I’ve long admired Gordon Wood’s The Radicalism of the American Revolution as a model of intellectual history. I have compelled numerous undergraduates to read it in a seminar called “Republics and Republicanism” which I gave for a decade with my colleague Harvey Mansfield. The book was first published in 1991, but is newly relevant to our present moment since the radicalism of the American Revolution and the American Founding in general has become in recent years a contentious topic both among progressives and conservatives.
As Wood already noted in his book, the American Revolution has long been blamed by progressives for not being radical enough. Its inspiring ideals of liberty and equality weren’t immediately applied to grant women full equality with men; slavery was not immediately abolished; and this failure set the agenda for political conflict, civil war, and social upheaval for the next century and more. Because the Revolution wasn’t radical enough, Americans were required to make moral and political progress towards a more egalitarian future.
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