Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution

by Gordon S. Wood

New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gordon S. Wood elucidates the debates over the founding documents of the United States.

The half century extending from the imperial crisis between Britain and its colonies in the 1760s to the early decades of the new republic of the United States was the greatest and most creative era of constitutionalism in American history, and perhaps in the world. During these decades, Americans explored and debated all aspects of politics and constitutionalism--the nature of power, liberty, representation, rights, the division of authority between different spheres of government, sovereignty, judicial authority, and written constitutions. The results of these issues produced institutions that have lasted for over two centuries.

In this new book, eminent historian Gordon S. Wood distills a lifetime of work on constitutional innovations during the Revolutionary era. In concise form, he illuminates critical events in the nation's founding, ranging from the imperial debate that led to the Declaration of Independence to the revolutionary state constitution making in 1776 and the creation of the Federal Constitution in 1787. Among other topics, he discusses slavery and constitutionalism, the emergence of the judiciary as one of the major tripartite institutions of government, the demarcation between public and private, and the formation of states' rights.

Here is an immensely readable synthesis of the key era in the making of the history of the United States, presenting timely insights on the Constitution and the nation's foundational legal and political documents.

Genres: History, American History, American Revolution, Nonfiction, Politics, Law, Audiobook

240 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 2, 2021

About the author

Gordon Stewart Wood is an American historian and professor at Brown University. He is a recipient of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992). His book The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (1969) won the 1970 Bancroft Prize. In 2010, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama.

Reviews

[Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wood is likely the preeminent scholar of the history of America’s founding. This book is based on several lectures he gave, and although there isn’t an overlying thesis tying it all together, it is nevertheless fascinating and corrected some misconceptions I had.

For instance, we consider our constitution to be a monumental achievement in promoting representative government—and it was—but Wood reminds us that the individual state constitutions came first. They helped to push the nascent US into a more democratic mindset. And the federal constitution was in large part a reaction to the “excesses of democracy” in the state legislatures. The elites believed that uneducated and unprincipled men were pushing for legislation that was desired by certain interest groups but not necessarily beneficial for the nation as a whole.

Anyway, rather than spending the time to text out some second-rate summary I will provide this link to Joseph’s excellent review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[James Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wood continues to impress me as our foremost historian of the founding of the republic. Here he presents a short, pointed summary of his thoughts on the political foundations of the Constitution, an analysis that continues to inform much of our current state. As always, Wood's writing is lively and entertaining but even if it wasn't, this summary of a life's work is essential reading for anyone interested in "how we got here."

[Miles Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolutely fantastic treatment of the development of the American republic in the 1780s.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a gem. A deep dive in a slim volume into the social, economic, legal and political forces that gave rise to and shaped our Constitution. If you read only one book about the Founding, this is the one to read (maybe twice).

[Vincent Li · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this Gordon Wood book as I always do. There are a few typos (sentences that clearly repeat mid-sentence and a few mispellings) but overall the content of the book is very good. Much of it gathers themes that Wood has written in other places. For example, Wood writes about how the part of the revolution was caused by the colonists' disagreement with the British that sovereignty was lodged in parliament. While the prevailing theory at the time was that sovereignty could only be located in one place, in parliament, the colonists started to argue that parliament only could regulate trade using taxes, but not raises taxes on the colonies to raise revenue without the permission of the colonial legislatures. In fact the colonists started to suggest that the colonial legislatures were parallel to parliment in that both were bound together by allegiance to the crown (essentially the commonwealth system), another mystery to the British who saw parliment as the traditional protection against the crown. But to the British such theories were nonsense, especially since it would be almost impossible to distinguish between taxes to regulate trade and taxes to raise revenue. Some colonists argued that it would turn on the intent of parliment, while some British argued that what the colonists were really suggesting with their splitting of sovereignty was independence, a rationale the colonists eventually embraced.

Wood goes on to explain that in framing the state constitutions, the prevailing theory was that the legislature needed to be expanded as the embodiment of the people while the executive was generally weakened. At the same time, the separation of powers principle that legislators could not hold executive positions came into the foreground, to prevent the use of giving valuable offices to corrupt the legislature. Another key development of this time was the idea of the constitution as a superior fundamental law, above ordinary legislation. This made no sense to British eyes, for whom the constitution was simply the government. Americans struggled with how to make law fundamental, occasionally creating special requirements for legislatures to alter written constitutions, but eventually settled with the formula that the constitutions are paramount because they are adopted by special conventions of the people.

Then Wood writes about the familiar story of how the state legislatures started to frighten nationally minded men. The Articles government was too weak to enforce its treaty obligations, regulate trade, and could not raise its own money. State legislatures started to pass paper money laws, forcing creditors to take devalued paper money for debt, seriously harming the elites who lived off of lending (there was no analogue to British landlords, since land was too plentiful in America). State lawmakers seemed to be narrowly interest driven, and not interested in the greater long term good. These concerns lead to the desire to create a robust national government. Under Madison's original plan, the national government would have worked directly on the people through its proportional two houses, and two (one from the congress and one from a council of revision) vetos on unconstitutional state laws. He was disappointed when the vetos were lost and the senate was made equal. But Madison continued to defend the national constitution based on the idea that narrow interest groups would neutralize each other, much like a neutral law towards religion preserved a type of settled peace. Anti-federalists saw the constitution as a foisting of an aristocracy on America and raised the issue of split sovereignty that there were two governments sharing power, the states and the new national government. Federalists then developed the theory that the sovereignty belonged to the people, who delegated parts of it to the state and national government.

