Brown’s Pulitzer Winner Gordon Wood on the American Revolution’s 250th Anniversary

The Learning Curve Gordon Wood

[00:00:00] Alisha Searcy: Welcome back to The Learning Curve podcast. I’m your co-host, Alisha Thomas Searcy, and Dr. Cheng is off for the week, and so I’m excited to have a guest co-host with us today. Kelley Brown, welcome to the show.

[00:00:37] Kelley Brown: Alisha, thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited to be here.

[00:00:40] Alisha Searcy: Good. Well, I know a little bit about you, but I don’t know if our guests know enough about you, so why don’t you tell the folks who you are.

[00:00:48] Kelley Brown: Sure. My name’s Kelley Brown and I am a government and history teacher at East Hampton High School in Western Massachusetts, where I teach a pretty special civics course called We the People, the Citizen, and the Constitution. And in my other. Free time. I really love to work with teachers and do training in civics education, in inquiry-based history, using primary sources, and really just helping teachers think about getting students engaged and active in their learning and history and government.

[00:01:23] Alisha Searcy: Ooh, I love that. Do you take the show on the road, you know, to places in the South, for example?

[00:01:29] Kelley Brown: I do. I’ve been all over the country doing professional development for teachers with lots of different organizations that I’ve worked with and really just enjoy working with teachers everywhere, including elementary teachers.

[00:01:44] I work a lot with elementary teachers on civics and history, and that is really fun. ’cause I feel like as a high school teacher. Everything I learned about how to be a good teacher came from an elementary teacher.

[00:01:56] Alisha Searcy: Interesting. Well, I am looking forward to hearing more about that, and again, we’re happy to have you on with us this week.

[00:02:04] And so we’re gonna jump in starting with, I’m gonna give a story of the week, and then if you don’t mind, I would love for you to tell our audience about something special that you participated in recently and may have won a contest or two. So we’ll hear about that in a moment. But before we get to that, I wanna talk about my story for the week.

[00:02:23] It’s a Gallup poll telling us that half of school leaders say Finding a good math teacher is tough. This is not a surprise, Kelley, I’m sure. But this article was really important for me to read. Number one, we know that it’s hard to find math, science, special education teachers if you’re in education. You know, that’s a thing.

[00:02:44] I think it always has been the case. It’s probably even more difficult now. And so in this poll, nearly half of 1,471 education leaders who responded to this poll said that it was very challenging to find math teachers and far worse than finding strong English language or social studies applicant.

[00:03:08] What’s also interesting here, Kelley, is that. What we don’t talk enough about is preparation programs. And so if you think about this in the context of science, of reading and all of the things that we’ve been doing for the last few years, because we’ve figured out that there’s a science to this and how to teach reading, we’re also realizing that there’s a necessary preparation that is required for math teachers to be able to teach math.

[00:03:37] And so the National Council on Teacher Quality. Which released this teacher preparation study this month found that the average undergraduate program dedicates 85 hours of instructional time to foundational math content knowledge. Which is 20 hours short of what this organization recommends, but get this graduate programs devote even less time to the topic.

[00:04:03] 14 hours total with only meeting 5%. Meeting or approaching the minimum recommendation of 150 hours. And the council says that 22% of undergraduate programs earned an F for their performance in this area. And more than 80% of graduate level programs also earned this failing grade. And so when you dig down and you think about what that really means.

[00:04:29] Kelley, I don’t know if you are in this category, but I may have said a time or two in my life. I’m not that great at math. Hmm. And that didn’t come from inside. That came from hearing it all the time from teachers, from other adults. I just remember as a child, hearing that all the time, I was intimidated by math.

[00:04:49] I did fine, but I, you know, didn’t go far in math because I just felt like it was too hard. It was too much. So let me just, you know, do. What was required, right. To get out of high school, to get out of college, whatever it was. And so I also know having LED schools before, elementary teachers in particular, don’t like teaching math.

[00:05:09] You know, when we got to departmentalized, they all wanted ELA and social studies. They didn’t want math and science, and I don’t think it’s an ability issue. I think it is an exposure issue. I think it is. How did the teachers that we had in elementary and middle and high school, the other adults around us feel about math?

[00:05:28] What was their confidence level in teaching math? And I think this article essentially points out that it starts with teacher preparation programs. And so this isn’t to. Damn all education preparation programs, but it is to raise a question for all of us who do this work from a policy standpoint. Those of us who are, you know, in education in some way, to think about where this starts, how we prepare teachers, the mindsets, how we make sure they have those foundational.

[00:05:56] Skills so that they really are equipped to teach math and to inspire students to love math. I think those people who do love math, it’s because of a great teacher that they have. And so again, great article. I hope people will check it out. It’s in the 74, and I also think that it’s important to point out that there are some districts who are.

[00:06:16] Addressing this by putting additional supports in place for teachers. Teach for America is one of the examples that I talked about, but other things that are being put in place to make sure that teachers are prepared, but we clearly need to do a lot better, both at the undergraduate level and at the graduate level.

[00:06:34] So that’s my story of the week. Kelley, any thoughts about that before we turn it over to you to talk about your contest that you won or that your students won? Well,

[00:06:42] Kelley Brown: Alisha, I will say a lot of what you said really hit home for me. One of the other hats I wear that I didn’t mention is I’m an instructional coach and I do actually work in a classroom a lot, and I work in several math classrooms.

[00:06:57] And so many of the things you said about students’ attitudes towards math, about their fears towards math, and also really giving math teachers the support they need in order to really think about how to help students understand what they’re doing and how to keep moving forward and how to get excited about math.

[00:07:16] Mm-hmm. It’s been a really fun challenge for me as an instructional coach. I, I actually in a another life wanted to be a math. Teacher when I graduated from high school, but fell into civics. And so it’s been a little dream for me to return back to the math classroom a little bit. And I can say I’m doing my best to help support and partner with those teachers that might be struggling to figure out how to tap into that joy.

[00:07:40] Alisha Searcy: That’s really good. And how cool is that, that you teach civics and train teachers in that area, but you’re also coaching in math, so very important. I have a tendency to ask a lot of questions, but I’m gonna keep moving because you made me very curious about, you know, what you’re learning as you do this work.

[00:07:56] And so we’ll have to talk offline about that. I’m very interested in, in hearing that. But tell us more about what you’ve been doing in terms of contests or recent trip to dc. What’s happening?

[00:08:07] Kelley Brown: Sure. So as I mentioned earlier, I teach a course called We the People, the Citizen, and the Constitution. And it’s a course that’s based off the Center for Civic Education’s.

[00:08:16] We the People Program. And what’s so cool about this program is it has this authentic congressional hearing based assessment that’s part of the course, but it also involves a competition that students get a chance to participate in. So any student that walks through the door is a part of this program and they’re gonna go to that competition and do the best they can.

[00:08:36] And my students had that opportunity. They worked very hard and they won the Massachusetts State competition this year in Boston. Oh. So I know. It’s exciting. And we just had the opportunity to travel to Washington, DC. And participate in the national we the People Competition where we competed against 47 other schools from all over the country.

[00:09:00] And students got to really dig into some very deep questions about the US Constitution from philosophy all the way through to modern application and show their knowledge through a congressional hearing style competition where they get a chance to kind of testify in front of judges. But we also got to see.

[00:09:21] All the sites live. Starting with the National Archives. I always bring my students there first so they can see the documents right there and begin our trip. And we had a wonderful opportunity to both compete academically, but also to enjoy a lot of the sites in DC and including our team favorite is always to go to Mount Vernon.

[00:09:42] We had the opportunity to go to Mount Vernon on our last day, and we very much enjoy. Not only seeing Washington’s home and learning about Mount Vernon itself, but having an opportunity just to enjoy some of the peacefulness and serenity that we know, president Washington or General Washington as he preferred to be called.

[00:10:03] I. Really longed for, and it didn’t get much time in retirement to spend there, but my students really just had kind of a onic experience if we can tap into the ancients a little bit. And they worked really hard to get there, and I think they had the opportunity to. Feel that contentment in their performance, but also in really having a new appreciation, a, a new understanding for what our capital means, what these sites mean, and why they’re important in our continuing story of our democratic republic.

[00:10:40] And if I could share one little story that I think sums it up. Yes. Had a chance to go to the Library of Congress. And one of my favorite places, but I never know if it’s gonna be for the students, is the display of Jefferson’s library. Mm-hmm. And watch my students scurrying around looking for things like, oh, he read Cato’s letters.

[00:11:02] Oh, you know, he, he read Aristotle, he read on politics. He read Nima ethics. He in all of these different books that they were able to see, you know, did he read Machiavelli? We don’t know. And so they would search around in the stacks to find them and it was just very sweet to watch them to be so excited to think about the fact that the things they were reading were also read by Jefferson and informed some of the decisions that the founding generation made.

[00:11:32] Alisha Searcy: You know, that is incredible. These are literally life changing experiences and life shaping experiences for your students. How incredible is that? Thank you for what you’re doing. I would argue that there’s no more important time than now for them to have these kinds of experiences, you know, given just the shifts that we’re seeing in our country right now.

[00:11:55] And just the importance of understanding civics and our history. You know, to your point, being exposed to all of these documents and readings, you know, to shape how this country came to be is so very important. So kudos to you. Thank you for what you’re doing.

[00:12:10] Kelley Brown: Yeah, it’s exciting stuff and it certainly gives me hope to see them.

[00:12:13] So excited and so interested in all of these pieces.

[00:12:18] Alisha Searcy: Yes, and gives me hope too as a former elected official that I think you might have been developing some future members of Congress and legislatures and governors. And presidents.

[00:12:28] Kelley Brown: It’s exciting, and they had a chance to get into the White House and a special tour of Congress, and I have a former student who is the chief of staff for a legislator right now.

[00:12:36] So they had a chance to kind of see the inside track on staff in Congress, which I think is always really nice. To see kind of how things work behind the scenes.

[00:12:46] Alisha Searcy: Amazing. Well, again, happy to have you. It is time for us to have our guest on, so we’re excited about that. So stay tuned because coming up after the break, we have Pulitzer winner Gordon Wood, on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.

[00:13:16] Gordon Wood is Alva Oe University professor and professor of History emeritus at Brown University. He taught at Harvard University and the University of Michigan before joining the faculty at Brown in 1969. Wood is the author of the Creation of the American Republic, 1776 to 1787, which won the Bancroft Prize and the John h Dunning Prize and the radicalism of the American Revolution, which won the Pulitzer Prize for history and the Ralph Waller Emerson Prize, professor Woods, the Americanization of Benjamin Franklin was awarded the Julia Ward Howell Prize by the Boston Authors Club.

[00:13:56] I. His volume in the Oxford History of the United States Empire of Liberty, a history of the Early Republic, 1789 to 1815 won the Association of American Publishers Award for History and biography, the American History Book Prize by the New York Historical Society and the Society of the Cincinnati History Prize.

[00:14:18] In 2011, wood was awarded a National Humanities medal by President Obama and the Churchill Bell by Colonial Williamsburg. His reviews appear in the New York Review of books, and he’s a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He earned his BA degree from Tufts University and his PhD from Harvard University.

[00:14:41] Professor Wood, again, thank you so much for joining us. We’re excited to have you. It is my pleasure. This year we’re celebrating the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington in Concord. Fought on April 19th, 1775, marking the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. I. Can you briefly sketch for us what listeners should know about the historical context of Great Britain and its North American colonies in 1775?

[00:15:11] Gordon Wood: Well, it starts really in 1765 with a SNAP Act, and there’s a 10 year debate over the relationship between the colonies and Great Britain focusing on the ability of. The English Parliament to tax the colonists and the colonists are adamant on that point. Refuse to accept any taxation by Great Britain, the crisis of April 19th.

[00:15:39] Which was a date of course, that they referred to the way we refer to September 11th. The columnists later talk about April 19th. The context for that is really the Tea Party. In December of 1773, Samuel Adams was getting frustrated because nothing was happening in the relationship and. Of course we might think of Samuel Adams as a terrorist.

[00:16:01] At least the British would’ve thought of him in those terms. He gets frustrated and there was a tax on tea. The colonists were refusing to drink tea, but he decided, he and his cohorts, his colleagues in Massachusetts decided to to destroy 10,000 pounds. That is value, which was an enormous sum of tea, throwing it into Boston Harbor.

[00:16:27] Now that was not well received by the other colonists. George Washington said, that’s terrible. That’s destruction of private property. And he was appalled by the actions of Massachusetts radicals, but the British, in all their wisdom, I. Changed the situation completely. They came back with what they called the coercive acts.

[00:16:48] The colonists labeled them the intolerable acts. They closed the Port of Boston. They replaced the civilian governor Thomas Hutchinson with a military general, a British general. They ended the town meetings of the towns except for one a year that would be allowed to vote supplies, and they changed the Massachusetts charter by making the council appointed rather than elected.

