced the colonists during a time in which the colonists’ close-knit communities were beginning to grow fragile due to their still largely agricultural economies and limited commercial opportunities that restricted the rise of independent leadership.

However, the economy would begin to change at the same time the population of the colonies exploded. Death rates were low and birth rates were high in the colonies, and immigration was steady. Land began to run low in some parts of the colonies, and the defeat of the British over the French in 1759 opened up lands to which the colonists flocked. Farmers began to grow surplus crops they were willing to sell and expanded their crops to include corn and wheat. This created a new import/export business that altered the economy. At the same time, inland imports grew and with it came the use of paper money and the appearance of banks. Those who had never had money before were beginning to enjoy a change in circumstances, and the view that labor was only to satisfy a man’s needs was beginning to change.

Family dynamics changed with the changing economy and the breaking apart of close-kit communities. A focus on the nuclear family became the norm, and changes in the way that parents cared for their children began to alter the focus of society. Paternalism was no longer seen as the natural order, but was instead considered something man-made. This caused more breaks in the social structure of the colonies, causing a shift from a patron-based society to one where impersonal contract ruled all interactions. There was a certain lack of trust that bloomed into a sense of fear that a person’s wealth and property could be stripped away.

In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, the common man embraced the ideas of equality and freedom. Common men began to engage more in inland trading, not only selling agricultural goods but also manufactured goods that could be made in the home. The rise of small factories began to change the economy of northern colonies. With more inland trading came the importance of paper money. Banks began to appear in every city and village.

The bonds that once held society together disappeared along with the class distinctions that were an important part of America’s early society. Concern about the lack of these bonds created a drive to form new bonds through the government or church. However, these attempts failed as common men preferred the government to operate in the background and chose churches based on their personal doctrines. Founding fathers began to worry that the republic they had intended to create did not work well and wasn’t going to survive the test of time. However, common men bonded over the ideals of the Revolution and forged forward to embrace a democracy that, while not what the founding fathers envisioned, persisted well beyond the time of the founding fathers.