In his own way, Wood opened up the understanding of the Revolution to feelings as well as thoughts, to ideology as well as theory. Meanwhile, he was revising his Harvard doctoral thesis, which became The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. Published in 1969, this pointillist, essayistic yet comprehensive study tracked how understandings of political structure, including the very idea of constitutions, changed under the pressure of revolutionary war and the formation of state governments. An American revision of classical and seventeenth-century English republicanism informed the fledgling republics. In 1787, experience moderated the democratic spirit of ’76. Wood discovered a remarkable knack for explaining how ideas could be new and old, innovative and conservative, at the same time—and how creative political thinking advanced best under the sometimes self-deceiving cover of restoration.
Out of irrationality could come a higher rationality, though not without ironic results. For example, John Adams’s tough-minded insistence that constitutional structures had to reflect the existence of social classes, including aristocrats and plebes, in order to balance them, made him “irrelevant” when enough Americans agreed to disagree, or at least to stop talking about, whether such classes did or should exist.
Wood exaggerated Adams’s unpopularity, but in doing so drove home the sobering point that American republicanism, tending toward Herrenvolk democracy, would have a lot of trouble dealing with the relationship between economic inequality and political power. The course of the 1780s led toward a Madisonian “science of politics” that saved the nation from revolutionary excess yet sought to bury rather than reflect or address economic conflict in its schemes of federalism and representation, creating an American political tradition that couldn’t deal honestly with class or money.
With this flourish, the 35-year old assistant professor performed an acclaimed scholarly triple axel, fashioning a learned interpretation of American origins that seemed to have something for everyone, which was no easier in 1969 than today. At great length and sophistication, he’d offered something to those inclined to celebrate the Constitution, something to those who criticized it, and much to those looking for some way between. The republic, simply put, was moderate yet innovative, advanced and yet caught up in self-deception. Some of the founders were brilliant, yes, but maybe only slightly more so than Gordon S. Wood, who figured out what they knew, what they did, and what they had barely perceived.