Revolution. Period. Im not going to read off all the long list of the books and publications hes written or the awards and medals and honors hes received. But all of you go home and google him for a mindblowing experience. I just want to mention a few things that he and i discussed. After receiving his suma cu suma cum laude degree from tufts, he joined the air force. During the training he found out that his eyes werent good enough so he was sent off to japan to be a photo intelligence officer. When he arrived, to his dismay, he found out he was made a Personnel Officer because his boss was lazy and didnt want to get up in the morning. When lieutenant wood arrived in the orderly room at 7 30, he had nothing to do. So he spent his time reading history books. Thankfully for all of us, for his students and for america, he completed his rotc requirement, didnt think the military had treated him well and went off to study history. He earned his m. A. And ph. D. At harvard studying under bernard bailin. He once wrote, and i quote, history may be kept alive, made vivid and constantly relevant and urgent by the living memory of it. Which is exactly what were trying to do here. Baylin was the great and rival of ed morgan who taught joe ellis. Teachers matter. In 1969 wood joined the faculty of Brown University where he is still professor emeritus. He told me nothing he had ever done achieved as much excitement on campus or the wide approval of his students as the few seconds of fame he had when matt damon and ben affleck mentioned his name in the 1997 movie good will hunting. The campus went nuts. And he said when Newt Gingrich praised woods 1992 prizewinning book the radicalism of the American Revolution, wood describes newts praise on cspan saying, that was the kiss of death for me among academics. None of them are republicans and none of them are conservative. George mason law School SponsoredAmerican History seminars for United States federal judges for about five years. The two history professors chosen to lead the discussions among these elite were gordon wood and joel ellis. I have talked with federal judges Doug Ginsberg and ricecamp who is here today, among many others, and they said how much they benefited from these incredible seminars which coincided with the annual conferences that our federal judges have by district around the country. Wouldnt you love to have been in those meetings . Dr. Wood was one of three historians chosen to write for the oxford history of the American People, by far the most respected, multivolume history of the United States. This is the equivalent of the American History of encyclopedia. His contribution, which is wonderful if you can read it, empire of liberty, history of the early republic 1789 to 1815. With all of the additional writing and teaching he was doing simultaneously, it must have been a huge burden. It took him 20 years to complete. But in the process of finishing this 700page book, joe ellis told me, gordon wood read everything. More important than the pro dijus productivity is the quality of his work, said David Hackett fisher. Dr. Wood is a trustee of the new museum of the American Revolution which will open in philadelphia next april. They are so lucky to have him and we should all go and visit. Ladies and gentlemen, it is such a privilege to introduce our second speaker for the founders and us, historian, professor, author, father of two daughters and a son, and 61yearlong husband of wife louise who is in palm beach and joining us for lunch, ladies and gentlemen, dr. Gordon wood. [ applause ] oh, my goodness. Isnt she something . [ applause ] im delighted to be here and to be part of this extraordinary series on the founders. Ive spent my whole career working on this period and its got to be the most fascinating period of American History. The questions that joe raised last time i think im going to touch on, too, although i have not heard what he had to say. But why do we americans honor these historic figures who lived two centuries ago in the fullsome way that we do . Our founders is the term that we use have a special significance i think for us. Celebrating in the way we do this generation that fought the revolution and created the constitution, i think is peculiar to us. No other major nation, as far as i know, honors its past historical characters in quite the same way we do. We want to know what Thomas Jefferson would think of affirmative action or what would George Washington think of our invasion of iraq . As far as i know the british dont get to check in periodically with, say, either of the two William Pitts in the way we check in with jefferson and washington. We americans seem to have a special need for these authentic historical figures. Theyre recent by comparison with ramos and remus for example. Why do we check in with them . Why should we behave the way we do . Scholars have a variety of answers. Some suggest that our continual concern for constitutional Juris Prudence and original intent accounts for the fascination with the founding and framing of the constitution. Still others think that we use these 18th century figures in order to recover what was wise and valuable in americas past. They believe that the founders of 200 years ago have the have become a kind of Gold Standard against which we measure our current political leaders. Why dont we have such leaders today seems to be the implicit question that we ask. I think the most important reason for our preoccupation with the revolutionary generation has to do with our sense of identity as americans, of the kind of people we are. The identities of other nations, say being french or being german are lost in the midst of time and are usually taken for granted, which is that is to say theres no american ethnicity. The french have an ethnicity. The germans have an acute sense of their own ethnicity. We americans dont and never have, even at the outset, which i think makes us much more acceptable, more willing to accept immigrants than the european nations. I know we have problems with immigration but they pale with the problems the europeans are facing and will continue to face. Those french have arabs living with them, algerians, have been living in france for three or four generations and yet the french dont really think of them as french. You anybody whos been in america for three or four generations is utterly american. We do not have an ethnicity. We became a nation in 1776 and thus in order to know who we are, we need to know who these founders are. The United States was founded on a set of beliefs and not on as other nations were on a common language or common religion. To be american is to is to believe in something, not to be someone. You have to that set of beliefs is what came out of the revolution. Not only did the revolution i think its by far the most important event in our history bar none. Not only did it legally create the United States and make us a nation, but infused into our culture, our highest aspirations, our noblest ideals, the wellbeing of ordinary people. Its these aspirations, these ideals that hold us together and make us a single people. Since were not a nation in any traditional sense of the term, in order to establish our nationhood we have to reinforce and refresh periodically the values of the men who declared independence from Great Britain and framed the constitution. And as long as the republican doers in other words, we americans are destined, i think, to go back and continually look at our founding. Abraham lincoln knew this. He identified completely with the founders and thought all americans should do so as well. Present day academics sometimes mocked the close feelings that ordinary americans have for these as they said dead white men of 200 years ago, but its not so easy to mock lincoln. Half the American People had no direct blood connections to the founders of the nation. German, french, american and scandinavian citizens, and he was aware of these in 1858, they had either come from europe themselves, he said, or their ancestors had. They had settled in america finding themselves our equals in all things. Although these immigrants may have had no actual connection in blood with the revolutionary generation, that would make them feel part of the rest of the nation, they had said lincoln that old declaration of independence with this expression of the moral principal of equality to draw upon. This moral principle which he said was applicable to all men in all times made all these different peoples one with the founders. And this is the most extraordinary statement i think lincoln ever made and its still, i think, makes us feel something kinship with these founders. He said they are made us feel one with the founders as though they were blood of the blood and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that declaration. This emphasis on liberty and equality lincoln said was the electric cord he changes the metaphor that links the hearts of patriotics and liberty loving men together and will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. That was lincolns assessment of the founders and i think lincoln rescued the founders from obscurity and after the civil wars the founders achieved that reputation that they now still have. Despite what tom brokaw said, the revolutionary leaders in my mind were the greatest generation. They were larger than life, giants in the earth, a forest of giant oaks lincoln called them. They seemed to peace intellectual and political capacities well beyond the generations that followed them. We americans have been unable to look back at them without being overawed by the brilliance of their thought, the creativity of their politics and the sheer magnitude of their achievement. What were they like . What made them different . Different from all succeed ing generations and certainly different from us . Great as they were, these revolutionary leaders were certainly not demi gods or super human. They were very much the product of peculiar circumstances in a peculiar moment in time. They were nor were they immune to the allures of interest that attracted most ordinary human beings. They wanted wealth and position and often speculated heavily to realize their aims. They are not demi gods, but they were not democrats, either. Certainly not democrats in any modern sense of the term. They never embarrassed to talk of a leaderism of being superior and they need their sense of superiority to ordinary human beings. In fact, they always believed that the people in general were the source of their authority. We had a moment, i think, where we had a nice balance between what we might call aristocratic and democratic values. Even in their own undemocratic times and circumstances they were unusual if not unique. As political leaders they comprised a peculiar sort of elite, a selfcreated aristocracy that ruled english society. 18th century britain remained under authority of four noble families whose political influence were unmatched by anyone in north america. Take, for example, the duke of rockinghams Country House, he was the patron of edmund burke, his Country House was 650 feet long. Thats longer than two football fields. Compare that to william birds estate which still exists on the james river westover 90 feet. 90 feet long. While Charles Carroll of maryland, one of the wealthiest families, one of the wealthiest planters in the American South was earning what americans were earning, a huge sum of 1,800 pounds a year. The earl of vast estates in england were bringing in an annual of over 40,000 pounds. By english standards americans aristocrats Like Washington and jefferson even with their hundreds of slaves remained mine minor gentry at best. And by the english measure of status, lawyers like john adams and Alexander Hamilton were even less distinguished. Gentlemen no doubt, but nothing like the english no billbility vast scale of wealth was beyond anything that existed in north america. They were different from the english aristocracy. Now the 18th century angloamerican enlightenment was preoccupied with what they called politeness which had a much broader meaning than it has for us today, much more than manners and decorum. It