Wood's chapter on slavery is the most innovative of the entire book. There he argues that before the revolution, since labor was so valuable in the colonies, unfree labor (both slaves and forms of indentured servants) were more restrictive than in England. While there existed unfree white labor, slavery did not seem like an aberration. But at the time of the revolution and its discussions of liberty and equality, colonists realized the inherent issues of unfree labor; and the revolution unleashed important antislavery movements and forces. The northern states passed gradual abolition laws (but started to strip free blacks of their voting rights) or found slavery in violation of their constitutions, and Virginia passed manumission laws which were banned by British policy. Many of the Framers were optimistic that slavery was coming to a natural end, condemned the slave trade, and banned slavery in the Northwestern Ordinance. But there was already resistance to such a rosy picture by the deep south, which wrangled concessions in the constitution such as the 20 year ban on ending the slave trade, the 3/5th clause, and the fugitive slave clause despite the hard stop that slaves were never recognized as property under the constitution. But regardless, it was a sign of what was to come, and with the Haitian revolution and the fear it caused, any optimistic hope of the end of slavery was dashed, punting the issue to be resolved by a bloody civil war.

Wood's chapter on the judiciary is not wholly new but he does expand significantly on prior work. He has written before about the great mystery of how judges, who were originally seen as agents of the crown came to exercise the power of judicial review as agents of the people. Wood writes that early on, many people had thought that judges were part of the executive, and it was only a revolution in thought, that judges were also agents of the people that lead to the acceptance of judicial review. Wood argues that while many had agreed that the branches could make determinations on the constitutionality of laws, it was not clear why the judiciary would be able to trump the other branches' determinations. He argues instead that what occurred was the transformation of declaration of laws as unconstitutional which was a momentous political action (normally implicating the right to revolution) into a technical exercise in ordinary litigation (in fact this is what makes American constitutional law unique, it is just in due course of resolving a dispute between two parties in ordinary court, not a political high court or special mechanism). What caused this transformation was a growing distrust in popular law making. There was great hope that legislatures would codify and simplify law, but what occurred was a confusion of too many and inconsistent laws, leading to some to see technocrat judges as properly developing common law as a specialized area of knowledge. When Federalist judges tried to use common law in the criminal context, the Republicans nearly destroyed the judiciary out of the fear of an aristocratic lawmaking, but it was narrowly averted by the finesse of Marshall. As part of the suspicion of popular law making, judges were seen as defenders of rights, which had developed its specialized and technical meaning.

Related to this idea is Wood's last chapter in which he discusses the growing division of the private and public. Wood notes that before the revolution, political power followed social power (explaining the need for reputations, someone without a reputation could not lead), to the point that many thought of offices as inherited. Public projects were not carried out by the governments but by leaders in society. This changed with the revolution, and governments began to take more interest in carrying out public projects (as well as regulating society), and there were movements against inherited office holding. Property became personal, instead of a requirement of officeholding. People with no social standing flouted that fact as a plus and openly used offices to enrich themselves. There were pressures on legislative grants of charters of incorporations which were seen as anti-republican, eventually this led to general corporate statutes where anyone could apply to incorporate. Importantly, the distinction between a public corporation (towns, cities), that the legislature could modify at will, and the private corporation which was a type of personal property right and exempt from legislature modification (the contract impairments clause).

Wood finally concludes with Rhode Island which refused to join the constitutional convention. Rhode Island was a bit of a unique colony, with no centralized power and a particularly democratic government. Rhode Island was a particularly egregious issuer of paper money, which helped its middle class and commercial economy. Even though the constitution banned the state from issuing paper money, Rhode Island got around it by creating state banks that issued effective paper money. In a sense, Rhode Island was what terrified the Framers, but also ultimately what inevitably America became; a thriving commercial, and somewhat grubby democracy.

[Zachary Olsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an American history teacher at the secondary level, this book did an excellent job at explaining a few things that I've struggled to communicate to my students - namely the debate about virtual representation occurring before the Declaration of Independence, and then, in the last chapter about the challenges the early US faced in their issuing of paper money. The only reason I couldn't give this book five stars was the sheer volume of typographical errors - I know the book was released relatively recently, but I was a little shocked to find typos on what seemed like every fifth page or so.

[Bradd Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most surprising item from Wood’s book is that the constitution every American is so proud of was written not as a way to expand or enhance democracy but as a way of holding it in check.

When the various colonies of America had declared themselves liberated from England and claimed to be a republic they had done something radical. No Western country (or in this case loose confederation) had ever invented a government from whole cloth in service of the common man. The possibilities of such a government were so intoxicating to a people who had struggled under the yoke of a rigid, Old World, caste system that they could not help but abuse it—ignoring, or, at the very least, ignorant of the idea that any law they might see fit to pass could have unexpected consequences. This lack of perspective sometimes led to chaos and called for a corrective. That corrective came, finally, in the form of a strong national government based on a written constitution.

While there was certainly an unusual amount of political equality in America that didn’t mean it was without its social stratifications. There was the still the gentlemanly, educated, and privileged class who felt entitled to be in control of the levers of government and the uneducated, lower, “middling” class who were desperate to be its master.

James Madison in particular, saw the power of the middlings as a problem. He had been in the Virginia legislature and had seen firsthand how the middling man governed and was appalled. As a result, he and some of the others of his class became determined to reinvent the Articles of Confederation and replace it with a document that would bring a defining power to a federal government that could could rein in the states. This decision made the country what it is today but it was not without its ramifications. Again and again, we see in Wood’s book that the same arguments we have in America now about who should rule: the urban or the rural citizen, the common or the elite, the states or the federal government were rooted in these foundational and divisive class distinctions. The fact these issues are still with us suggests that the government they created in response has its flaws and is clearly a work in progress, or that any government no matter how well intentioned it might be is always, in some way, going to be balanced on a knife’s edge.

Of course to say that the country was truly representative at that time was inaccurate anyway. In most states even freed blacks, women, and indentured servants could not vote. One of the most revealing aspects of Wood’s book is the way in which he shows that slavery in its many different forms was so widespread in 18th century America. Whites and blacks were both victims of it in somewhat different ways. The attitude toward work at that time was distinctly hierarchal. Those at the bottom had less rights.

It’s clear in Wood’s book that the founders of the country knew their republic was vulnerable to corruption, abuse, and tyranny. It took a lot of trial and error to create the system we have today. Still the founders knew that it was a system that could be exploited. Only a mutually shared sense of ideals and values could hold it together.

Wood clearly feels the American experiment is inspirational and exhilarating and definitely worth preserving. His book gives us a perspective on how difficult this is.

[Jason Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wood, who got his two minutes of fame as the subject of a quote in Good Will Hunting ("you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin' about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization"), is nearing the end of a prolific, 50+ year career in academia, specializing in early American history and constitutionalism. In closing out his career he sought to contribute a volume in opposition to history-as-politics or even partisan propaganda. As he writes in the introduction, "Assuming that every nation needs its history to be as accurate as possible, this book aims to recover those aspects of America's constitutional history it deals with as impartially and as truthfully as possible."

Perhaps the key word in that quote is 'recover,' as Wood clearly believes that American history has succumbed to either forgetfulness or deliberate misrepresentation, or both. His book reminded me a bit of Bernard Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, but more up-to-date. It was only after thinking this that I discovered he studied under Bailyn while receiving his PhD from Harvard in the early 60s. "The student is not greater than the Master," except in this case, Wood's writing is perhaps a bit more accessible than Bailyn's and, if I may add, perhaps a bit more in line with my own understanding of our founding.

It's probably an impossible task to write a completely neutral rendering of any history, but especially something as complex and important as the American founding. I would say that Wood does a very good job of doing so, with a few exceptions where his own opinions clearly leak into his writing.

Wood draws out several interesting themes in the book, reflected in his somewhat-interesting chapter divisions:

1. In the first chapter, The Imperial Debate, Wood notes how the colonists' notions of representative democracy grew out of their disputes with England on the nature of the British Empire. Were colonial legislatures subject to Parliament, or were they separate, independent legislatures answerable only to King George (hint: reading the list of grievances in the DoI will help answer this question)? What is sovereignty and where does it reside? Where should it reside? Many themes that Wood develops in this chapter are played out in later chapters, which follow a mostly chronological step through American history.

2. Wood's second chapter is entitled State Constitution Making, in which he makes a very strong case that it wasn't the drafting of the US Constitution that was really revolutionary, but the thirteen experiments in state constitution-making that preceded it. The thirteen colonies were largely independently working out some of the republican theories recently popularized by Burke, Montesquieu, Paine, and others--theories which had never been fully fleshed out in practice in the modern world. Should there be an upper and lower house, similar to the Lords and Commons (ten states), or a unicameral legislature (Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Vermont)? If the executive powers were limited, where should those necessary powers be granted instead--the legislature? If the judiciary was not simply an agent of the executive, should it be an agent of the legislature, or completely independent? And so on. This was a fascinating chapter.

3. In The Crisis of the 1780s, Wood perhaps departs the furthest from simply recording history and offers his own interpretation on what specific weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation led to their scrapping and the adoption of their successor, the US Constitution. Contra nineteenth century historians who concluded that the constitutional convention was necessary because of a near-collapse of the state economies, Wood argues that the 1780s were a time of relative prosperity, quoting one bewildered South Carolinian: "If we are undone, we are the most splendidly ruined of any nation in the universe." Wood also takes issue with Charles Beard's (and the twentieth-century Progressives) assertions that the Constitution was essentially a conspiratorial fraud "foisted on the country by a minority of men with particular property interests that needed protection from rampaging democratic state legislatures." Instead, Wood points out the lack of taxation authority in the Articles was debilitating, that the country wasn't strong enough to defend itself on the high seas from Barbary pirates and other nations' humiliations, but the much more serious problem was that "excessive democracy in the states created a sense of genuine crisis among many leaders that required the scrapping of the Articles and the formation of the new Constitution." This is a bold claim and one that Wood supports well, which gives a radically different interpretation to the founding era than children are being taught today (if they are being taught American history at all...).

4. In The Federal Constitution, Wood covers the puts and takes in the convention itself and offers that the US Constitution was largely a product of compromise between competing interests. Especially insightful was Wood's coverage of James Wilson's observations on the nature of sovereignty and where it should reside in American constitutionalism.

5. In Slavery and Constitutionalism, Wood provides a good overview of the state of slavery in both the US and the wider world and its contributions to the political debates of the time. As a complex issue often reduced to sound bites for political purposes, this chapter provides a measured view that anyone with an interest in truth rather than propaganda should read.

6. The Emergence of the Judiciary was, for me, one of the areas in which Wood covered almost completely new ground. What we now take for granted as an independent judiciary was perhaps one of the most revolutionary departures from the past. Jefferson observed in 1776 that Americans had come to view judicial activity as "the eccentric impulses of whimsical, capricious, designing man" and the legislatures as the representatives of the people and the defender of their rights. The notion that an independent judiciary also represented the people and could take the legislature to task for violating fundamental law (i.e., the constitution, as opposed to normal legislative activity) was not found even in the Enlightenment theorists.

7. In The Great Demarcation between Public and Private, Wood is absolutely brilliant. Prior to the revolutionary era, there was little distinction between 'public' and 'private' spheres. Offices, even in a republic, were often nearly hereditary and it was often the private wealth and reputation of a man that made him fit for office. Consequently, there was often admixture of both public and private funds. Men used their private wealth to execute public responsibilities and had little compunction in using public funds for private purposes; wasn't the one man both public official and private citizen?

8. Wood's Epilogue is an interesting, but confusing, diversion on Rhode Island commerce and paper money. Its content serves to emphasize several themes Wood makes throughout, but seems to be a bit forced and out of place.

This is really an excellent book and I would highly recommend it to any interested reader of American history. Had it been better executed, I would give it six stars, but it suffers from poor editing (several typos, repeat sentences, etc.), a slight lack of connectivity (Wood could have done a much better job of closing loops later in the book that he opened in earlier chapters), and the lack of a strong conclusion in favor of a somewhat meandering epilogue.

[Richard Subber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gordon Wood, a gifted historian, applies his highly respected talents to the history and evolution of the American brand of a “constitution,” but he skims the underlying political machinations, and that’s annoying.

Power and Liberty offers details galore about the thinking, historical foundations, terminologies, and philosophies that affected the development of the American constitution, and the range of ideologies and convictions that were exercised in its final adoption (ratified 1788).

I think a defect of Wood’s approach is that he allows the reader to infer that all the constitutional squabbling was pretty much intellectual give-and-take. The making of the American constitution was hardcore, eye-gouging, undisguised, self-serving political debate and argument. Some of “the people” finally approved the highly compromised document, but it was shaped by many powerful and elite interests.

Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com

[Ostap Bender · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the early period of the formation of America government. The central theme from which the title derives is the tradeoff between power (enabling those in government) and liberty (the rights of individuals). Wood lays this out in chapters that review the debate over separating from England, how the States paved the way for self-government in the form we have today through their own constitutions, and how the resulting “democracy gone wild” led to a conservative shift and the increased Federal power in the Constitution of 1787 that we now revere. Getting his insights into how this played out over time, when the Revolutionary period is all too easily lumped together in one’s mind, was wonderful. He goes on in further chapters to address slavery, the rise of power in the Judicial branch, and the debate between public and private spheres, which set the context for each in startling ways, as well as an epilogue that focuses on the wild (yet productive) state of Rhode Island as a case study. As any form of government has its flaws, and as Wood deftly represents the framework for the government in Great Britain, it’s a work that really made me think, and all the more so because of the relevance of these same debates in the present day.

Jefferson and Madison, while they differed on the proper amount of Federal authority, both saw with great frustration what democracy was in the first decade of America. Wood writes, “Such men [the elected representatives] rarely had any concern for public honor or honesty and always seemed to have a ‘particular interest to serve’ regardless of the needs of the whole state or the nation. They made a travesty of the legislative process and were reluctant to do anything that might appear unpopular with their constituents. They postponed taxes, subverted debts owed to the subjects of Great Britain, and passed, defeated, and repassed bills in the most haphazard manner.” Madison realized that “too many Americans could not see beyond their own pocketbooks or their own neighborhoods.” Sound familiar? This is what led to the Constitutional Congress, and the ensuing debate between all-Federal authority, essentially demolishing the States, and allowing States some authority without creating an “imperium in imperio,” an empire within an empire. Wood’s description of its formation and the compromises along the way is excellent.

Wood probably should have included content on how the Constitution notably did not allow its states to secede from the Union, since this would be the drama that would play out in the 19th century. That said, he summarizes the viewpoints and debates without apparent bias, simply trying to present truth and historical accuracy, which I appreciated. He lauds the achievements of the early American government, noting how many of its aspects were unprecedented in the world, while at the same time, makes it clear that American democracy was not without its drawbacks, and that its leaders struggled with where to place power.

The formation of the electoral college was another fascinating passage. “…how would the people in such a huge nation know who were the best men qualified to be president?” Wood writes. “Finally after much discussion and many votes, the Convention decided to create an alternative Congress composed of notables who would know who was competent to be president; it would have one function: to elect the president every four years. … Many expected the electoral college to work as a nominating body in which no one normally would get a majority of electoral votes; therefore, most elections would take place in the House of Representatives among the top five candidates, with each state’s congressional delegation voting as a unit.” It’s just fascinating to ponder the original intention vs. the usage of this body today.

