The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787

by Gordon S. Wood

One of the half dozen most important books ever written about the American Revolution.-- New York Times Book Review

"During the nearly two decades since its publication, this book has set the pace, furnished benchmarks, and afforded targets for many subsequent studies. If ever a work of history merited the appellation 'modern classic,' this is surely one.-- William and Mary Quarterly

"[A] brilliant and sweeping interpretation of political culture in the Revolutionary generation.-- New England Quarterly

"This is an admirable, thoughtful, and penetrating study of one of the most important chapters in American history.--Wesley Frank Craven

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

680 pages, Hardcover

First published January 28, 1969

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

[Frank Stein · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on American government I've ever read.

This was not exactly a school book, but one of my teachers kept recommending it so frequently and so heartily that I had to give it a try, even if its not exactly in my field. He was right. It is just an amazing piece of work.

It's an intellectual history of sorts, except there are practically no individual characters or thinkers. Most of the innumerable quotes come from a barely distinguished mass of newspapers and private correspondence. A typical paragraph may contain phrases from five papers, 2 diaries, and James Madison, all attributed only in the footnotes. But this is kind of the genius of the work. Wood tries to show how an entirely new way of political thought was created and spread in the ten turbulent years after independence, not just among a few thinkers, but among the whole American people. He begins by describing the old "civic republican" ideology that motivated the early revolutionaries (where government was composed of 3 distinct estates (not branches), focused almost entirely on the legislature, and run by disinterested public men of virtue), and then discusses the rise of a new, modern conception of politics (where separation of powers was paramount, and all sovereignty rested not in the "rulers" but in the people).

These are all big ideas, but Wood shows how America in this decade was peculiarly placed to wrestle with them. He focuses on the hitherto neglected debates over state constitutions, which forced every American to think about what a bicameral legislature meant, where the appointive power should lie, and how much power judges should be given to interpret the law. In Woods' story it seems that the whole country for ten years was engaged in one massive, and shockingly intelligent, constitutional debate. But more than just a debate, Wood shows an how this intellectual discussion was rooted in real events. He shows how state legislatures rose and fell, and, most importantly, how people actually LEARNED from the mistakes of the past, and how new arguments based on these events (say, on the nature of the upper house or "Senate") took thinkers in directions they never would have expected. When the time finally came for a new, federal constitution in 1787, Americans had already formulated some of the most daring and original political thought on the planet, and they were ready to implement it.

For me the book finally answered the question of how early America produced so many great political thinkers in what was then such a small, provincial backwater. The answer is that 10 years of highly refined discussion about the nature of colonial, state, and federal government made Americans perhaps the most experienced political thinkers to ever walk the earth. As Wood shows, they forged the world's first real constitution (he also shows how the very concept of a constitution was born and evolved), and created some of the most enduring thoughts about politics ever. The problem is that because this thought was scattered in countless pamphlets and papers, historians of political science haven't given these everyday Americans the credit they give to Locke or Montesquieu. Wood remedies the defect, and shows how Americans truly created something new under the sun, and how their seemingly abstract thoughts on things like national sovereignty and virtual representation had a real, and lasting, impact.

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not a "book" so much as a collage of artfully strung together phrase-length quotations -- sort of like if you asked to guy who wrote the restaurant reviews for Zagats to write about the intellectual history of the American Revolution. "I liked the 'balance of power' and 'the lack of a hereditary aristocracy,' but the steak was 'overcooked' and the maitre d' refused to 'give voting rights to the Negroes.'" Each paragraph had its own footnote, and a standard one that I opened to randomly reads: "Ibid., 364, 171, 33, 150, 422, 200, 356, 393, 374." So, that's what your getting.

The best part, though, was the actual ideas that were considered, if you could get through the ponderous writing style to actually think about them. What did the Founding Fathers mean when they talked about a "Republican form of government"? Not what we mean today, and not even what the people they were talking to actually meant. Why did America revolt over voting rights, while people in England -- many of whom also did not have voting rights -- did not?

Most interestingly for me, why did almost every state that formed its own Constitution after 1776 create a bicameral legislature with an upper and a lower house? Why does New jersey have a bicameral legislature today? "Upper" and "lower" than what? The obvious answer is that England did it that way -- with it's House of Lords and House of Commons. But in a country with no Lords, what was the Upper House/ State Senate actually supposed to BE? It seems that every state had a different answer, and while almost every state had an upper house, the answers were almost all different. Some states had an upper house with stricter voting requirements so only richer people voted for it. Some states had an upper house with stricter eligibility requirements for candidates, so everyone (who was a white man) voted but they could only vote for richer people. Some had a lower house for "the people" and an upper house for "the property." Only Pennsylvania, I think, had a unicameral legislature in the decade after 1776, and they didn't keep it for long. It's a fascinating case where everyone agreed on the same answer, but the answer itself was so poorly defensible that it is surprising that they didn't all stop for second and consider the fact that they were possibly all wrong.

Then, at the end, there was an incongruous chapter about "The Relevance of John Adams," which seemed like a personal grudge by the author against Adams, who seemed to write lots of things later in his life that went against parts of the author's thesis, so he had to show that no one was listening to him anyway. I'm going to keep the book for the footnotes, and if I ever want to look at any of these issues again, I'll read the book in the footnotes instead of this one again.

