In Memoriam: Gordon S. Wood

AEI is deeply shocked and saddened by American historian Gordon Wood’s sudden, tragic passing on Sunday. Dr. Wood was our nation’s greatest historian of the American Revolution, and his work fundamentally reshaped Americans’ relationship with our founding. As I put it last year : That so many of us today look on our nation’s founding with reverence, gratitude, and appreciation is due in no small part to Wood’s over six decades of scholarship. When Wood started his career as a historian in the 1960s, academic history was dominated by progressives who disdained the founders—regarding them as hypocritical aristocrats whose lofty ideals were a mask for economic self-interest and political ambition with little relevance to modern America. Wood led a generation of scholars in overturning this consensus. He took the founders and their ideas seriously, and in so doing, he reintroduced Americans to the world-changing significance of the Revolution. We were fortunate to host Dr. Wood in Washington, DC last year at AEI’s Annual Dinner, where he graciously accepted the Irving Kristol Award. Anyone who wants to understand the special quality of Dr. Wood’s teaching and scholarship would do well to read the remarks he gave that night on the theme of American identity : In Jefferson’s Declaration Lincoln found a solution to the great problem of American identity: how the great variety of individuals in America with all their diverse ethnicities, races, and religions could be brought together into a single nation. As Lincoln grasped better than anyone ever has, the Revolution and its Declaration of Independence offered us a set of beliefs that through the generations has supplied a bond that holds together the most diverse nation that history has ever known. Since now the whole world is in the United States, nothing but the ideals coming out of the Revolution and their subsequent rich and contentious history can turn such an assortment of different individuals into the “one people” that the Declaration says we are. To be an American is not to be someone, but to believe in something. That is why we are at heart a credo nation, and that is why the 250th anniversary of the Declaration next year is so important. I am grateful we got to hear his reflections on this important anniversary for our country, but his brilliance, erudition, and deep, reflective patriotism will be sorely missed during the rest of this year’s commemorations. To learn more, I encourage you to watch the tribute video we put together on his career last year: The post In Memoriam: Gordon S. Wood appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI .