Gordon Wood was our great historian of the founding era. He was killed by a driver who hit him while he was walking this past Sunday afternoon. His death at the age of 92 represents a great loss to our country and our culture. I hope to have a few words about him from Professor Wilfred McClay to post on Power Line some time soon.
AEI called on Professor Wood to contribute the lead essay for Democracy and the American Revolution, the first volume in AEI’s America at 250 series. This is the concluding paragraph of his essay:
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Despite the many examples of racial injustice, the persistence of slavery in the undemocratic South, and great disparities of wealth in the society—despite all that, within decades following the Declaration of Independence, the United States laid claim to being the most democratic and egalitarian nation in history. It was already by then a unique nation dominated by ordinary, Bible-toting people, violent and obsessed with consuming alcohol and making money, vulgar and vibrant, barbarous and boisterous: the only great democracy in a world of monarchies and one that awed and frightened some of its own citizens and many Europeans. It seemed to represent the future for all of humanity.