[Billy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought this for eleven dollars at Powell's on a trip to Portland back in October, and started it soon after; I think it took so long to finish because reading it felt like work, or perhaps homework (although I was a history major at college I'm uncertain whether I read him then in my poor excuse for an American history curriculum*). Or maybe it was the interminable circularity of his points and Zagatian pathology of constructing prose not by synthesizing and summarizing but by hitching quotation snippets together. And yeah, as he admits in the new preface to this edition, the 600-plus pages so rife with equine corpse abuse give just about zero space to the influence of religious or broader philosophical trends (e.g. congregationalist protestantism, Scottish common-sense realism) on the rapid development of a fundamentally new and uniquely American political science. One would also wish for some discussion of how the intellectual leaders of the new republic expressed and classified the fact of their own subjugation of an entire class of people. Not a ham-fisted "in-the-context-of-the-time" defense, but just honesty as to where this social fact fit into their system of thinking or, if they did not think of it at all, then at least pointing as much out affirmatively. Otherwise, the story of the development of American constitutional notions is sanitized and false, a creation myth stripped of its original sin.**

But that's enough criticism - what a sheer pleasure to spend time with a teacher so obviously fascinated and hungry for his material. One of the main themes is the movement away from conceiving of government as embodying and mirroring society, as the English system purported to do by carving out the executive magistracy for the monarch, the peerage for the wealthy, wise and deserving aristocracy, and the House of Commons for everybody else. Instead, even though the formal structure of a President, Senate, and House of Representatives was drawn from each of the same, respectively (the judiciary a derivative, not independent, function of the monarch, of course, as was too the English legislature - the King's Parliament), the idea was not to reflect the allocations of liberty in society but to diffuse the right - for which all [who counted, of course] were equally qualified - to exercise governmental power amongst different functions, and thus forestall easy dominance by any one faction of any sort (as Wood winks at the very end, hence the consolidation of political parties, not provided for in the federal constitution at all, soon after its conception). It's too tempting to resist reading this with the egocentric view of the present, looking back from now for purposes of the genealogy or diagnosis of modern political idiosyncrasies. One sees the antecedent Whig belief in simplicity and (re)public(an) virtue (which survives in mythology, if nothing else) yield to the stronger forces of individualism and the market of self-interests to find a durable system for the sharing and wielding of power; in the constitutional design was embedded the DNA of latter-day fractiousness and dysfunction (not to mention disunion). There's a sort of sad little chapter at the end of a quixotically old-fashioned John Adams more or less shaking his fist at the moon in resistance to (or ignorance of) the radical change from a classical notion of naturally-ordained differences in society (of wealth, talent, wisdom, etc.) that should not only be not denied but formally recognized in the political economy; Wood slopes the floor a little bit to sympathize with Adams' more mature, adult cynicism set against the frenzied optimism for a democratic utopia.

There is much more in this book worth spending time with than I'm getting into here: the idea of sovereignty as original and ultimate authority; the notion of the same derived from the people versus monarch (and it's refreshing and grownup to think of monarchy as a political notion of a unitary executive, rather than the frivolous, but more common contemporary notion of royalty as a swarm of luxuriating dainties); the gestational development of the new political thinking in the various state constitutions during and after the Revolution; the idea of a constitution as a superior form of law, outside of the immediate reach of government officers to change; a précis of the Federalist/anti-Federalist debate, et al. In short, a good book for a long winter.


*And oh yeah, yeah, Good Will Hunting, "Gawdon Wood," etc. I haven't seen the whole movie, but I did watch that scene and don't really understand it - are grad students really supposed to spout verbatim quotes from prominent scholars like lines from Shakespeare? Is that a thing? My failure to appreciate that is the reason - the only reason - I'm not a history professor at Harvard.

**[Edited to remove an extraneous definite article before the word 'American'; the original language appears quoted in Robert's kind comment below, which alerted me to its clunkiness as first written.]

[RC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweeping, lucid, and magnificent, but not for the faint of heart. I read every page of this 615-page behemoth, and I feel like I deserve a cookie. This is an intellectual history of the evolution of the ideas that were debated and thrown into the blender of the Constitutional Convention. Why is there a Senate? Is the Senate meant to be a body populated by a natural aristocracy of the propertied and talented? Why isn't there just one legislative body? How can one generation of "the People" bind future generations? Who makes up "the People"? Why can't legislatures just amend the Constitution? What is the supra-legislative body of a "Constitutional Convention"? From where does it derive its authority? Why was there a need for a Bill of Rights? Did setting out a delineated list of rights reduce the authority or natural rights that were originally retained by the people, given that the Constitution was simply a form of power of attorney to authorize representatives of the People to carry out certain carefully delineated functions?

Wood's prose is crisp and lucid, though much of the text is a masterfully arranged tissue of quotations from Hamilton, Madison, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Noah Webster, et al. The bottom of each page has long string cites of quotations from source materials. The sheer amount of research put into this book borders on terrifying. But it is all put together in a clear and readable form.

That said, this is not a Joseph Ellis history of the early republic. There are no colorful anecdotes, no tidbits about shoe sizes, hobbies, nights out on the town, showy experiments with electricity, aptitude with the French language, etc. This is strictly a history of ideas, a history of the development of thinking about political science, checks and balances, tyrannies of majorities, of consolidated power, etc. So, in that sense, this book is clearly not for everyone. It's for you if you're deeply interested in the questions set out above in the first paragraph. Wood does a masterful job of charting the progress in the thinking of the Revolutionary generation, and how they came to their understandings of sovereignty, the purpose and role of a Constitution, the need for checks and balances, the nature of American society -- and human nature -- etc.
I found it to be a thrilling and deeply educational ride.

It must be noted, the book was published in 1969. That is not that long ago, and it is somewhat stunning that there is essentially no discussion of the issue of slavery or women or the reach of suffrage. Reading a history of the development of the Constitution today, that seems ridiculous. I understand that Wood dealt with these issues further in later works, but the total omission of these issues in this book is a massive hole.