Wood is not without the occasional clunker, however. Early on he states that because Americans come from a wider set of cultures, “other nations are having greater problems with immigrants than we are,” completely overlooking America’s long history of persecuting successive waves of immigrant groups, to the present day. I’m also not sure quoting Charles Beard’s treatise from 1913 on the Constitution was such a great idea, given his “specific arguments and proofs have been eviscerated and were too crudely presented to be persuasive today.” Overall, though, this is a good read, and certainly insightful in many more areas beyond the points I’ve mentioned here.

[Robert Mckay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without the Constitution, the United States wouldn't exist as we know it - and might not exist at all. It was the Constitution which created the federal government, with its three branches separating the powers of government, and allowing the United States to move from an unruly mob of almost totally independent states to a confident federation which could take its place in the world without fear or shame. Alas, the shape the United States have taken in the 20th and 21st centuries isn't what the Constitution created, but that's a subject for another book.

The subject here is how the people of the colonies moved from loyal subjects of Great Britain, in willing submission to the king and to Parliament, to a group of independent republics fighting for their liberty, shedding their own blood to get out from under both king and Parliament. The political thinking in the colonies, which became the United States (and as a side note, in those days many references were to the "united States," united being an adjective describing the states rather than part of a national name), underwent a truly rapid transformation in a period of about 10 years, resulting in the Declaration of Independence. And then after the United States won the Revolutionary War, thinking continued to develop, until the creation of the Constitution. And although the book doesn't address this point, it's worth noting here that the various states individually withdrew from the Articles of Confederation, and individually ratified the Constitution, voluntarily leaving one confederation and joining another - something which has great relevance to the so-called civil war of 1861-1865, and to our modern day.

Wood is a very clear, cogent, and interesting writer, which a lot of academics aren't. He knows how to present the facts neither dryly nor pompously, but interestingly. And unlike many historians, he doesn't parrot the mythology which arose during and after the War for Southern Independence, building on Lincoln's absurd contention that the Constitution created the states and therefore secession was illegal. He knows - and says - that the states were independent, sovereign republics which formed a confederation in order to effectively contend against Britain for their independence. He rightly compares the United States to the European Union, which no one would ever confuse for a single consolidated nation from which no state can ever withdraw (indeed, the "Brexit" was exactly comparable to an American state seceding from the union). He doesn't take sides in the War for Southern Independence, and that war and its debates aren't his subject - but by stating the simple truth about this he cuts the legs out from under those who insist, in essence, that one can voluntarily join an association and then that association has the right to use brute force to keep you from ever leaving it.

In 2021, after decades of ignorance of the Constitution, after decades of judges making "constitutional law" which is as connected to the actual Constitution as a fish is connected to a sparrow, after the past couple of years in which mayors, governors, and federal officials have blatantly ignored the Constitution and deliberately violated rights that the Constitution renders inviolable, this book is eminently necessary. And anyone who wants to know where he ought to stand in the waning days of 2021 needs to read this book.

The only flaw I found was an incomprehensible lack of proofreading. This is the Oxford University Press, hardly a cut-rate publisher, yet it appears that the only proofreading anyone did was to run the spell checker over it. I can't fathom any reputable publisher allowing such a large number of such obvious typographical errors into print, and for the Oxford press to do so is almost as difficult to credit as for the moon to float in a cup of tea.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some main points I picked up:

First, what was the purpose of the American Revolution? According to Woods, it was to "create republican governments that would abolish the abuses of patronage and patrimonial power...In place of dependent subjects they would create republican citizens who were equal and independent and free from dependency on grandees and patrons....It sought to assert the primacy of the public good over all private interests...to separate sharply the public from the private and to prevent the intrusion of private interests into the public realm." The then republican states (after the Articles of Confederation and prior the Constitution) were for "promoting a unitary public interest that was to be clearly distinguishable from the many private interests of their societies." Prior to the Revolution, colonial governments relied on private interests to carry out what today we would consider public necessities - governments used their legal authority to require people to carry out necessary tasks. As well, offices were occupied by the wealthy and passed down to family. Though government officials often used their own funds to purchase supplies or pay salaries, in the same way public funds were often used to pay for private affairs.

Why the need for scrapping of the Articles of Confederation and the making of our Constitution? Was it solely for the issues of commerce, credit, and foreign policy? No. It was also needed because of "excessive democracy." The common man, the middling man, began to make too much of a presence and influence in government, particularly as seen in Shays Rebellion.

Next, what was so different about the Constitution? Quoting one of the first Supreme Court justices: "In England, the constitution lay entirely at the mercy of the Parliament," whereas by the end of Revolutionary America a constitution was no part of a government. It was a written document "distinct from and superior to all the operations of government." Wood then quotes Thomas Paine as stating that a constitution is a "thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution." A constitution is "the act of the people themselves." How? Because it is "the practice of separation of powers, the modern idea of a constitution as a written document, the device of specially elected conventions for creating and amending constitutions, and the process of popular ratification." These idea were initially realized between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution via the making of state constitutions.