[00:17:12] All of these changes were appalling and it changed the minds of other colonists. Washington said if they can do that to Massachusetts, they can do that to Virginia. So from that moment on, I think there was a confrontation that was bound to. Explode. And in April 19th, the British sent some forces out to see some arms in Concord, and the confrontation took place.

[00:17:37] It would’ve happened sooner or later, somewhere in Massachusetts, some confrontation between the colonists and the British. And of course, the exchange of fire killed hundreds of red coats, British soldiers, and that changed everything.

[00:17:53] Alisha Searcy: Thank you.

[00:17:54] Kelley Brown: I’m so grateful for you being here. The British historian Andrew Roberts recently wrote the biography, the Last King of America, the Misunderstood Reign of George iii.

[00:18:05] Could you talk about King George iii, his court and ministers, and the key imperial policies and constitutional violations that led up to the colonists seeking independence.

[00:18:17] Gordon Wood: I reviewed Robert’s book somewhere, but he’s trying to recover George’s reputation with Americans. He’s quite right. George was quite an enlightened man.

[00:18:27] He created the Royal Academy of Arts. He, he was well read in, and of course, he’s the first king in the hian line who was born in England and spoke English fluently. But he comes in in 1760, succeeding. His grandfather, his father had died before he took. So the succession went from the grandfather to the grandson.

[00:18:49] And so he was a very young man when he took over the crown in 1760 and he was determined to rule his ministers were the ministers of the Crown, his Majesty’s ministers. And it took him a while to figure out which minister that he liked could command a, a majority in, in the House of Commons. And as a consequence, he went through a number of ministers.

[00:19:12] Tremendous instability through the whole decade leading up to 1770 where he finally found in North. Lord North, a minister that he liked and could trust. He destabilized politics, created all kinds of chaos in the politics. Many people thought he was bringing the Torries back in, Torries being the people who support a strong monarchy, and so it was a very disruptive affair.

[00:19:39] He ended up being a, a real hawk and kept the war going, the war that broke out. In April 19th, kept that going right to the end. He was a strong supporter of military force against the colonists.

[00:19:55] Alisha Searcy: Professor, when people think of the revolutionary and founding generations, they often think of their unique educations, including the influences of Greco-Roman history, Bible reading, British law and Enlightenment thinkers.

[00:20:10] Can you tell us about their formative intellectual development and how it’s transformed them from subjects of an empire into citizens of a republic?

[00:20:20] Gordon Wood: Well, there is no doubt the influence of the classics that played into it lightened men and women on both sides of the Atlantic in the English speaking world in particular, but also in the French world as well.

[00:20:34] This is the source of, you might say, the source of Republicanism. When Jefferson go is minister in France and he goes to Nim and sees the Maison Re, which is a Roman temple from the first century. He writes back to his colleagues in Richmond who are creating a, a new capital I. Richmond, Virginia, and he says, hold everything.

[00:20:56] You’ve gotta make the capital a copy of this Roman temple. And that kind of influence of course, affected our classical educ. I mean, our classical buildings from then on the classics were very important. But not everybody had a college education. Franklin did not, and Washington did not. But they were widely read.

[00:21:17] And so the whole enlightenment is really focused on classics in particular because, especially in Rome, they wanna know why Rome fell. It’s not surprising that gibbon. Write his book on the decline fall of the Roman Empire, it was on everybody’s mind. What makes for a healthy state and what makes for disease and the death of a state.

[00:21:40] And so that’s understandable that they would focus on, uh, on Rome because they were concerned. The columnists thought that England was past its prime. It was, was dying. It was an old lady. Alexander Hamilton, the 19-year-old, a 20-year-old student at King’s College, which later became Columbia debates with Samuel Seabury, who was a Anglican minister, the age of the mother country.

[00:22:04] Hamilton saying it’s a, she’s an old hag and, and Seabury trying to say no, she’s in the prime of her life. They thought of states in those terms as growing up, maturing. And eventually dying like human beings. So the education was very much focused on enlightenment thinking. All men are created equal, is an enlightenment phrase shared by educated people on both sides of the Atlantic.

[00:22:29] And it’s a quite radical phrase if you think about it, that they believe that all men, and that meant blacks, any person at all, blacks, whites, whatever. Their background were all born equal Now. They developed differently, and that was due to the environment. So an enlightened person was somebody who believed in nurture, not nature.