implied affability, socialability, cultivation. Indeed politeness was considered to be the source of civility which was soon replaced by a much more expansive term civilization. So what they meant by politeness was civilized, to be civilized and this american gentry, was caught up with these ideals of politeness. Civilization implied a social process, societies it was assumed moved through successive stages of Historical Development and you get this development at the end of the 18th century of what was called the fourstage theory beginning with hunters, gatherers, shepherding, the third stage farming, agriculture, and the final stage of commerce. Beginning in rude simplicity and progressing to fine complexity of civilization, all nations could be located along the spectrum of four stages of social development. Since civilization was something that could be achieved, everything was enlisted in order to push back bash barbarism, refinement and knowledge. Also its in the 18th century English Speaking world, also its a new organizations and instruments grew up, sprang up to spread light and knowledge among people. This is the period and this is why we call it the age of enlightenment. Learned societies, debating clubs, assembly clubs, reading groups, gentleman magazines, concerts, galleries, museums all were created in this period of the 18th century. 18th century English Speakers saw the beginning of culture, culture as a public commodity, as something that was valuable and that gave status and that could be acquired. The cultural world that we are familiar with today as the four Arts Organization exemplify, that cultural world was born in the age of enlightenment. Now, at the center of this new civilized world was the idea of a gentleman. Defining a proper gentleman educated the public of the 18th century englishspeaking world and writers from richard steel, addison steel, to jane austin spent their lives struggling with what constituted the proper character of a gentleman. Indeed, john adams and Thomas Jefferson were still going at it in their correspondence at the end of their lives. For many in the 18th century, including the American Revolutionaries, being a gentleman assumed a moral meaning that was much more important than its social significance. Pure monarchists might still define aristocracies exclusively by the pride of their families or the size of their estates or the lavishness of their display and the arrogance of their bearing, but others increasingly down played or ridiculed these characteristics and emphasized others. Think of jane austins novel, particularly pride and prejudice. Elizabeth bennett is looking for a proper gentleman and mr. Darcy has other characteristics. Hes got wealth, 10,000 pounds a year, hes got blood, purple blood but thats not what jane austin or Elizabeth Bennett wants. She wants a man whos a proper 18th century enlightened gentleman. To sum up in the idea of a liberal Arts Education. Indeed, the 18th century created the modern idea of a liberal Arts Education in the English Speaking world. The age old distinction between gentleman and commoners had a vital meaning for this generation that we today have totally lost. We put gentlemen on our restroom doors. It has no more significance than that. But this distinction marked a horizontalal cleavage, in some respects even more imposing than the horizontal cleavage that appalls us between free and enslaved, but it also divided the social hierarchy into two unequal parts almost as sharply as the distinction between officers and soldiers. The two are linked. We hear officer and gentlemen. Officers are supposed to be gentlemen and gentlemen were eligible to be officers. Gentlemen who constituted about 2 of the Southern Society and about 8 of northern new england, north new york society were all those at the top of the social hierarchy who were wealthy enough to not have to work, at least not have to work with their hands. They were those who were able to act in what was called a disinterested manner in promoting a public good. The gentleman the character designation of gentleman actually had a legal meaning as well, and often, as john adams pointed out, somebody in a trial had to be designated, is he a gentleman or not . And he would be treated differently in the law in accordance with whether his status was that of a gentleman or not. Now disinterestedness, fascinating word, was the most common term that the founders used as a synonym for the classical conception of virtue or selfsacrifice. It was washingtons favorite word. He used that more often than he used the term virtue. It meant being impartial. Now we today have lost most of this earlier meaning. Educated people use disinterested to mean uninterested. If you look it up in the dictionary, both meanings are there. Uninterested but also the older meaning of impartial, standing above interest. Its almost and the modern meaning of uninterested is almost as if we cant imagine anyone being truly disinterested, standing above an interest. Even if they have one, theyre supposed to act impartially and rise above any pecuniary concern in becoming unselfish and partial where an interest might be present. Washington was very much caught up in this, and he refused to take a salary for that reason as commander in chief and tried to not take a salary as president. They wouldnt let him do that. And if youve watched Downton Abbey you get some sense of this. That kind of view extended into the 20th century in england. Do you remember Maggie Smiths character, whos really born in the shes a victorian woman. Shes appalled that her grandsoninlaw wants to continue practicing law when hes going to supposed to run the estate. And that was a violation, in her mind, of what an aristocrat ought to do. You should not be a lawyer. She didnt understand the whole notion of working at all. She said at one point, whats a weekend . She didnt understand that there were distinctions. This you know, Benjamin Franklin in the Constitutional Convention made several proposals, one of which was that all members of the executive branch from the president on down should