What of slavery and our constitution? How do we talk about equal rights and republican ideas yet slavery continued. On the eve of revolution there was a "mounting sense" that slavery was "on its last legs."We know this thinking was wrong. During the Revolutionary era the number of enslaved grew. Wood notes that slavery had existed for millennia throughout the world which prevented a quick ending. Though some northern states attacked slavery with mention of abolition in their state constitutions, and the Confederation Congress made its own attempt with the Northwest Ordinance, we know that during the Constitutional Convention slavery was a tense issue with much confrontation and debate which led to several compromises between north and south (especially Georgia and South Carolina) resulting in the the three-fifths clause and the Fugitive Slave Clause). (I had not realized the extent to which Virginia had considered ending slavery - which changed in the 1790s with the multitude of slave rebellions). Though the Constitution did not fully address the abolishing of slavery, and by the early 19th century the difference between the north and south in terms of the ideology of manual labor and slavery, Wood urges us to understand that the actual institution of slavery WAS challenged, and abolished in the northern states, and paved the way for other nations to do so.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book from one of THE top historians of the founding period of the US. Wood examines a number of key intellectual, political, and social shifts during the founding era with a focus on the making and meanings of Constitution. Wood starts by examining the issue of sovereignty in the American Revolution. At first, most colonial protests against GB were about the exertion of parliamentary sovereignty over the colonies, not monarchical rule; he shows that it was actually well before 1776 that most colonies had become de facto independent, having declared that parliamentary sovereignty does not and cannot apply to the colonies (thus making no taxation without representation a slight misnomer). In the early 1770s, the colonists were arguing that they still had allegiance to the king but had the right to rule themselves. This definitely reoriented my understanding of the leadup to the revolution.

Next Wood looks at constitutionalism at the state level during the Revolutionary War. This was another explosion of thought and experimentation, one which greatly empowered legislatures in most states (including some that only had a legislative branch). Wood quickly but thorough examines these state constitutions, which helped enable a huge surge in popular participation in politics and formed many of the core ideas of the eventual Constitution.

Wood then reframes the 1780s: on one hand, it was an era of explosive growth, intense democratic participation in politics, and change and optimism about American society. However, the eventual founders of the Constitution believed that A. the Articles of Confederation were totally inadequate for creating a large, coordinated, integrated republic that could compete in a hostile international climate 2. The states under their individual constitutions were running amok, reflecting an excess of democracy by, for example, issuing paper money and forgiving debts in ways that were harmful to the economic elite, to the US global credibility, and just generally destabilizing to the economy. They called the Constitutional Convention because of a growing consensus that the AoC were inadequate, not because of an overwhelming social or economic crisis. In the last 3 chapters of the book, Wood explores some of the social, moral, and legal trends of this era and their relationship to the Constitution, including anti-slavery, the rise of the judiciary as a check on legislative power especially, and the growing demarcation between a public and private sphere of life that became foundational to liberalism in the 19th century.

The thing I like about Wood is the he appreciates the Revolution for what it was in context, rather than comparing it to some idealized good. He of course recognizes its limits, but he doesn't stretch the historical record to fit some preconceived ideological agenda (1619, cough). There really wasn't anything in the world at the time quite like the American Revolution, the constitutional and public political debates that were going on, the ordered movement toward greater liberty (contra the French Revolution) and the explosion of popular energies that revolutionized a continent and eventually reshaped the world. What Wood really appreciates is just how different the US was becoming in this era than countries like Britain or France, even if we today may wish it had become more different, more like us today. That is what I think a historian should do, and the rest can be left to polemicists.

[Erik Champenois · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise, but thorough, overview of some of the highlights of constitutionalism in the American Revolution, with chapters devoted to the imperial crisis, the state constitutions, the problems with the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, slavery and constitutionalism, the emergence of the judiciary, and the growing demarcation between public and private in the early American republic.

A very helpful overview of several of the most important issues of the time, and recommended reading for anyone interested in the American Founding. Despite having read many books on the period already, I learned things from this book that I hadn't realized before, including how Shay's Rebellion was not just disconcerting to the Founders because of its nature, but because it took place in Massachusetts, which was considered to have an otherwise model conservative constitution. If Massachusetts couldn't resist the populist impulses of early America, then who would?