[Jay Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

"'The independence of America considered merely as a separation from England, would have been a matter but of little importance,' remarked Thomas Paine, "had it not been accompanied by a revolution in the principles and practice of governments.'" (pg 594)

"... observed Nathaniel Chipman in 1793...'While government was supposed to depend on a compact not between the individuals of a people, but between the people and the rulers, this was a point of great consequence.' But not any longer in America, where government was based on a compact only among the people. Obedience to the government in America followed from no such traditional consideration. The flow of authority itself was reversed, and 'consent,' which had not been the basis of magisterial authority in the past, now become 'the sole obligatory principle of human government and human laws'... The once important distinction between magisterial authority and representative legislative authority was now obliterated...No more revolutionary change in the history of politics could have been made: the rulers had become the ruled and the ruled the rulers." (pg 602)

"The constitution represented both the climax and the finale of the American Enlightenment, both the fulfillment and the end of the belief that the endless variety and perplexity of society could be reduced to a simple and harmonious system. By attempting to formulate a theory of politics that would represent reality as it was, the Americans of 1787 shattered the classical Whig world of 1776." (pg 606)

The above quotes from the final chapter of this book summarize the point Wood is trying to make. The creation and development of the American system of government was by no means inevitable or anticipated. How the thinking of the American founders changed and developed is marvelously shown in this book. Previous assumptions about society and forms of government had to shift, sometimes greatly, and with considerable effects.

Not only is this an important work for understanding the development of the American constitution, it is also a great work of historical thinking and writing. Highly recommended.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of the most impressive books I've ever read. It is an amazing work of research and scholarship that is astounding in scope. It is clear that Wood has done his homework and has created an impressive work. The title is rather broad, and could indicate a variety of things, but lest any be misled, this book is pure political philosophy. This is not a work dealing with the war, the build-up to war, or even a history of the period. The book is singularly focused on the evolution of the political philosophy during the period from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitutional Convention.

This singular focus being so thoroughly treated at such length is nearly breathtaking in ambition. It is a surprisingly fast-paced read though I grew tired of it. I simply did not have the sustained interest Wood requires from his readers. Again, it is most impressive that Wood knows the material so well and can actually sustain this work.

The work itself is most interested in the notion of ultimate sovereignty--which is the highest governmental authority? The traditional answer, coming from the British tradition, is that the monarch is invested with ultimate authority. But the Glorious Revolution began the transition of the loci of power from the monarch to parliament.

The trouble leading to the revolution is that the American colonies had no parliamentary representation--it was instead a "virtual representation." This was wholly unsatisfactory to the colonial Whigs, and they became increasingly concerned that the British Crown was imposing tyranny over the colonies in a variety of ways. The move toward the Declaration of Independence moved the central authority from the representative body to the people itself.

This transition of power from the people's representatives to the people themselves evolved rapidly particularly as the colonies enacted state constitutions during the war period. The political philosophers of the time were concerned that the power of the people be sufficient to stand against the authoritarian impulses in government. Theorists were concerned that one body, whether it be the executive or the legislature would grab too much power and impose tyranny over the people.

The bicameral legislature was part of the answer--but how could the two legislative bodies be different and act as checks against one another when their authority is derived in the same fashion? Law makers struggled particularly with the aristocratic nature of the House of Lords and the implications for an equal people.

After the colonial constitutions had been in place for several years and the Articles of Confederation united the colonies, the founders became increasingly concerned that the state governments were corrupt and required a power over them to restrain their avarice. So Wood argues that the Constitution came not so much from a weak Articles of Confederation, but out of corrupt and ineffectual state government.

As the Constitution Convention was convened, Madison had already formulated a plan, along with Hamilton that would create a Federal government that would be invested with greater power and would become the focus of the best of the best--a government run by the elite of the nation placing a restraint upon unchecked state power and corruption.

It is clear that Madison was a son of the Enlightenment, for whatever beliefs he held about man, he clearly believed that the proper system of government could act as a buffer against corruption, greed, tyranny, and partisanship. This is another central theme of the book--the impact of the Enlightenment upon the framers. Wood rarely actually writes about this explicitly, rather, it is an implicit theme of the framers that government is good and a positive societal power.

It is this naive assumption that a governmental system could act sufficiently to restrain the wickedness of man and keep man in check that was the most insightful aspect of the book. Not all the founders believed this, in fact many were vocal opponents of such a view. But it is their actions that speak louder than their words. Wood in fact concludes the book in admiration for the genius of the Constitution in its restraint against tyranny. Yet it is abundantly clear today, and should have been sufficiently clear during the lifetime of the founders, that the Constitution was a very limited restraint upon the ambitions of partisans.

The Constitution has in fact been a failure. It has not restrained tyranny, corruption, greed, and abuse of power. I would argue that the U.S. Constitution, regardless of how good it was in intention, it has proven far too pliable to the sinfulness of man. No governmental system can restrain the evil of its people. To believe otherwise is to subscribe to the Enlightenment notion of the perfectibility of man.

So what did I "get" from this massive, thorough, and impressive work? The founders were fundamentally children of the Enlightenment--whatever Christian influence there was subsumed under Enlightenment philosophy. I'm far more skeptical of the "Christian founding" narrative so often told by Christians. This is not to say they are entirely wrong, just that they are trying to argue for too much. The Constitution is perhaps as good of a document as could have been had in 1787, but it placed its fundamental authority not in the Word of God, but in the people. This constant refrain that all government is derived from the consent of the governed is a thoroughly humanistic philosophy derived from Enlightenment rationalism.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

According to author Wood, the inauguration of the American revolution antedates July 4, 1776. It begins with the instruction of the Continental Congress to the colonies to rewrite their constitutions. This book traces that process from 1776 through 1787 as regards, first, the colonies (inclusive of the briefly independent Vermont) and, second, the republic they formed under a federal constitution.