[00:22:52] That’s what’s radical about that phrase in the Declaration of Independence. And it affected American thinking from then on because once you assume that it’s nurture that matters, then education matters and controlling the environment matters. And so from that, a whole host of consequences flowed.

[00:23:13] Alisha Searcy: I love that.

[00:23:14] Kelley Brown: Professor Wood, I’d like to ask you a little bit about Franklin. So your landmark book, the Americanization of Benjamin Franklin Recounts Franklin’s Rise from his humble beginnings as the youngest son of a soap and candle maker, 15 outta 17 children who had only two years of formal education. Through his statesmanship and inventiveness, he became glorious or gained glory as the quintessential American.

[00:23:39] Could you briefly discuss Franklin’s role in American independence?

[00:23:44] Gordon Wood: Well, Franklin came late to the revolution of the Brits had been smart in 17 67, 68. They created the American department for the first time, created a department that would handle American affairs. Up to that point, it had been handled out of the back pocket of the Secretary of State for the Southern department who handled all European affairs in in Southern Europe.

[00:24:08] So at that point, Franklin, I think, really hoped or expected. He would be the undersecretary, the bureaucrat who would run a department. He couldn’t be the secretary because they were all lords. But he hoped, and if the Brits had been smart, they would’ve appointed him the undersecretary. And I think he might’ve remained a Brit the rest of his life, but instead turn on him.

[00:24:32] And a man named Blue Wood Hillsborough was appointed who hated Franklin And Franklin, slowly within the next couple of years, becomes alienated from British life. And turns against the Empire. And in March he leaves. He stays until March of 75, hoping with William Pit or Lloyd Camden, to somehow save the empire.

[00:24:54] And he finally gives up and says before he is gonna be arrested, and has immediately elected to the Continental Congress, which is meeting in May of, of 1775. Now many people in America think that he may be a mole, that he’s a spy for the British and there’s a lot of suspicion of him. He knows that, and of course he writes a phony letter to his good friend in England saying, you are my enemy and I’m yours.

[00:25:20] He ends the letter with that phrase, but of course he never sends the letter. He just publicizes it so that people think that he’s turning against his former friends and that eases the suspicion. But there was a lot of suspicion that he might be still loyal to Great Britain after our, his son was a royal governor of New Jersey.

[00:25:39] He had spent so much time in Great Britain. From 1757 to 1775, except for a short visit back in the mid sixties to look after his post office, he was a, a resident of Great Britain, and so there it was, there was a good deal of doubt. How American is this guy? He had to prove himself. Of course they appoint him because he’s the most internationally known figure.

[00:26:03] In fact, he’s the only person in America that anybody in Europe had ever heard of. He’s appointed minister to France when the revolution breaks out, and he acted brilliantly through the whole period extracting loan after the loan from the French government, and bankrupted essentially bankrupted the French, which led to their own revolution in 1789.

[00:26:27] Alisha Searcy: Wow. I wanna go back for just a moment. Can you talk about the pre revolutionist James Otis, his famous Ritz of assistance speech in 1761, and how the events in 1760s and early 1770s, including the Boston Massacre Committees of Correspondence and the Boston Tea Party animated and inflamed Colonial Massachusetts

[00:26:51] Gordon Wood: Otis’s father had been a, uh, important politician in general court.

[00:26:57] His father gets denied a judicial appointment by the Bernard Governor Bernard’s government, and Otis is really angry. It’s not at all clear that he’s got a revolution in mind. He’s just angry at the authorities and he goes after the search warrants. In 17 60, 61, that led John Adams to believe that that’s when the revolution really started.

[00:27:20] He and Jefferson had a little tiff later in life, which state was more more responsible for the revolution, Virginia or Massachusetts. And this was Adams’ retaught to Jefferson’s claim that Patrick Henry had. Got the ball of revolution going. At any rate, Otis is an interesting man because he wrote several very important pamphlets, very ambiguous pamphlets.

[00:27:42] ’cause he would say on one hand, the House of Commons are parliament, he’s supreme. At the same time, it can’t do an unjust thing like pass the stamp act. He later suffers from some kind of mental illness and is not an important figure in the late sixties or early seventies. Now the Stamp Act is the crucial point, and from that moment on, there’s a confrontation that’s just not gonna go away.