My one criticism of the book is that in its focus on the Founders and the impact their thinking had on early American constitutionalism, the book neglects the perspectives of Black and indigenous peoples. Wood acknowledges in his introduction that this isn't a complete history and specifically points out the constitutional issues surrounding native peoples as one gap. But I also found his chapter on slavery and constitutionalism lacking. Despite presenting otherwise excellent context, the chapter focuses on the narrative that most people at the time believed slavery as an institution was on its way out - and that the North, and even Virginia, had made significant gains in challenging the slave trade and slavery. Yet this neglects the very real fact that some people had an interest in the perpetuation of slavery: the lack of a Southern perspective, or of a fuller treatment of the slave interests in early America, makes for a more celebratory narrative, and thus perhaps unintentionally plays into a different kind of "usable past" than the one the author critiques some historians for writing.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historian Gordon S. Wood is a professor at Brown University in Rhode Island. In 2021, Gordon S. Wood published a book entitled Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution. Wood’s book is based on “a series of lectures that Wood presented at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in the fall of 2019” (Wood ix). The book has an introduction. Chapter 1 explores the differing understandings of constitutionalism in the British Isles and the thirteen colonies during the 18th Century (Wood 5). Chapter 2 discusses the state constitutions in the pre-federal United States. Chapter 3 discusses why the decade of the 1780s led to the creation of the federal Constitution. Chapter 4 is on the federal Constitution (Wood 74-99). Chapter 5 examines how slavery fit into the debate over constitutionalism in the early United States. Chapter 6 is on “the emergence of the Judiciary” branch (Wood 149-174). Chapter 7 is on how “distinguishing between public and private spheres, not just in law but also in other areas of life, was an important consequence of the American Revolution” (Wood 149). The “Epilogue” (Wood 175-188) explores why representatives from Rhode Island did not attend the Constitutional Convention in 1787 in Philadelphia (Wood 175). The “Epilogue” explores how Rhode Island had embraced paper money, which led the non-Rhode Islander Founding Fathers to be suspicious of Rhode Island (Wood 180-182). Even Alexander Hamilton, who understood how banking worked, did not understand the economy of Rhode Island (Wood 184). Wood feels that being “overwhelmingly middle-class in character, Rhode Island anticipated the vibrant capitalistic society of northern antebellum society as no other state did” (Wood 176). I read the book on the Kindle. The book has a section of notes and an index. I read the book on my Kindle. Wood’s book Power and Liberty is thoughtful.
Works Cited:
Bernstein, R.B. 2015. The Founding Fathers: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Kindle,
Loughlin, Martin. 2023. The British Constitution: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Kindle.

[Urey Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

American exceptionalism is a concept widely misunderstood, if not intentionally distorted. It has nothing to do with economics, or military prowess, or size or power or political aspirations, or international standing. It has everything to do with the foundational nature of the entity that is America and the fundamental power for the authority of the state. As Gordon Woods makes clear, there is always an ultimate, supreme authority that enables an empowers the state. For America that primary, original source of power resides in the consent of the governed – not in cultural or tribal traditions, not in divine right or clannish bloodlines. It is not a matter of heritage or racial history or caste-based traditions. It is not inherited or bequeathed or predestined. The people collectively retain the ultimate, foundational power of governance and only the people.

America did that – it is the only country to do so and the underlying principles of human liberty, independence of thought and the critical irreducible prerequisite for consent are the very essence of American exceptionalism, for those things were extraordinarily exceptional at inception, and continue so today. American exceptionalism is real, and lasting. To be sure, America has not always fully lived up to those foundational principles and ideals, but very generation it gets closer and closer across the board. That too, is exceptional.

In “Power and Liberty” Gordon Wood has laid out the genesis of the foundational principles and immutable concepts first formally articulated in the Declaration of Independence and subsequently translated into the structure of government in the US Constitution. It is a slim volume, but riveting to read. Wood takes the reader through the slow but steady formulation of the concepts and ideals that underlay the principles, and ultimately gave those principles their context and form. Th Founding Fathers were feeling their way, and they were not uniform in their views, opinions or goals. The various compromises and machinations that led to the final form of the American experiment are fascinating ... including the huge bait and switch that was the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in the first place instigated almost entirely by James Madison (the aptly described Father of the Constitution) who ended up convinced it was all a failure.

The book should be required reading – it instills a profound appreciation for the foundational principles of the American way of life, our Constitutional system, and the existential reality of our Declaration and Constitution. Wood dispels a lot of misconceptions that have become more conventional, if not more characteristic of assorted partisan agendas. It is an engaging, superbly perceptive and deeply informed, absorbingly written civics lesson that many of us sadly need.

[Caitlin Peters · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful introduction to the creation of the US Constitution which stemmed from English common law. Read this for my Barnes and Noble 52 Book Challenge for something that takes place in the 1700's. As someone who hasn't read a history book in a while since my college days this was an easy transition. An easier read but chock full of information and definitely a lot of things they skip in most history classes particularly of the public school variety. Such as the difference of slaves and indentured servants and Federalists and Jefferson Republicans. I also had no clue that according to some accounts indentured servants in some cases had it worse than slaves. Also once the slaves were I also had no idea that in the process of freeing slaves most of them were indentured servants until they turned a certain age. I have a deeper appreciation for the process of writing the US Constitution and the thought process behind it. It further inspires me to read it time and time again to make sure it is being followed and that our freedoms remain in check. This book also has me reflecting on just how big and powerful the federal government has gotten since its inception. I found the last chapter on the demarcation of public and private property enlightening and it is still very much something we should think about today. The epilogue was also fascinating for being such a tiny state Rhode Island has quite the history! The notes section was helpful as much as I don't flipping back and forth there are some sources in there I would like to consult in the future. I would like to read more books by Gordon S. Wood if they are a similar style to this one I'm sure I'll enjoy them.