Between 1776 and 1787 there was a great shift in American political thought, an ideological revolution. Central to it was the idea of sovereignty. In the beginning most thought about the British model. In the end, in the debate between Federalists and Anti-federalists over the constitution, they came up with a uniquely American conception, that being of popular sovereignty. While the mixed government of Britain, the government of Commons, Lords and Monarch, relied much upon tradition, even divine right, the mixed government of America, that of House, Senate, Executive and Judiciary--and these on both the state and federal levels--bespoke entirely, however mediately, the will of voting citizens, the foundation and source of all authority.

This impressive work of scholarship is definitely not for everyone. Following 15 polities (the 13 colonies, Vermont and the federation), the principal debates within them and the precedents they referred to is daunting to the non-specialist. The thrust of Wood's argument, supported by these examples, is, however, clear enough.

Personally, I was introduced to this field in high school, one of my papers for the required U.S. Government class being a critical review of Charles Beard's economic analysis versus McDonald's critique of same. For what it's worth, Wood sides with McDonald.

[Nigel Sellars · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this as part of my studying for the general exams I took for my doctorate in history. Wood does an incredible job of explaining what the founders' really believed and what the Constitution really means. Everyone should read this classic, especially those Tea Party types who need in a good lesson in what the original intent of the Founders actually was. Sobering, humbling, exhilarating, and stimulating--one of the best books I have ever read.

[AskHistorians]

One of the seminal works on the American Revolutionary era. Wood attempts to refute previous scholarship which focused primarily on the economics of the era, giving emphasis to the role of ideas and public conceptions of politics and the role of government.

[Piker7977 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Professor Wood provides an exhaustive examination of the political and philosophical ideologies of the Revolutionary generation and late 18th century American discourse. The creation of the American democratic republic was not a simple nor fluid process. It was born out of two revolutions: 1776 and 1787. Both of these events sought to form a system that was democratic and just while trying to balance the problematic considerations of governors, judiciaries, representation, democratic participation, consolidation, people power, balanced polity, and so on and so forth. The list of debates and ideas is incredible in itself. Wood does a fine job of weaving primary sources in the text. So much so that this text is almost a political quilt of American history.

Chocked full of fodder for deep debate and thesis ideas The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 is a dense text that is worth reading to understand and appreciate the historical complexities and nuances of our system along with its unique place in Western thought.

[Vincent Li · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just great history and great writing. Gordon Wood tends to focus on a few topics in particular but I found this book the most unique out of the books I've read. The book is dense, and requires some understanding of early American history. It's less a book about discrete events that occurred throughout the Revolutionary period than the transformation in political ideology and assumptions. It doesn't trace for example, the stories of particular founders, or the battles. Instead the book quotes extensively from newspapers, pamphlets, and correspondence to tease out the changes in the prevailing political philosophy. Ideology can be complex, so often there are people of the same general agreement still disagreeing on the details, or grasping the contradictions of intellectual commitments. The book argues that often even those who were most prophetic in their vision of where political philosophy was going was only seeing half the picture, slowly feeling their way into a new paradigm with implications for even today.

The colonists started with a generally British view of politics and sociology. There was a belief that politics was a science that had stable principles that could be teased out from history, so many of the colonists were incredibly well-read on history and political philosophy. But even in the beginning, the colonists were reading literature that was out of the mainstream in Britain, what Wood calls "country opposition" or Whig views, that had an almost paranoid view of court politics and feared concentration of power in particular. The Whigs feared the corruption of the magistrate in doling out favors and creating an aristocracy that ruled by connections instead of merit. The Whigs instead preferred legislatures which they took to better represent the people (essentially a replica of the people at large). This fit the colonial experience well, since it was their legislatures protecting them from the royal governors. Early state governments were wary of giving their magistrates too much power, sometimes stripping the executive powers of appointment, and war declaration and giving it to the legislatures. Some states even replaced their governors with multi-head councils.

There was a strong belief in republicanism, the idea that people would set aside their private interests for the greater public good, that legislators would not represent the narrow private interests of their constituents but rule in favor of a homogenous public good (some more radical thinkers even thought that there would need to be property redistribution in order to align the interests of the public). The colonists thought of America closer to the Republican ideal than decadent Europe, since America was relatively egalitarian (land was too plentiful for a landed nobility), and had simple tastes in general. However, the colonists were highly sensitive to the possible creation of inherited aristocracy as well as the well connected families. Famous founding fathers were resentful of the social superiority of those who ruled because they had the family connections and favor with the Crown. The colonists did not want an "artificial" aristocracy by crown connection but a "natural" one by merit.

But the revolution had unleashed social forces and leveling that went beyond ending artificial aristocracy to ending all aristocracy (a theme more explored in Radicalism of the American Revolution). Suddenly, even meritocracy seemed suspect and anti-Revolution. Populists came out and were elected to state legislatures not embarrassed by their lack of education but openly touting their salt-of-the-earth backgrounds. Wood argues that this was the true driving force behind the constitutional convention. In the eyes of many of the Founders the Revolution had gone overboard, destroying order with an excess of liberty (as represented by the various rebellions in Western Massachusetts, cumulating in Shay's rebellion), and giving too much power to the legislatures which could be as tyrannical as the crown (by passing legislation against the minority, creditors and propertied interests for example). The people, instead of electing their natural elites put their trust in demagogues who put local interests above the republican common good. The constitution with its focus on a national government, and relatively small membership would act as a filter for the natural elite to rule. Only the wealthy or famous could command the electoral loyalty to raise to national office. It would be a check on the overly demagogical and potentially tyrannical state legislatures.

