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(More customer reviews)This outstanding book is generally regarded as fundamental to understanding the American Revolution. Wood immersed himself in contemporary writings including a huge array of political pamphlets, sermons, letters, and other texts in an attempt to reconstruct the thinking of the people who made the Revolution and the Constitution. Wood begins with a reconstruction of how colonial Americans perceived the political organization of their societies, their relationship with Britain, and how they conceived politics in general. The initial parts of the book parallel and draw from Bernard Bailyn's outstanding book, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Indeed, much of Wood's book can be seen as sequel to Bailyn's book.
Wood begins with a reconstruction of the pre-Revolutionary conception of politics. Like Bailyn, Wood reconstructs this as a compound of several elements but dominated by certain general Enlightenment concepts and the specific framework developed by dissident 18th century British Whig intellectuals. Basic concepts included the idea that political structure reflected basic social structures, that the 'people' embodied by parliamentary representation were opposed and oppressed by the Crown, and an obsession with 'corruption' induced by abuse of the executive power of the Crown.
The successful conclusion of the Revolution, however, did not produce the outcome predicted by this conception of politics. The resulting confederation and states were perceived by many American intellectuals as dominated by greed and self-interest, there was an absence of the expected moral regeneration, and there were increasing concerns about the power of state legislatures causing both abuse of minority rights and threats to social order.
The reaction to these problems produced a wholesale revision of American's conceptions of politics. In the period leading up to the formulation of the Constitution, many ideas that we accept as basic were formulated. The nascent and later explicit Federalists severed the coupling between social and political organization. This gave government an essentially independent role and represented a form of social engineering because the Federalists essentially depended on constructed institutions to guarantee social success rather than the prior emphasis on public virtue. The ideas of constitutionialism, large republics, delegation of sovereignty, mixed government with responsibility divided between states and the Federal government, and emphasis on social contracts as a source of authority all stem from this period.
Wood is careful to emphasize some particularly interesting aspects of this process. In some respects, the Federalist drive to constitutionalism was a reactionary act on the part of traditional elites who felt they were losing out in excessively egalitarian world created by the Revolution. The process was widely diffused. Important and generally recognized figures like Madison and James Wilson figure prominently in the story but Wood demonstrates how a host of other figures, many now obscure, contributed to and articulated this process.
In a sense, there were 2 American Revolutions. The first being actual revolt from the British Empire and the second being the dramatic change in political thought and institutions that followed the successful conclusion of that revolt. Wood does a wonderful job of delineating how this second revolution occurred.
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