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Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different Paperback – May 29, 2007
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"Of those writing about the founding fathers, [Gordon Wood] is quite simply the best." —The Philadelphia Inquirer
In this brilliantly illuminating group portrait of the men who came to be known as the Founding Fathers, the incomparable Gordon Wood has written a book that seriously asks, What made these men great, and shows us, among many other things, just how much character did in fact matter. The life of each, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Paine, is presented individually as well as collectively, but the thread that binds these portraits together is the idea of character as a lived reality. They were members of the first generation in history that was self-consciously self-made men who understood that the arc of lives, as of nations, is one of moral progress.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash Broadway musical Hamilton sparked new interest in the Revolutionary War and the Founding Fathers. In addition to Alexander Hamilton, the production also features George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Aaron Burr, Lafayette, and many more.
Look for Gordon's 2017 release, Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Books
- Publication dateMay 29, 2007
- Grade level12 and up
- Reading age18 years and up
- Dimensions8.44 x 5.52 x 0.73 inches
- ISBN-100143112082
- ISBN-13978-0143112082
- Lexile measure1290L
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- Publisher : Penguin Books; Reprint edition (May 29, 2007)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0143112082
- ISBN-13 : 978-0143112082
- Reading age : 18 years and up
- Lexile measure : 1290L
- Grade level : 12 and up
- Item Weight : 10.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 8.44 x 5.52 x 0.73 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #96,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Gordon S. Wood is Alva O. Way Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. His books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution, the Bancroft Prize-winning The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, and The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History. He writes frequently for The New York Review of Books and The New Republic.
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The chapter on George Washington emphasizes how Washington went to great lengths to ensure that the American presidency would not have the powers of a monarch. This extreme caution played a key role in Washington's stepping down after two term limits, his warning against a standing army and his personal distress over whether he allowed himself to receive too much adulation or too many gifts as President. In this respect, George Washington is a remarkable man. The history of the United States would surely be substantially different, in terms of precedents set by Washington, had he not been so reluctant to wield executive power.
The chapter on Thomas Jefferson is also very good. Thomas Jefferson is obviously an incredibly accomplished intellectual and statesman. In addition to penning the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson also fought to abolish the laws of primogeniture (which automatically passed all estate property to the eldest son of every family) as well as helped establish the separation of church and state with the famous Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom. However, Wood's work suggests that Jefferson sometimes got too lost in ideals while failing to note how those ideas played out in practice. This shortcoming cannot be better illustrated than Jefferson's infamous "Adam and Eve" letter where he wrote the following to comment on the violence of the French Revolution:
"My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is."
The chapter on Alexander Hamilton will be unsettling to those who value free market capitalism. This chapter details how Hamilton was instrumental in establishing a national bank despite the opposition from John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In addition, Wood also details how Hamilton repudiated the benefits of unregulated markets and how he pushed to ban private banking. This chapter also details how Hamilton advocated an "American empire" over a "Democracy" and wanted a standing army contrary to the admonition against one in Washington's farewell address.
Although I will not detail them here, many of the other chapters in this book are also very good. The chapter on James Madison explores the alleged change in James Madison's values when he went from a co-author of the Federalist Papers to a staunch Democratic-Republican and concludes that there were no substantial changes in Madison's political philosophy. The chapter on Benjamin Franklin explores Wood's thesis that Benjamin Franklin was a longtime British loyalist who, up until his seventies, clung to the overly optimistic belief that the British crown was still generally good for the American colonies. The chapter on John Adams does delve into some of his impressive intellectual achievements, including his 'Defense of the Constitution of the United States'. However, my perception is this chapter understates the importance of John Adams in many of the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence, say compared to C. Bradley Thompson's 'John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty'. Overall, this is a great read for anyone seeking to understand the important moral and political ideas that the different Founders held.
Wood argues that you cannot separate the Founding Fathers from their era, they lived under a very different set of circumstances, and responded to these circumstances in their own unique ways. Since so much of their writings and journals have survived down through the ages,it makes these early statesmen prime subjects for psycho-analysis, but what Wood tries to do is take the position of an observer, looking into their conduct as one would in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
While a ranking of their conduct can more or less be inferred by the order of the chapters and the way Wood assesses their individual characters, the author stresses the pivotal roles each had in shaping the United States. Washington is paramount in the way he was able to balance all these competing forces in his presidential administration. He was a leader, if not necessarily a "decider," capable of weighing the opinions of his administration and reaching what he regarded as a just and due course for the nation. He may have lacked the intellectual abilities of Jefferson and Hamilton, or the judicial acumen of Adams, but he didn't seem to second guess his decisions, sticking by them and accepting the consequences like the gentleman he saw himself as. While this may have lent him a stiff air he was so respected in his day that the deification of his role in the American Revolution had already begun by the time of the Constitutional assemblies. If he was reluctant to assume the role of President, Wood argues it was because he did not wish to become king, which was the way many leading figures were projecting him at the time.
Franklin and Adams were less concerned with how they were viewed by others, but they too cultivated public characters that served them well throughout the revolution. Both saw politics as a form of theatre, and as such perception was as important as the reality of their actions. Franklin seemed to be the more optimistic of the two, whereas Adams was deeply worried about the balance of government, something which Wood says gave Adams no rest throughout his lifetime.
This could also be said of James Madison, which Wood devotes an excellent chapter to, showing how he was misinterpreted both in his time by his fellow statesmen, and later by historians. It is largely viewed that Madison underwent a major change of heart in the 1790's from that of an ardent Federalist to an anti-Federalist over the role the federal government should play in the United States. But, Wood argues Madison never saw the federal government as anything more than an adjucator, resolving state disputes, not governing over them. Here is where Madison differed sharply from Hamilton, who believed strenuously in a strong federal government, to the point of being an authoritarian regime, which in many ways the early Federal government was.
Wood even devotes a chapter to Thomas Paine, the most democratic-minded of all the early statesman, and perhaps the most "revolutionary." Paine's role in the revolution is often overlooked because he did not serve in the federal government. However, his pamphlet "The Rights of Man," was one of the key documents of the revolution and perhaps the most far-reaching.
In a time when many persons, both historians and politicians, are reassessing the Founding Fathers, it is refreshing to have a book like this, which strips away all the attempts to make these "revolutionary characters" into mythological figures and views them within their 18th century context.
Their thinking focused on men of property whom they considered "gentlemen".