serve without pay. Now, it got tabld, it was just impractical for americans, but it was he was echoing this kind of oldfashioned notion of what an aristocrat ought to do. You know, members of the Parliament Got no salary until 1911. That was the first time they were paid. So this was the responsibility of aristocrats, and you get some semblance of this. Now, others disagreed with this. John adams, for example, wrote several long pieces on why Political Office holders had to be paid a salary. He needed the money. He couldnt serve as washington did without without pay, and at one point he really he did not Like Washington for that reason, because it put him in the shade. He said, i know well that the word disinterested turns the heads of the people by exciting their enthusiasm, but although there are disinterested men, there are not enough of them in our in any age or any country to fill all the necessary offices and, therefore, the people may depend upon it that the hypocritical pretense of disinterestedness will not be set up to deceive them much oftener than the virtue will be practiced for their good. Hes trying to take on that conventional wisdom that a leader ought to rise above pecuniary interest and act in an impartial way. Now, i think there are only two two occupations left in our time that have a semblance of this disinterested behavior. I cant see you because the lights are strong, but shout out. Can you think of any of these two occupations . [ inaudible ]. Well, okay. But im thinking of im thinking first of judges. I think they although weve got doubts about judges because we see these hearings that we have when a judge is appointed, were not even sure of judges any longer, but i guarantee you there is one occupation which billions of dollars are invested in where we really count on these people being disinterested in this oldfashioned sense of the term being impartial. [ inaudible ]. No. [ inaudible ]. No, not the military has some semblance of this, i think, oldfashioned notion, but im thinking of referees and umpires in our sports world. I mean, think about it. A kid a kid grows up in boston as a red sox fan and then he becomes an umpire and hes umpiring a red sox yankees game and his emotional commitment to the to the red sox is very strong. We expect him to transcend that emotional commitment to the red sox and be impartial in his judgment. Thats what washington meant by disinterested. It didnt mean that you had no interest. You have interest but you you overcome your interest, the emotional or pecuniary concern you have for that interest and make an impartial judgment. And that is difficult to do, and yet we count on it, i think, for sports umpires. The whole the whole vast professional sports world is dependent upon it, and i think thats the one group we really hope will be truly disinterested. Enlightened gentl. Jeffersons father, peter jefferson, was a wealthy virginia planner and surveyor who married successfully into the prestigious randolph family. But he was not a refined and lib really educated gentleman. He did not read latin. He did not know french. He did not play the violin. And as far as we know, he never once questioned the idea of religious establishment or the owning of slaves. His son, Thomas Jefferson, was very different. Indeed, all the revolutionaries knew things their fathers did not know, and they were eager to prove themselves in what they believed and valued by their disinterestedness, by their virtue. But there was one prominent revolutionary leader who did not seek to play this role that the others did. Now, on the face of it, aaron burr had all the credentials of being a great founder. He was a revolutionary war veteran, a princeton graduate, and a charming and wealthy aristocrat. He eventually became a senator from new york and Vice President of the United States, the third, and his predecessors were john adams and Thomas Jefferson. He was well on his way to a great career, but something set him apart, set his character apart from his colleagues. He inherited his claim to leadership. He was a real aristocrat, if you will. John adams said that he had never known in any country the prejudice in favor of birth, parentage and dissent more conspicuous than in the instance of colonel burr. Burr was the son of a president of princeton and the grandson of another princeton president none other than jonathan edwards, the most famous theologian in the 18th century. Burr said adams was connected by blood, by blood with many respectable families in new england. Unlike the other leaders of the revolutionary generation, unlike jefferson or washington or adams, hamilton, madison or franklin, burr was born fully and unquestionably into whatever nobility and gentility 18th Century America had. Unlike the other revolutionary leaders, therefore, burr never felt the need that he had to earn his aristocrat particular status. Aristocracy was in his veins, in his blood, and he never forgot it. And he took it for granted. Consequently, he behaved very differently from the other revolutionary leaders, especially in promoting his own selfish interests at the expense of the public good. His letters are not full of any talk of virtue or disinterested behavior. He just didnt care about that. His talk was always concerned with what can i do to advance my interests. He didnt care about the other values that the others were intensely trying to cultivate and perform. Burr behaved differently, and in the end i think that difference provoked his fellow statesmen into bringing him down. He was brought down from both ends of the political spectrum, from hamilton at one end, from jefferson at the other, both came to despise burr and both brought him down and destroyed his reputation. Yet i think the very high mindedness of this of these mainstream revolutionary leaders raises some fundamental questions. If it was the intense commitment of this generation, these founders, to new enlightened values that separates them from other generations, why, it might be asked, and it has been asked by recent critical historians, why did the socalled enlightened and