A particularly interesting evolution was in the American conception of a "mixed" government and how this evolution lead to a radical new understanding of sovereignty. The colonists praised the British king-in-parliament system as a mixed government in the classical sense. The house of commons embodied democracy, the house of lords aristocracy, and the king monarchy. In the classical formulation, each form of governance had a fatal weakness. Democracy tended towards anarchy, monarchy towards tyranny, and aristocracy towards factionalism. By mixing the types of government, each of these weaknesses were avoided. The aristocrats would bring wisdom to the table, the commoners honesty and the king order. Additionally, but analytically separate, the house of lords, commons and king represented the different orders of society, the nobles, commons, and king respectively. Parliament thus "embodied" the realm. Early state constitutions matched these principles, sometimes even making the senate the explicit embodiment of the propertied interest (as in Massachusetts). However, as the revolution proceeded, the egalitarian ideology put pressure on this conception of singling out the elite. Eventually, the existence of the senate was justified as a checking mechanism on the lower house, in order to prevent abuse, instead of an aristocratic element of government. The implication arose then that the lower house was not truly the people, but its representatives, moving away from the embodiment principle. John Adams, who missed out on the developments of the time approved of the federal constitution based off the mixed constitution theory, as he saw that in America since there were no artificial distinctions the "rat race" between the haves and have-nots would even be more brutal, therefore requiring balancing by a strong executive. He thought that any government that had an executive was by definition a monarchy, and saw no contradiction in terms in a monarchial republic. His arguments confused his contemporaries, because he had missed out on the developments surrounding sovereignty.

But by the time of the constitutional convention the conception of government had actually radically changed. It was a basic assumption of the era that within any state there could only be one supreme sovereign, there could be no sovereign within a sovereign. This logic helped drive the revolution, since the colonial legislatures and parliament could not both be sovereign in the Empire. The colonists tried to argue that colonial legislatures would only control home affairs, while the parliament could only regulate trade (sometimes by taxes), but this conception fell apart. The idea of a unitary sovereignty also raised problems for the federalism embodied in the federal constitution. The states and federal government could not both be sovereign. Under pressure to justify the federal structure, as well as the extensive use of conventions (which were originally seen as legally dubious but used so often by the revolution that they were seen as more representative than the legislature by the end of it), the federalists came to the conclusion that the sovereignty was with the People, who never truly transfer it out of their own hands. Instead, the people could delegate bits and pieces to the federal and state governments. Part of the federalist rejection of a bill of rights, was the idea that traditional declaration of rights in British history were compacts negotiated between the rulers (kings) and the ruled. But in America, there was no such clear distinction, the people are rulers and the government (now all the branches) were simply their servants. The senate and magistrate no longer represented elements separate from the common people but were also servants like the legislature.

Tied into this development of sovereignty was the role of the constitution as a "higher law". The idea of the constitution as the highest law of the land had to be developed. There was no written higher law in Britain (there still isn't), because in the British mind, the constitution was simply the structure of the government and its acts. Since Parliament was sovereign, there could be no higher law binding it. However, the colonists (perhaps influenced by their tradition of charter granting) eventually came around to the idea that there was a higher law than ordinary legislation that could bind the legislature, other than a possible natural law prohibition against irrational legislation suggested by certain English sources. Early articulations of the idea were difficult, since thinkers were unsure how legislatures could bind later ones, or how it could even bind itself. Eventually, the idea developed that special conventions representing the people could pass higher law that would be enforceable against the legislature by the courts. Early political philosophy on the separation of powers focused on stripping the executive's power to corrupt the legislature by favors, and conceived of judiciary powers as inherently executive. The separation of powers was still nascent, and like early parliament, many state legislatures still acted as high courts. But as the idea of a judicially enforceable written higher law became real, the judiciary needed to be independent.

The book is really pretty magisterial though it's quite long. But Wood is a great writer, and there's enough interesting material that it doesn't ever feel like a slog. The greatest strength of the book was to show the evolution of political ideas that Americans today take for granted. Ideas about the separation of powers, the constitution as higher law, popular sovereignty, federalism, and the courts did not come handed down to the Framers but were forged in debate, political exigencies, conflicting pre-existing idealogical commitments, social anxieties, and occasionally inspirational genius. A must read for anyone fascinated by the Founding.

[Brian Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 600 page book on the political and legal theory that influenced the forces forming the burgeoning independent United States, this is quite simply one of the most important books on American history I have ever read. Although published in 1969, it is still one of the most insightful and penetrating analyses of the thought of the time, one that eschews the divisive claims of modern political parties for the era just prior to that scourge in American politics.

Wood's book is one of the most intensely researched books I've ever read. It's rather a hefty synthesis of literally several hundred quotes representing the contending forces creating a new nation. How was America different than anything that came before? What were the actual political theories influencing the formative drivers of the governments of the American colonies? How did the founders decide on the precise system of tripartite government with its checks and balances and apportioned powers?

This book answers these questions in the actual words of the driving personas. We learn the theoretical underpinnings of the reasoning behind declaring independence (it was more about cutting ties with a corrupt and remote hierarchy than anything else and representing themselves within their own government), the various philosophies and multi-varied governments of the states in the era between 1776-1787 (some with more success than others), and finally the need for a national Constitution and the controversy over its reapportioning of power to a centralized government.

