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I found Gordon Wood’s piece on the revolution to be refreshing. He spoke about the base issue of the war (patriot dissent of the British social system) in an effective manner. Wood’s tied in the everyday relations between Patriots and Courtiers by illustrating the dynamics of their interpersonal relationships. The soon-to-be Americans had developed a sense that rank was to be earned in the New World. Woods himself makes a reference to a Thomas Paine quote that captures this sentiment quite well. The saying goes, “virtue is not hereditary.” Clearly, this was opposite to the British social structure in which people gained their status and title form their parents.
A specific example would be of a fairly well off farmer who, through hard work, attained his wealth, yet was still subject to the rule of the political structure ran by men who inherited their titles. It is easy in this scenario to see Wood’s theory at work on a very personal level. This farmer would despise that fact that despite being a self made man, he would still have to adhere to a social and political system that, in the years leading up to that war, were not in his best interest. The loyalist aristocracy in the colonies was a tangible variable, being a group of people, that represented a violation to the values that Patriots had begun to develop. In this way, I think that Wood’s not only puts forward a great argument, but also makes it easier to understand.
In addition to this, he took time to address the obvious confusions that would arise. Specifically, he noted that the very values Americans used as reason for separation from Britain would conflict with the fact that slavery still existed after the revolutionary war. This is an issue that Wood’s did not delve into, as his piece was on the revolutionary war. But is important nonetheless and comes up in our other texts. As Ness noted in her blog post, it is a large part of Davis’s argument in his book Inhumane Bondage, and essential to understanding the progression of events between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War