liberally educated gentlemen not do more to reform their society . Why did they fail to enhance the status of women, eliminate slavery entirely, treat the indians in a more humane manner . Now, its true that the founders did not accomplish all that many of them wanted. It turned out that they did not control their society and their culture as much as they thought they did, and they were no more able accurately to predict their future than we can accurately predict our future. In the end, many of their enlightened hopes and their kind of enlightened elitist leadership was done in by the very forces that they unleashed with their revolution. No doubt all of the founders assumed instinctively that the western territories would eventually belong to White American settlers, but many at the same time were scrupulously concerned for the fate of the indians who occupied the territories. The state of washingtons secretary of war, henry knox, in the 1790s in letters he wrote to washington about the need for a just treatment of these native people, our modern anthropologists would praise and applaud. But purchasing the indians rights to the land and assimilating or protecting them depended on an orderly and steady pace of settlement. But the ordinary white settlers moved west who moved west flush with confidence that they were, indeed, the chosen people of god, their leaders told them they were, paid no attention whatsoever to what knox was saying and to what the leaders back in philadelphia and the capital were trying to do. They went ahead and rapidly and chaotically scattered westward and stirred up warfare with the indians into which the federal government was inevitably drawn. Democracy and demography did the same for other hopes and plans of the founders. All of the prominent leaders thought that the liberal principles of the revolution would eventually destroy the institution of slavery. When even southerners like jefferson, Patrick Henry and Henry Lawrence publicly deplored the injustice of slavery, from that moment, declared the new york physician and abolitionist e. H. Smith in 1798, from that moment the slow but certain death wound was inflicted upon it. Of course, such predictions could not have been more wrong. Far from being doomed, slavery in the United States in the 1790s was on the verge of its greatest expansion. At the end of the revolutionary era despite enormous eliminations of slavery in the north, there were more slaves in the nation than had existed in 1760. But such selfdeception, such mistaken optimism by the revolutionary leaders was understandable. They wanted to believe the best and initially there was evidence that slavery was dying. The northern states where slavery was not inconspicuous, not inconsequential, 14 of the population of new york, for example, was enslaved, were busy from the moment of revolution, 1776, were busy trying to eliminate the institution and by 1804 all, all the states in the north had done so. The founders thought that the same thing might happen in the southern states. Granville sharp was given Granville Sharp was the leading british abolitionist at the time. He was given an Honorary Degree in 1791 by the college of william mary. Why were these planners who were all slave holders given Honorary Degrees to the leading abolitionists . Its one of the Great Questions that you ask your graduate students to investigate. Why would they do that . They were optimistic that slavery was dying and it would die, maybe not immediately but was on its way out and, therefore, they could celebrate an abolitionist. Not only were there more antislave societies created in the south than in the north, but in the upper south, in virginia, maryland grew quite rapidly in the years immediately following the end of the war. Many thought that the ending of the International Slave trade in 1808 would eventually kill off the institution of slavery. The reason the founders so readily took the issue of slavery off the table in the 1790s was because of this mistaken faith in the future. They lived with the illusion, as i think all generations do, as oliver elsworth, the third chief justice in the world said, as population decreases, slavery will be rendered useless. Slavery, he said in time, will not be a spec in our country. This is the chief justice of the United States. The leaders simply did not count on the remarkable demographic capacity of the slave states themselves, especially virginia, to produce slaves for the exploding areas of the deep south and the southwest. And whatever the revolutionary leaders might have wished of the ending of slavery was now defied by the demands for more and more slaves. So if you want to know why we can never again replicate this extraordinary generation of founders, theres a very simple answer. The growth of what we today presumably value most about American Society and culture, egalitarian democracy. In the early 19th century the voices of ordinary people, at least ordinary white people, began to be heard as never before in the history of the world and they soon overwhelmed the highminded desires, highminded aims of these revolutionary leaders who brought them into being. The founders have succeeded only too well in promoting democracy and equality among ordinary people. Indeed, they succeeded in preventing any duplication of themselves. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you very much. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. Afterwards, gordon wood sat down and discussed his interest in studying the Founding Fathers and what he thinks people misunderstand the most about them. This conversation is just under an hour. Let me just start by asking, what sparked your interest, your passion for history . I believe you grew up in massachusetts near concord and a number of historic sites. Did that play a role in it . No, i dont think so. I just was interested in stories. I read a lot. I had a Terrible High School teacher, i must say, in i went to waltham high school, and he was horrible, but it didnt dampen my interest. I just read history and enjoyed it. But as dave said earlier, i had