Quotes from Gordon S. Wood

If history teaches anything, it teaches humility.

More than any other figure in our history [Tomas] Jefferson is responsible for the idea of American exceptionalism.

Academics have given up trying to recover an honest picture of the past and have decided that their history-writing should be simply an instrument of moral hand-wringing.

The relationship between [John] Adams and [Tomas] Jefferson was extraordinary. They differed on every conceivable issue, except on the Revolution and the love of their country.

[John] Adams never hid his jealousy and resentment of the other Founders, especially Benjamin Franklin.

there must be some public fools who sacrifice private to public interest at the certainty of ingratitude and obloquy—because my vanity whispers I ought to be one of those fools and ought to keep myself in a situation the best calculated to render service.

David Hume thought that even the Tories had been so long obliged to talk "in the republican stile" that they had at length "embraced the sentiments as well as the language of their adversaries.

Public opinion exists in any nation, but in our democracy it has a special power. The Revolution in America transformed it and gave it its modern significance.

The Baptists expanded from 94 congregations in 1760 to 858 in 1790 to become the single largest religious denomination in America. The Methodists had no adherents at all in 1760, but by 1790 they had created over seven hundred congregations—despite the fact that the great founder of English Methodism, John Wesley, had publicly opposed the American Revolution.

In fact, forming new state governments, as Jefferson said in the spring of 1776, was "the whole object of the present controversy." For the aim of the Revolution had become not simply independence from British tyranny, but also the prevention of future tyrannies.

Yet the Pennsylvania radicals continued to assault judges for their abuse of discretionary authority."Judges," the popular radicals contended in 1807,"very often discover that the law, as written, may be made to mean something which the legislature never thought of. The greatest part of their decisions are in fact, and in effect, making new laws.

The Americans' new state constitutions would therefore have to be fixed plans—single written documents, as the English constitution had never been—outlining the powers of government and specifying the rights of citizens.

In a republic that depended on the intelligence and virtue of all citizens, the diffusion of knowledge had to be widespread. Indeed, said Noah Webster, education had to be "the most important business in civil society.

In their desire to root out tyranny once and for all, the members of the state conventions who drafted the new constitutions stripped the new elected governors of much of the power that the royal governors had exercised. No longer would governors have the authority to create electoral districts, control the meeting of the assemblies, veto legislation, grant lands, establish courts of law, issue charters of incorporation to towns, or, in some states, even pardon crimes.

Private associations of men for the purpose of promoting arts, sciences, benevolence or charity are very laudable," declared Noah Webster, but associations formed for political purposes were "dangerous to good government.

The Federalists resisted every attempt by Northern artisans to organize, lest their success, as one Federalist writer put it, "excite similar attempts among all other descriptions of persons who live by manual labor."79

Between 1798 and 1808 American colleges were racked by mounting incidents of student defiance and outright rebellion—on a scale never seen before or since in American history.

Most basic and dangerous of all was the Federalist creation of a huge perpetual federal debt, which, as New York governor George Clinton explained, not only would poison the morals of the people through speculation but would also "add an artificial support to the administration, and by a species of bribery enlist the monied men of the community on the side of the measures of the government. . . . Look to Great Britain.

In a republic, they believed, no person should be allowed to exploit the public's authority for private gain.

a man whose ignorance and perverseness are only surpassed by his pertinacity and conceit.

In 1788 Dr. Rush had told the clergy that, whatever their doctrinal differences, "you are all united in inculcating the necessity of morals," and "from the success or failure of your exertions in the cause of virtue, we anticipate the freedom or slavery of our country.

Do not give to persons able to work for a living," declared a critic of the traditional paternalistic charity in 1807. "Do not support widows who refuse to put out their children. Do not let the means of support be made easier to one who does not work than to those who do.

Both Jefferson and Madison remained convinced to the end of their lives that all parts of America's government had equal authority to interpret the fundamental law of the Constitution—all departments had what Madison called "a concurrent right to expound the constitution.

After much jousting between the Congress and the president over the appointment of more officers, Madison by the end of the year had issued commissions to over eleven hundred individuals, 15 percent of whom immediately declined them, followed by an additional 8 percent who resigned after several months of service.