[00:28:10] George Greenville, who passes the minister in charge, the Prime Minister in 1765. He thinks the colonies are ripping off Great Britain. Great Britain had just succeeded in a long war. That went on for seven, the seven years war, although it was actually nine years. It started in the colonies, seven years war.

[00:28:30] That increased the data of Great Britain to a horrendous height, I think 140 million pounds, which was astronomical for the time. In fact, the interest on the debt. Was equivalent to about 60% of a peacetime budget, just paying the interest, something that we today have to worry about how much the interest is costing us.

[00:28:51] And he felt that the colonies had benefited from the war. The British had eliminated the French threat. Had been seeded all that territory up to the Mississippi and the colonists should have been willing to help pay ’cause they needed to supply troops to look after the Indians and also the French who are still in Quebec.

[00:29:11] Of course, about 50,000. Frenchmen still living in Quebec and at the same time, the soldiers are coming back from America saying, this is a land of milk and honey over there, they got the highest standard of living. And, and it’s probably true, the colonies probably had the highest standard of living in any people in the, in the world at the time, especially if you measure it by.

[00:29:32] Its ability to reproduce itself. And that was true of black slaves in Virginia. They were reproducing at the same rate as the whites. So by European standards, this is an extraordinary demographically growing country, the fastest growing country in the world, or at least the western world. And so it’s natural that Grenville said, well, why shouldn’t they pay for some of this?

[00:29:56] And that lies behind the step back. And from that moment on, there’s a, a struggle that, uh, led to the publication of hundreds, if not thousands of pamphlets on both sides, arguing the case back and forth. And finally, you reach a point at the end of the decade, the sixties, where a famous pamphlet by William Knox, who was a one of the sub ministers.

[00:30:21] Who did all the work, if you will, in the government, publishes a a pamphlet saying, look, this is invokes the supremacy of parliament, the sovereignty of parliament. He said, if you accept one iota of parliament’s authority, you have to accept all. If you deny one iota of parliament’s authority, you have to deny all and confronted with that choice.

[00:30:42] And it’s echoed by others like Governor Hutchinson in Massachusetts. He says to the general court, you’re either all under parliament. Or you’re outside of Parliament and they’re given that choice the call and say, okay, we’re not under parliament at all. Now, parliament was such a, had such a, how to put it in the wig mind.

[00:31:01] The wigs being those who were antagonistic to the king and and suspicious of the King Parliament was the source of all liberty. It was the Bullock of Liberty. It was the source of the Bill of Rights of 16 88 89. It stood for liberty in British eyes. Anyone in his white mind would wanna be under Parliament’s authority and, and how would you defend yourself against the crown, which is the source of tyranny.

[00:31:25] But the columnists decided to take that choice that they were not under parliament. And so you have a kind of commonwealth theory of the Empire emerging in the pamphlets, especially written in 1774 by all of the leading pamphlet, Benjamin Franklin Hamilton. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, they all write pamphlets saying, we’re tied only to the Crown Parliament has no authority over us.

[00:31:52] It was a little awkward for them because they conceded that Parliament could still regulate their trade. They had to kind of put that aside, but otherwise, that’s the position they’re at. That’s why the Declaration of Independence doesn’t mention Parliament or scarcely mentions it. Georgia Third have combined with others.

[00:32:10] The others, of course, parliament, but they are scrupulous, legally scrupulous in the declaration by avoiding any mention that they’re breaking away from Parliament ’cause they had already decided that they had broken from Parliament. That helps explain, uh, the peculiar nature. Of the Declaration of Independence, which attacks only the crown, even though the crown, or it’s not the source of the stamp Act or the towns of duties or the, or the coercive acts, or any of those things that they complained about.

[00:32:38] That was all Parliament. Interesting.

[00:32:41] Kelley Brown: That debate over sovereignty is so interesting and you distill it so well in power and liberty. My students really grasp that and it’s so exciting to see them really understand it. I wanna jump to George Washington, the revolutionary and founding generations themselves, as well as modern biographers have called George Washington.

[00:33:01] The quote, indispensable man to the American cause. Could you share with us what we need to remember about Washington’s character and larger military leadership in the improbable feat of the American colonists successfully rebelling from the most powerful empire in the world?

[00:33:18] Gordon Wood: Right. Washington is the central figure.

[00:33:21] He’s a self-made man, and because he lacked a formal education, he worked at it strenuously. He had an image really derived from reading of what. An ideal leader should be a disinterested person. That is, of course, that term itself has lost some of its meaning. We now use disinterested to mean uninterested.

