Renowned American Revolution Historian Gordon Wood Dies at 92

Gordon Wood, a Brown University professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian celebrated for his scholarship on the American Revolution and Founding era, has died at the age of 92. Reports indicate he was struck and killed by a passing car while walking. Wood's most celebrated works, including 'The Creation of the American Republic' and 'The Radicalism of the American Revolution,' are considered foundational texts in the field and had a profound influence on historians, legal scholars, and public intellectuals. His scholarship emphasized the universalist Enlightenment ideals embedded in the American founding, arguing that the United States was defined by a civic creed rather than ethnicity or ancestry. In one of his final public speeches, delivered at the American Enterprise Institute, Wood argued forcefully against both ethno-nationalist interpretations of American identity and revisionist claims that the Founding was primarily rooted in the promotion of slavery. He drew on Lincoln's invocation of the Declaration of Independence to argue that the moral principle of equality united all Americans regardless of ancestry. Wood's death leaves a significant void in American historical scholarship and public discourse.