The seeds of our modern political system are here, as are many of the wrongful assumptions that the founders generated. The Federalists, who advocated for a strong central government, were in fact "republicans" (small r), who believed that America should be a bicameral legislature where the most enlightened intellectual elite would be represented as a check on the plurality of common men and their prejudices. The Anti-Federalists, who felt betrayed by the Constitutional Convention, were "democrats" (small d), who believed governments should be constituted purely of common folk elected popularly. That's why Jefferson's Anti-Federalists by 1800 would be calling themselves Democrats and why Lincoln's party would call itself Republicans; the Southerns states were primarily for states' rights and considered themselves that type of Democrat, and Lincoln's Republicans 60 years after that were for the primacy of the Union and the central Washington government. Those parties flipped their focus, both in Teddy Roosevelt's transformative time in D.C., as well as the Civil Rights Era in the 1950s and 1960s.

The primary emphasis I personally perceived is even more important in 2018 than 1969. The Founders never intended for the corrupt or personally invested to hold office. Governments should be full of public servants with no financial reward. The Electoral College was a way to prevent the ascension of a demagogue (now it rubber stamps the vote of states without regard for the popular vote or for the fitness of the elected President). Gerrymandering would be taboo. The legislature should never be deadlocked due to personal or political concerns; now, they play all politics and power games to the detriment of the people. Everything was supposed to flow upwards from the grass roots democracy, and the people should feel fairly represented. With the American public more disenchanted with their government than ever before, it is fair to assert that we have moved a long way away from the initial vision set up so cogently in Wood's seminal study. Obviously for the hardy reader (it is no joke literally 618 pages of political and legal theory), but rewarding for those who try.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Creation of the American Republic, Gordon Wood tracks the transformation of the colonial, classical, and Whig-inspired conception of early American politics through the Revolution and the Constitutional crises of the 1780s to its arrival as a distinctly modern conception of politics, government, and republicanism. Wood's tome is an impressive feet, successfully extrapolating and distilling the political theories of countless colonial American thinkers in order to synthesize the schools and strains of political thought in a particularly complex era. This is predominately an intellectual history, understanding political culture as the intellectual debates and discussions that Americans carried on during the period in question. Wood nevertheless succeeds in going beyond the intellectual discussions of the Revolutionary era to focus on the gritty political and social conflicts that often propelled these ideological debates, identifying the gaps and connections between the rhetoric of the Revolutionaries and the material and social motivations they also held. Ultimately, Wood finds that the American system of government developed in the 1780s was "peculiarly the product of a democratic society" (615) - a society complete with economic, regional, and political strife yet instilled with a shared understanding of democratic political involvement. This conclusion, however, highlights one of the limitations of this study. Wood acknowledges that political discussions and decisions were "dictated by peculiar circumstances - the prevalence of Indians, the desire for western lands, the special interests of commerce - that defy generalization,"(484) but his study rarely adequately acknowledges the role historical contingency played in influencing or limiting the choices of these early American men. Wood sets out to highlight that important intellectual developments that still influence modern politics today did not originate in an intellectual vacuum, but the environment he presents could still be included with more context.

[Thomas Isern · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not perfect, but magisterial. In another venue I will write more extensively about Wood's work, which I undertook reading as a personal quest, in search of the republican spirit of America. I think I found it, pretty much, although I am left to fill in some soft spots for myself. Two things about the book are dissatisfying to me. First, Wood often handles quotations poorly. I don't mean he handles them dishonestly, or chooses them poorly; I mean he sometimes fails in managing the mechanics of quotation. Second, I think he pulls his punch in the end. The image of a "kinetic" republic with which he leaves us seems a bit contrived, cobbled on in order to avoid exactly where the line of evidence leads and to better fit the zeitgeist of the time of publication. These things said, I am left with a long string of recorded comments, to which I will return in reflection and composition, and with a profound longing for republican virtue.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book on the revolutionary period. This book is packed and well written. A tour do force.

[Michael Hattem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply put, this is one of the ten most important books written about early America in the last one hundred years.

[Martha Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the half dozen most important books ever written about the American Revolution. This 615 page book is no light read.

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wood shows: (i) the American revolution was rooted in republicanism, not liberalism or democracy; and (ii) the constitution drew on a reactionary elitism.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Completely fascinating and packed full of revelations about the early thinking of political leaders forming our republic (or democratic republic, the new type of government the founding fathers claimed they had created). The author focuses on the years leading up to 1776, and the critical period between independence and the creation of the constitution and the federal government. Basically, political philosophy evolved from a radical Whig ideas rooted in England that emphasized the legislature (specifically the House of Commons) as the primary voice of the people as opposed to the two other branches that represent the monarchy (the King) and the aristocracy (the House of Lords). The early U.S. state constitutions after independence were distrustful of government in general, and put most powers in the legislature, the ensuing chaos (especially from the perspective of the upper classes) brought about the move towards a federal structure that mirrored classical ideas about government with a balance between the monarchy (our president), the aristocracy (our senate), the people (our House of Reps), and the judiciary, with the radical twist that all branches of government actually only represent the will of the people not kings, aristocracies, or anyone but the people. It is a little academic, but that idea broke with thousands of years of political thought about what a republic is and how it works.

To summarize (and simplify to the degree that the author would likely quibble with), after 1776 a bunch of highly democratic forms of government were created at the state level (large houses of representatives with most of the power, frequent elections/short terms in office, hyper-local representation, limited restrictions of voting for white people - more on that in a second). Many founding fathers, who were the aristocracy in the US, freaked out about the amount of power lodged in the hands of the voting public and created a national government to water down the influence of voters, mostly by taking power away from the House of Rep and delegating those powers to an executive (a king-like role), a senate (the calming voice of the aristocrats), and a judiciary.