[00:33:44] That’s not what it meant in the 18th century. It meant impartial, standing above an interest. Everybody had interest, but there had to be a leader who was willing to stand above his interest. And Washington emerged as that kind of. Impartial. He had a tremendous sense of, I guess you’d say, prudence wisdom.

[00:34:05] He was the perfect kind of commander, keeping control of things, seeing the big picture. Everyone admired him for that. Now, he could not have won the revolution without the aid of the French, and of course, Yorktown is essentially a French victory. But Washington emerges as this kind of figure that stood above.

[00:34:25] Partisanship stood above interest. He, in fact, in 1784, he’s out of office. He’s back at Mount Vernon, and he receives a gift from the Virginia legislature of 150 Canal shares, and he’s so upset by this ’cause. He said, how can I accept them without hurting my reputation for disinterest in he writes to at least a dozen people, everybody he knows, Jefferson and Fairfax in England, Lafayette in France.

[00:34:51] He writes to. Can I accept them? What should I do? And Jefferson comes through with a solution. He says, accept the shares, but then give them away to the college out in Lexington, Virginia. And he does it gives ’em to Washington Uni. It becomes Washington University. And then of course later with a Civil War.

[00:35:10] That’s Washington and Lee. University, they are the recipients of his Canal shares. But the fact that he would do this and worry this thing so much, this issue gives you an idea of his personality. He was, his character was totally controlled. I mean, he wanted to be in the eyes of other people. What kind of person he wanted to be was that kind of leader.

[00:35:32] And he, he worked at it all the time, thought about it all the time. And of course that’s why he freed his slaves at the end of his life. He wanted his legacy to be that of someone who freed his slaves and not a slave holder, even though he, through the most of his life, of course, and read up until his death, he was a slave holder as any Virginia planner was.

[00:35:52] Alisha Searcy: Professor you mentioned a few minutes ago, Patrick Henry. And so in recent decades there’s been a lot of focus on the revolutionary and founding era achievements of Washington Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, you know John Adams, that sometimes figures like Samuel Adams or Patrick Henry and George Mason often seem obscured.

[00:36:14] Yeah. So can you discuss these three men and the importance of their careers to the American cause?

[00:36:22] Gordon Wood: Well, there’s sort of an age problem. They’re older, and so they, they aren’t really there. I mean, Samuel Adams an old man by the time he get to the Constitution, he’s not all excited about the federal constitution.

[00:36:34] That becomes crucial. And the same is true of Henry. He’s a brilliant opponent of the federal constitution. This hurts these people. Mason had been at the convention. But turns against the Constitution as well. When he gets back to Virginia, he writes against it. He’s the one who thought it should have a bill of rights, which of course it eventually does get added by Madison.

[00:36:58] So part of their problem in for our celebration of them is their opposition to the main document of government in our history. Which is the federal Constitution drafted in 1787. So I think that’s more than anything is what reduces their importance to some extent in, in our eyes, Washington, of course, remains central through the whole period and he becomes, Madison has to get him to come to the convention ’cause it won’t mean anything without his presence.

[00:37:27] And he finally convinces him to come. And of course he’s immediately elected president of the. Philadelphia Convention. The rest of the people that we know like Jefferson and Madison and others are younger than the ones you mentioned. Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry.

[00:37:44] Kelley Brown: Thank you. Many men were members of the organized New England colonial militia companies trained in weaponry tactics and military strategies during the American Revolutionary War.

[00:37:57] They were known for being ready at a minute’s notice and were among the first to fight in the American Revolution. Could you talk about how this ragtag collection of farmers were able to have successes against the better trained and organized British army?

[00:38:13] Gordon Wood: Well, of course in the, in the Lexington conquered clash.

[00:38:17] These Minutemen, many of them had had experience in war. They had been in the seven years war, they hunted and they were good with arms and there isn’t that great advantage, the crucial. Time came with months after Lexington Concord where, ’cause the retreating soldiers there were picked off by Minutemen who are hiding behind walls.

[00:38:38] And of course the British soldiers thought that was unfair kind of warfare. They expected to meet their enemy directly on a flat field. So they considered that the Battle of Bunkers Hill in June really is shows how. How much patience they had because the 2000 red coats coming up, they were pretty impressive.

