The American Revolution was revolutionary. That’s the deceptively simple claim to which Gordon Wood, the historian who was tragically killed at the age of 92 on Sunday, devoted his career. The Revolution, of course, overthrew a monarchy—but the freedoms it advanced were unequally enjoyed, and the Founders left a great deal undone. But Wood insisted that, even so, we not lose sight of its fundamental character.
“The revolution did more than legally create the United States; it transformed society,” Wood wrote in his 1991 book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History. “Americans,” he argued, “had become, almost overnight, the most liberal, the most democratic, the most commercially minded, and the most modern people in the world.” By 2011, in The Idea of America, he had expanded his claim: The Revolution “was an event that opened up a new era in politics and society, not just for Americans but eventually for everyone in the world.” Wood’s vision of the Revolution gives us much to celebrate in 2026.
Wood became one of the most prominent historians of the United States. The longtime Brown University professor wrote 10 books and many articles, but it was The Radicalism of the American Revolution that propelled him to the forefront of his field. Although Wood himself would acknowledge that the American Revolution was not built on ideas alone, his ardent advancement of America’s Revolutionary ideals remains his most important and lasting legacy.
Wood spent his career studying the Revolution, but within the academy, he was something of a revolutionary himself. Not only did he help popularize the study of ideas in early America, but his scholarship also helped illuminate how America changed from a hierarchical, monarchical society to a democratic republic. In a subfield fixated on economic explanations, he emphasized how personal experiences could turn English subjects into Americans. He stressed the distinctiveness of the Founders and their “very different, distant world of the eighteenth century.”
His work was an inspiration for my own. The first time I saw him speak in person, about the influence of America’s Revolutionary tradition around the globe, I experienced an academic epiphany: This was the type of history that was missing from the field. Wood graciously served as one of my dissertation advisers, and the book that resulted, American Honor, builds on his focus on ideals. Although I was one of his last doctoral students, he continued to inspire anyone who took the Founders and their ideas seriously. Even as progressive historians downplayed the Founders’ achievements and dismissed their rhetoric, Wood created space for a positive interpretation of the American Revolution and its ideals. His path encouraged others to study the Revolution as “the most radical and most far-reaching event in American history.” It was a message with crossover appeal.
Academic historians generally don’t get famous. Wood was an exception. In Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon quotes him to an obnoxious graduate student—“You’re gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talking about, you know, the pre-Revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization”—in a scene that became a meme in its own right. It’s also why, when Wood agreed to join my dissertation committee, my family thought it was a huge deal. Perhaps even more remarkable, he was also embraced across the political spectrum. Wood was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama for “insight into the founding of our nation” and also received the conservative American Enterprise Institute’s top honor for being “the greatest historian of the American Revolution.” His work has been supportively cited by President Biden, Representative Newt Gingrich, the former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and the World Socialist Web Site. How do you like them apples?
As vilification of the Founders and the Revolution became more common, both in academia and in society at large, Wood functioned as part elder statesman and part lightning rod. Ben Franklin would have been proud. He pushed for objectivity, railed against academic presentism, and lamented the tendency of young historians to write only a “tale of oppression and woe.” Most notable, Wood was also one of the few professional historians to openly criticize The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” attacking it for “factual errors” and for being “perverse and distorted.” These views, combined with his fame, garnered bitter opposition from many historians and journalists—who extended that hostility to his academic work. In the glory days of Twitter, even admitting that you liked Radicalism of the American Revolution could earn you angry replies. But despite the criticism, Wood’s work continued to hold up—because he was right.
There really was something fundamentally different about the American Revolution. It did not descend into anarchy or terror or military dictatorship, for the same reason that it was sparked in the first place—it was built by ideas. “The American Revolution made us an ideological people,” Wood argued, a fact that has been recognized by the world since the 18th century. Rather than fixating on what the Revolution did not accomplish, Wood challenged us to see the Revolution as our “moral authority” and the origins of “anti-slavery and women’s rights movements” and “in fact all of our current egalitarian thinking.” This is the American Revolution we need to remember today. It is a shame that Wood will not be here to serve as our guide, because his vision of America can unite us. We all need the idea of Gordon Wood.