The discussion of republicanism, which is the classical idea that a republic cannot survive without a virtuous populace dedicated to the good of the community, was fascinating. Especially the idea that the founding fathers began the revolution with the idea that the US was filled with a special type of citizen that would make an everlasting republic possible and then, after 10 years were like "...um, nope, our people are idiots, we need to set up a government that insulates power from the people."

The corollaries to today were uncanny - the concern about the people being duped by unscrupulous politicians telling them what they want to hear, fear of the executive and possible tyranny, questions about whether politicians, especially the House of Reps, should represent their narrow slice of the public or some general public good, the evolution of politics from idealized perspective that government just translates abstract public good into operation to the realization that society is made up of many conflicting interests and must be battled out incrementally. I could go on, but its so strange that we seem to be fighting the same issues today that existed at our inception, maybe its the nature of republics, or maybe its the nature of humans?

Four stars b/c some times it was a little too academic, too many direct quotes with no attribution, and what seems like a pretty ridiculous oversight to never mention slaves, female suffrage, or anything about the glaring contradictions of talking about the rights of humans in our founding documents while enslaving and disenfranchising so many people.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The evolution of revolutionary thought.

Wood's 1969 monograph on the intellectual evolution of thought among the Founding Fathers to the Framers is a thorough and intellectually stimulating history that's sometimes drier than sand. Wood does a wonderful job tracing the development of revolutionary and constitutional thought as Founders and Framers countered and contradicted themselves on issues from representation/democracy, monarchism/aristocracy, unitary/divided government and how they wanted their new government to function.

Probably the most fascinating aspect of this history is that while the Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation were revolutionary documents/reactions to British oppression (perceived and actual), the Constitution was a fundamentally conservative document that recognized that the Articles probably went a little too far in eschewing anything that smacked of Albion.

While the revolutionary documents centered on the supremacy of the legislatures as representatives of the people and the Founders, on many levels, thought that legislatures could do no wrong -- the Framers took a very different approach and derided the selfishness of "the people" both individually and collectively through their various state legislatures. This spurred a desire for a government that tried to more intentionally embrace "the public good" and more importantly, those men of good public standing that could pursue it (i.e. natural aristocracy). This resulted in a more open embrace of the faults and natural limitations of the people and an affirmative attempt to check those impulses through the structure of the new Constitution.

This contrast, the evolution of thought that led to it in only 10 years between the Framers and Founders is really what makes this a great intellectual history.

That being said, because this is a intellectual history, it's broken up by subject areas rather than a chronological narrative and reads very dryly at times. So as an engaging history it leaves something to be desired, but as an indispensable reference to thematic areas of philosophical thought among the Framers and Founders, it's invaluable.

[Dave Benner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book on the period, bar none.

[Margaret Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

The amount of research that backs the writing of this book is almost incomprehensible. It is a weighty volume, but the more I read the more fascinated I became. Following the discordant arguments among contemporary political writers of these formative years of America's founding, I began to question my own knowledge that they were ever able to resolve their differences enough to establish a viable nation. That they ultimately created the exquisite Constitution we continue to honor after 230 years, despite their unrelenting disagreements (which I never before appreciated), is surely a result of human compromise at its very best.

We all know that the American Revolution was unique among revolutions in that it was followed by the establishment of the first national government on earth not to be led by a king or any other individual or group of leaders who made—and enforced—the laws by which their people would live. But what Mr. Wood shows here is how difficult it was for the people who demanded "individual liberty" to make their own laws to actually do it. He steps us through the evolution of thought and practices over the precarious decade of withdrawal from British rule and quest for orderly governance within and among the thirteen new states.

Their first instinct was to set up individual state legislatures with representatives to be elected for very short terms (usually one year), often without an executive overseer, so fearful were the former colonists of re-instituting any imitation of their former royal lords. But these systems became unwieldy and incapable of enacting general laws to please ALL of the people. Besides that, the Confederacy set up by the initial Articles of cooperation of the new states proved dysfunctional because of reluctance of any state to surrender its own preferences to those of another state. Practical experience and disappointment in initial efforts led to debate over solutions. Somehow, anarchy was avoided by widespread determination to keep trying for a method to allow The People to choose their own form of government. There seemed no disagreement that it must be People-directed, but great disagreement over how this goal might be accomplished.

By the 1780s, the idea of adopting a Constitution to unite all the states into a single nation was a prevalent notion, but what shall it say? Then in 1784 a South Carolinian named Thomas Tudor Tucker published a pamphlet that suggested, "The constitution should be the avowed act of the people at large. It should be the first and fundamental law of the State, and should prescribe the limits of all delegated power. It should be declared to be paramount to all acts of the Legislature, and irrepealable and unalterable by any authority but the express consent of a majority of the citizens collected by such regular mode as may be therein provided."

Meanwhile, the idea of separating the assignments of governance into three distinct branches—executive, legislative, and judicial—to act as counter-powers against each other gained favor. A constitution to establish the branches became the issue. James Iredale of South Carolina said it "may be considered as a great power of attorney, under which no power can be exercised but what is expressly given." Thomas Paine added that a constitution was "a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution," adding that a government "has of itself no rights; they are altogether duties."

We know the rest of the story. As Gordon Wood writes on the book's final pages, "The Americans of the Revolutionary generation . . . . had for the first time demonstrated to the world how a people could diagnose the ills of its society and work out a peaceable process of cure."

[Apoorva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just some weekend reading.

