Gordon Wood's The Radicalism Of The American Revolution

The American Evolution

Change is everywhere. Like a chameleon changing its skin color as it hides from a predator in the desert sand, we are naturally equipped to adapt to our surroundings as living beings in time of threat. This theory is no different in the realm of social history: humans are apt to change their actions, beliefs, and motives in transitional periods of sociological enlightenment or political progression; and with regard to the American Revolution, this process of social evolution is apparent in essentially every piece of pertinent historical literature. In Gordon Wood’s The Radicalism of the American Revolution, he states that the American Revolution was a rather “conservative affair, concerned almost exclusively with politics and constitutional rights…hardly a revolution at all.” As this statement arguably serves as the thesis of Wood’s monograph, Wood
It’s the gradual social evolution on the ground – proven by economic self-interestedness and personal interpretations of what independence and freedom meant to each individual – is precisely what led to the political and social revolution that is still in effect today. Each specific action that pushed America towards a utilitarian republic can surely be categorized as radical, but as a whole, it is far from revolutionary. America is an ever evolving republic, socially and politically. It was the evolution of colonial subordinates: their endurance of economical and political unrests that pushed elitists to act selflessly in their signing of the Declaration of Independence, a document which ultimately enabled the newly formed American society to evolve over the course of nearly two and a half centuries into one that attempts to provide all with life, liberty, and the pursuit of