This post is written in immediate reaction to the news of Gordon Wood’s death, June 7. For those who follow American History at all, he is the greatest historian of America’s national founding and early development. To those who don’t follow history, know that he is the clarion voice of our founding, and what we really celebrate for its 250 years, now in 2026.
The title of this post quotes only the pithiest of summaries of Wood’s findings. This blog exists to try to offer a voice that speaks from the mindset of those words. Wood did not pen them for the sake of an anniversary, certainly not as a way to weigh in on current politics, and not out of clever piecing together of opinions and factoids. Professor Wood actually created insights that lead to this conclusion, over a long, rigorously and conscientiously conducted, career.
In his “The Creation of the American Republic,” published in 1969, he dissected all the arguments of the Constitutional Convention and their premises, and discerned that “In America a constitution had become … a charter of power granted by liberty rather than … a charter of liberty granted by power.” Older charters like the Magna Carta were only “’restrictions on assumed power,’” (p.601) ceded by power but still granted by the king. Furthermore, the liberty of this Constitution resided not only in the people’s right to participate in government, but also in “the protection of individual rights against all governmental encroachments.” (p.609) Before, freedoms were by and for the rulers, so this liberty was radically new.
Wood cited this radicalism in his 1992 “The Radicalism of the American Revolution.” He analyzed the ancient social structures of hierarchy, personal ties, and power granted by station in life. In his always-full review, he noted how, in the American Revolution, “Rulers suddenly lost their traditional personal rights to rule, and personal allegiance as a civic bond became meaningless.” (p. 187) The new structure of power, of a sovereign defined by what “we,” this “people” declared in July 4, 1776, was an unprecedented idea, by the way still exceptional as a point of national identity, and therefore still an experiment.
In the op ed from which this post’s title was extracted, Wood also pointed out that America has an advantage over other nations. Europeans, as one case, must reconcile any liberal or humanistic codes they may follow with their identities of blood and soil. Under our national ethos, persons of any ethnic origin can – after fulfilling whatever necessary legal requirement we may set up, for actual naturalization – be American, simply by living in our beliefs. Beyond the immigration question, to riff on Wood’s point, old identities are tied to some tradition, some family tie, some history on “this land,” inherited from the past. America’s creedal identity is all about what we, this people of a principle, might do in the future. Any new development in the human condition could be a threat for the old identities – it will look more like an opportunity for us.
One more riff starts with Woods’ observation that, in our diversity and history of immigration, “the whole world is in the U.S.” One implication he might allow, though wouldn’t write without full historical and conceptual analysis, suggests that our case offers evidence that any ethnicity, any people, could and can also embrace the Declaration’s creed. No one is somehow “naturally” unable to believe in equal endowment of unalienable rights, to live our own lives, and the binding of government to secure those rights, under the consent of the governed. If we in this nation can keep this experiment going, just maybe the human condition admits of the same radical growth of our founding.
These rights and their implications are what America truly celebrates for the 250 years that we have held to them. Gordon Wood not only chronicled the formulation of these American traditions. In rigorous and conscientious study, he showed how deeply consequential our national origins are. For any with time and energy to read serious work, his books – any of them – are worth the effort. It is a tragedy that Professor Wood will not be with us for the Fourth of July, 2026. Ingesting his thought will go far to equip Americans for our next quarter millennium.
Common Conviction 