[Victor Gamma · Rating 4 out of 5]

How did thirteen separate colonies come together to devise one of the most durable systems of government ever created? Exactly how did we get the political system we live under? Gordon S. Wood’s The Creation of the American republic, 1776-1787 answers these questions and demystifies the "Miracle of Philadelphia" by probing the intellectual and spiritual roots of the American republic. Dr Wood achieved a prominent place among historians of early America with the publication of Creation in 1969. His study belongs to the “intellectual” history tradition of the American Revolution, continuing the tradition of Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and owes much to it. Wood, however, probes much deeper than Bailyn’s work in breaking down the process whereby American political thought led to the Constitution. Politically, the book falls partly into the neo-Whig spectrum while acknowledging also the radical elements of the American achievement. It delineates how American political thought developed from early protests against British measures to the construction of the world's first federal republic; the crowning achievement of American political thought. The key concepts and ideas of those dramatic years shaped our system of government. According to Wood's thesis, this process featured a transformation in American political thinking. During this transformation, Americans developed a unique ideology and a truly American science of politics. American rebels began by insisting repeatedly that they were struggling on behalf of the British constitution, not against it. They believed in “the fundamental maxims of the British constitution; upon which, as upon a rock, our wise ancestors erected that stable fabrick.” After two dramatic decades of conflict with Britain, however, the intensive public debate over political principles led Americans to reject many fundamental features of the British constitution and move in a new direction which ultimately resulted in the creation of something unintended and unprecedented. It is this transformation that Gordon Wood maps out for us in his remarkable study of the revolutionary and constitutional era.

[Iggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you stumbled upon this book because you were looking to read a history book about American Revolution, then this is the wrong book to address that desire. It is not about the events of the Revolutionary War; nor is it about the Declaration of Independence. It is a book focused exclusively on the science of politics that was developing in the years leading up to the war, its development during the war, and particularly its apotheosis after independence was declared. It is about all the debates that took place on all political and legal issues and how they were settled and resolved - if they ever truly were.

This is, by historians' consensus, one of the best and most scholarly books ever written about American history. Its scholarship is deep, penetrating and impeccable in all its facets. Gordon Wood undertook this enormous work after receiving his Ph. D. in history from Harvard and this was essentially the continuation of the work he undertook as a graduate student. However, having said that, to a layman this is also its major shortcoming: due to its immense and rigorous scholarship, the book is dense on political science theory, voluminous on quotations (and generally voluminous) and to a large degree dry. To sum it up: it is technically a monograph, and as such, it presents a topical treatment, rather than a narrative that most lay history readers are familiar with.

If you are a history buff, or a student doing research, this will be a great and epic read. But if you are looking for a more familiar popular history, rich in narrative and a fluid prose, then you will be disappointed and would be advised to look elsewhere. Indeed, Gordon Wood has written other more accessible works later in his career, all of which are terrific. With those reservations in mind, I still highly recommend this book.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

An intellectual tour-de-force. I have learned more about the development of American political theory by reading this book than by any other. The founders understood that people were by nature self-interested and could not design a system reliant upon virtue for its success. "America would remain free not because of any quality in its citizens of spartan self-sacrifice to some nebulous public good, but in the last analysis because of the concern each individual would have in his own self-interest and personal freedom" (612).

American political theory at the time of the ratification of the Constitution grew out of necessity. Its source was diverse, varied, and based upon self-interest. The government that arose from this new and revolutionary theory was a part of a Lockean conception of the social contract formed by "the individuals of the society with each other, instead of a mutual arrangement between rulers and ruled" (601). This concept was revolutionary political science at the time.

Wood does a remarkable job of tying together the patchwork of thought that led to the political theory underlying the federal constitution. Of course, in undergoing this type of analysis, the author will most certainly rely on those sources which support his position. Wood is no doubt guilty of this throughout the book. He sometimes overemphasizes minor movements and under-emphasizes mainstream thought. But as a history of the development of thought from 1776 to 1787, I have not read a more compelling argument regarding the nature of that development and the ramifications of that development in our democratic republic.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the origins of American Political Theory.

[John Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A heavy and heady tome, for sure. Originally published in 1969, Professor Wood's book traces the political philosophies, and the ever-CHANGING political philosophies of the American public and politicians who fueled the creation of the US system of government following independence in 1776. Wood uses an exhaustive array of first-hand sources to show the emerging American philosophy having its origins in the English Whig tradition, but branching off to have its own distinct character, a fact that made the so-called Founding Fathers quite proud -- and even slightly arrogant, one could say -- of what they had created. Debate and discussion was often, if not always, lively and heated. Letters, correspondences, newspaper editorials, written essays, books; these were the sources of fiery social media of the day. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. One of my favorite US history books ever.

[Matthew Dambro · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you only read one book on the early American experience; this is the one. It is clear that Dr. Wood immersed himself in the primary sources. His analysis and synthesis of those primary documents is nothing short of phenomenal. His basic thesis is that American political thought underwent a sea change between the Revolution and the Constitution. He is spot on. From a blind acceptance of the "people" as able to govern themselves without limitations to an acknowledgement that the "people" could be just as tyrannical as any monarch is the main thrust of Wood's thesis. The twist is that the Federalists co-opted the language of the old theory to push forward the Constitution and its limits on the "people". The book is absolutely brilliant, but a tough read. It needs to be sipped like a fine cognac not guzzled like a cheap beer.

[Reid Luzzader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the classic studies of American revolutionary-era thought. Wood argues convincingly that there was an evolution from the radical and liberal wings of English Whiggish thought to something unique to America. By the time of the ratification of the Constitution, this included a defeat of the more democratic, populist strains of American thought: "Though the artificial contrivance of the Constitution overlaying an expanded society, the Federalists meant to restore and to prolong the traditional kind of elitist influence in politics that social developments, especially since the Revolution, were undermining."

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most enjoyable works to read about those years essential to the formation of the Republic, despite the factional rivalries that were already well-established (and continue to characterize American society). Many authors are too technical or just plain dry when writing about the Constitutional era, but this is a lovely exception.