[Stephen Morrissey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Esteemed American Revolution historian Gordon Wood delivers a supremely accessible and fascinating overview of the dynamics of American constitution-making and how profound the changes were that occurred between the 1760s and the early 19th Century. While Progressive historians from Charles Beard on posited the federal Constitution as a conspiracy of monied interests, Wood makes a compelling rejoinder that instead of economics, the primary influence for the development of a new constitution was consternation at the democratic state constitutions that proliferated in 1776 and 1777. However, the monied interests, even if benefitting from the Constitution, were not the real winners: the middle-class artisans, businessmen, and entrepreneurs turned American culture upside down and made America the home of the most participatory republic in history.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wood, one of the foremost historians of early American history, offers with this book an account of the dynamics at work in the American constitution-making. There is so much that could be discussed but of particular interest to me was the dynamics of power that attended the making of the Constitution, such as slavery, the creation of a public sphere distinct from the private, the intrinsic tension between disinterested monarchical or aristocratic forms of government and more democratic, interested forms which attended the making of the Constitution as well as the economic reasons that lay behind the push for the formation of a constitution. As with his other works, this is essential reading for any serious student of early American political realities, with the same realities still impacting the political terrain today.

[John Deacon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful, short book. The third I've read from Wood.

My favorite thing about his books is how he weaves in cultural elements of the colonial/revolutionary era. You might be reading the same series of events (Articles, Constitution, slavery, federalist/anti-federalist debates) but you end up learning so much about the context of the time. Wood expertly relates revolutionary and founding events to the social and political issues of colonial history. His description of the cultural aspects helps to understand just how much the ideas we take for granted today were revolutionary for their time.

The epilogue covering Rhode Island and paper money was the icing on the weird revolutionary cake.

[Serge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent summary of a life's worth of scholarship

I have been reading Gordon Woods for as long as I have studied American history. Two significant insights in this short treatise are Madison's desire to curb the disastrous runaway populism in states such as Rhode Island and the Founders complicated relationship with slavery which they thought would die off within a generation. I also appreciated the chapter on the demarcation of the public and the private which is once again in evidence in our contemporary wrestling with tech seigneuries. I am recommending this book to my AP History students.

[Christopher Cerone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Americans of all stripes would do well to freshen up their understanding of the motivational forces behind the Revolution by reading this fine book. The inimitable historian Gordon Wood succinctly and convincingly notes how the Declaration and Constitution reflected the ideals and ideas percolating in the colonies for many years. He also astutely illustrates how the Revolution and the Founding documents set in motion important advances in commerce, law and politics, and unleashed the first anti-slavery movement in history. This is an erudite book that is accessible, insightful and inspiring.

[Ivan L Hutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent revelation (new to me, not included in any of my high school and college American history studies and post undergrad history reading) of the main factors, focusing on the major problem behaviors, including state constitutions and the proliferation of paper money and obstacles to trade among the colonies and going on between in the colonies between 1776 and 1787, influencing the development and content of the US Constitution of 1787. Clear and well written narrative of the problem behaviors of the states.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want a short, but substantive understanding as to how we became a nation, this book of Professor Wood is indispensable. He certainly has distilled the essence of the making of our democratic republic, not coming fresh from the convention in Pennsylvania, but among each of the colonies just before the Declaration of Independence and just after the Revolutionary War. Each colony engaged in debates over governance and republican ideas, and the need for written constitutions. Out of those colonist constitution making, the Republic we have today was made possible.

[John Petersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended; it’s a fantastic, albeit much too short, discussion of the thoughts, philosophies, traditions, psyches, biases, and emotions that went into creating the revolutionary new constitutional government of fledgling United States of America. So many Americans think the illustrious “founding fathers” all thought alike and were of like mind. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s rather amazing it actually got accomplished at all, and even George Washington didn’t think it would last more than two decades.

[Bobby Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting history of how the Constitution came to be and evolved from earlier conceptions. The idea that the document was meant to address concerns raised by "too much democracy" is an established but powerful discussion with wide implications. There are various points mentioned in the book that warranted much more discussion. The Constitution was meant to define what the government could not do as much as what it could. There are mentions of controversial subjects like eminent domain and even de Tocqueville's observation that lawyers have become the new aristocracy, and how government positions began to be used to serve private and special interests, but I believe the book would have benefited from a great deal more discussion about how the Constitution has sometimes been broadly (mis)construed to give the government powers to interfere in the lives of everyday citizens that were never intended, passing laws and policies that would never make it through the ballot box.

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly informative and helpful book, giving a window into the cultural attitudes of the Revolutionary and early 19th C periods of our country, and into the concerns of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists.

Many typos litter this book, and the editing/layout of the content makes little sense. The epilogue is really just another chapter that is kind of unrelated to the rest of the book. And the chapter on public/private distinction should've come at the beginning.

[Michael Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply put, very interesting

This book covers the early days of our republic. It includes many examples of the civic engagement of our forebears. Shamefully, perhaps by design, laypeople are not taught these details. Be that as it may, once you read this book you will be simultaneously amazed and grateful that things turned out like the have. God bless the brilliant and steadfast few who kept the vision of a republic of, for and by the people in view.

[Brian Ruddock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterclass on efficient writing. Every sentence is packed with meaning, backed by research, and contains no fluff. Don’t be tempted to breeze through this book despite its length, or you’ll miss something important.

Equally refreshing is Wood’s insistence on informing the reader about the past without projecting his political views or making ties to current events. This is a phenomenal book to learn about the evolution of political and legal thought around the Revolution.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was really well written and explained a lot about various ideas and concepts relating to constitutionalism and how they developed in the United States, how they became different than British ideas because of their North American context, and so forth. I really learned a lot from this book and it was a valuable addition to my self-education on the U.S. Constitution and the history of the founding of the American Republic.