Dr. Michael Andrews, Vice President of Academic Programs, interviews Gordon Wood on the founding fathers.
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Transcript
Intro: The Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History presents Dr. Gordon Wood, one of our nation’s preeminent scholars on the American Revolution. Dr. Wood discusses America’s founding fathers with Dr. Michael Andrews.
Dr. Andrews: I’m here with Gordon Wood, one of our country’s leading scholars on the American Revolution and founding eras. Gordon is the Alva O. Way Professor Emeritus at Brown University. He is also the author of numerous seminal works on early American history, including The Creation of the American Republic which won the Bancroft Prize in 1970 and Radicalism of the American Revolution which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Welcome Gordon.
Dr. Wood: Thank you.
Dr. Andrews: I’d like to ask you a few questions about early American History. The American Revolution has long been viewed as one of the signal events in the development of the modern west, the Declaration of Independence, after all, seems to closely reflect the writings of the political philosopher, John Locke, a thinker who is regarded by many as one of the main figures in the development of modern liberalism. In the past, however, you’ve written the founders to the contrary, were not modern men so much, but representatives of classical republicanism and I’m wondering if you could elaborate on that.
Dr. Wood: Well, I think the historical profession had emphasized the Lockean liberalism, the individual rights, the individualism so to speak of separate Americans, … and the classic notion of the public good, the Commonwealth had been neglected. So, I wanted to redress the balance. The founders, I think, expected the leaders to be more like themselves, more or less heroic individuals with the classical kind of conception of leadership. You’re not going to be in government to make money out of it. You’re not trying to exploit office for the sake of your own careers. You’re supposed to be devoted to the public. And, by the early 19th century the politicians, in that term they’re not statesmen, they are politicians running for office and doing things that the founders would’ve found objectionable. Log rolling, horse trading, all of the things that we consider to be the staples of American politics were not something that the founders expected. They didn’t want that kind of politics. They expected people not to run but to stand for office. They did not anticipate electoral politics as it emerged in the 19th century or that we have today.
Dr. Andrews: This transition from a more Republican to a more liberal culture is also closely paralleled by the transition from a more aristocratic to a more democratic culture.
Dr. Wood: Yes, that’s right because the classical republican notion depended on leaders who was disinterested, who were virtuous, who were capable of sacrificing the private interest. And, as society became more democratic, that aristocratic notion fell away and was unable to sustain itself.
Dr. Andrews: I’m wondering if you could discuss further the transition from an aristocratic to a more democratic society by talking about Benjamin Franklin. Was not Franklin one of the first great examples of the modern notion of the self-made man?
Dr. Wood: The conception of the self-made man, with Franklin at the center of it is really an invention of the 19th century. Businessmen in the 1820s and 30s needed a hero to justify their rise and they could not find that hero in Jefferson or Washington, or after all, aristocratic slave holders. But, they could find it in the printer, Franklin. And, they saw in Franklin, the printer who had made it, the kind of person that could justify their rise and they made… they turned him into the self-made man. The exemplar of that kind of rise.
Dr. Andrews: But, wasn’t Franklin’s first great act of self-making an attempt to try to transform himself into a British aristocrat?
Dr. Wood: Well, he wants to become a gentleman. He starts out as a printer. He’s a very wealthy man. But, as long as he’s still a printer… even if he’s running a shop with 20 employees, he is looked down upon by the gentry because he has to work for a living. And, labor was held in contempt. It had been held in contempt since the beginning of classical times. From antiquity on. So, Franklin has to retire. He does at the age of 42, 1748, he retires from his business in a very elaborate kind of ceremony. He has a coming out portrait painted. He becomes a gentleman and he never works again a day in his life. Now, he participated in science. He participated in public life. But, he’s not working as a businessman. His money is coming to him through all kinds of investments. He was very self consciously becoming a gentleman and that was a big distinction that we’ve almost totally lost.
Dr. Andrews: Stories often speak of the significance of the moment when Washington turned his sword over to Congress. Why was that moment so significant? And, why did King George III of Britain declare that if Washington turned his sword over to Congress “he would be the greatest man in the world”?
Dr. Wood: Who in history, what successful general had ever done such a thing? Except maybe, you could go back to Cincinnatus, which is in the mists of time, an ancient mythical hero. But, otherwise, we go from Caesar to Cromwell to Marlboro to William of Orange, all of those successful military leaders expected political rewards commensurate with their military victories. And, here’s Washington saying – no. I’m leaving. I’m going back to Mt. Vernon to my farm. And, it just electrified the world. They couldn’t believe it. How could you give up power. How does anyone give up power at the height of his success? Nobody else had done that in recent history. Certainly not since Cromwell. So, that’s what George III is saying. He just can’t believe that a person would give up power so easily as Washington did.
Dr. Andrews: Would it be possible for a figure like George Washington to reappear in the American political scene?
Dr. Wood: There’s no possibility of us having a Washington. We live in a very different world. Much more democratic world than Washington’s world. It’s very unlikely that anyone like him would appear again.
Dr. Andrews: You’ve written recently on the state of the historical profession. Why is that so many popular works of history so often seem to be written by non-academics, like David McCullough?
Dr. Wood: I think this is especially true of the early American period of the revolution which has been abdicated by professional historians that are much more interested in writing monographs for one another to advance the discipline which is a legitimate concern. To move into new areas, to work on women when they’ve been neglected, to work on slavery if it hasn’t been, and that’s the kind of monograph that’s being written, but I do think that historians have an obligation at the same time as they’re advancing the discipline to reach out to the general public. To tell them the story of the country’s history. Of what’s happened. How we got to be the way we are. We’re not physics. We’re not the kind where you can write your papers for each other. We need to reach out to the general public and I think that most historians simply aren’t doing that. They are caught up in issues that concern them and are not necessarily the issues that concern the general public. As a consequence, that whole area of political, biographical, constitutional history has been filled by non PhD’s and it’s not just McCullough, there’s a whole host of people who do not have PhD’s who have invaded, so to speak, and made a lot of money writing good popular history.
Dr. Andrews: Thank you so much Gordon.
Dr. Wood: Thank you.
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Tags: American Founders, Benjamin Franklin, civic education, Civics Education, George Washington, Gordon Wood