[00:38:58] And most soldiers in in the war, in war in the 18th century were always impressed by the British red coats who were very disciplined. They marched up the hill, bunker Hill under terrible fire. Kept going. And of course finally did oust the colonists, but they took tremendous losses and the commander felt that with these kinds of losses, we’ve got a real problem.

[00:39:21] And this was not a bunch of rabble we’re dealing with. These are organized soldiers. And so from that moment on the British least governor, how general, how knew that he was dealing with. Something more, more than just, which is what the British, more than rabble, which is what the British officials backed 3000 miles away thought that the Massachusetts people were.

[00:39:41] But this was no rabble as Howe said. They finally got the troops trained. It took a while. Washington was very discouraged at the outset with the Massachusetts people he had when he came into summer of 1775 to take over the surrounding of Boston. The training started right away. It went through right up through 78 with that at Valley Forge, we were still training soldiers, and I think at the Battle of Monmouth was the first time in that since it was late as 78, that the colonists really showed themselves to be a major force that could be dealt with equally with British.

[00:40:19] Now, when you talk about we’re going, coming down New York, that was just a misjudgment on the part of the British officials. They assumed there were more loyalists. That would flock to the British side as Burgo moved down the Hudson and it just didn’t happen. And he’s bringing, he’s got a train of wagons, probably a mile long, some of them, four or five of them just for his own personal equipment.

[00:40:46] It was just a misunderstanding of the terrain they were in, of the nature of the. Population they were fighting. There were about 20% of the population who were loyal to the British, but that was not, they thought they were, there were gonna be many more loyalists and they misjudged that completely. And that was one of the great allusions the British had through the whole period.

[00:41:09] Alisha Searcy: Thank you for that. For his extraordinary work in the Continental Congress, John Adams was called the Atlas of Independence. While Thomas Jefferson drafting the Declaration of Independence made them among most celebrated political authors in statesmen in world history. Can you discuss these two men, their differences and their similarities, and how their partnership was so fundamental to American independence?

[00:41:35] Gordon Wood: Yes, those two men are the MO men most responsible for the Declaration of Independence. Adam threw his speeches and prodding of his colleagues into independence. He just pushed from the moment he was in the Congress till the declaration was finally enacted. He was on about a dozen committees. He was on the committee to draft, of course, to draft the declaration, and they gave it to this young man who had just, he had arrived late from Virginia, this young squirt to write the declaration.

[00:42:07] Now it turned out no one thought at the time that the declaration was gonna become a. The premier document of American Life, and by the 1790s, Jefferson had emerged as, as the author, and Franklin was beside himself with jealousy. He says The author, the author, he was just a draftsman. And if he’d known that it was gonna become so important, he would’ve written it himself, he said.

[00:42:30] So that was part of their, they were so different in so many ways. I mean, Jefferson’s a, a slave holding aristocrat. Patriarchy in Virginia. Adams is a middle class person whose whole livelihood came from his lawyering. He was a very successful lawyer and earned his own way in Massachusetts society.

[00:42:53] Jefferson never had to work a day in his life and, and of course was supported by hundreds of slaves. Totally different. He was, by today’s stands, utter progressive. He believed everything that progressives in the. Larger Western world believed in minimal government. That was the position of progressives in the late 18th century and other trust in the people I.

[00:43:17] Adams did not trust the people. And Adams contested every American myth. Jefferson creates the no notion of American exceptionalism, and Adams doubts it. He says, there’s no special providence for America. We’re just as sinful. Just as we’re vicious. As other nations. He, he said there’s no special preserve for us.

[00:43:39] So they, they differ on a, and Adams had a shady view of human nature. He thought, can’t trust people, they’re gonna be nasty. And Jefferson had the opposite view, though. People were to be trusted. He just had a utter confidence in human nature, especially ordinary people, which of course is redeemed him for American history up until recent years where he’s.

[00:44:03] His slate holding has turned people against it, but for the greater part of our history, his trust in democracy and the common people made him the premier founder. It certainly was for Abraham Lincoln, so they couldn’t have differed more in there, but they were friends, especially during the ministry.

[00:44:23] They were both ministers. Well, for a while they were both in France and they got to know each other very well there. And in fact, Jefferson was a widower. And so he, he was adopted more or less by Abigail and John and John Quincy Adams was there, and Jefferson would take John Quincy Adams to the concerts and so on.

[00:44:43] So you got to know the family very well. Then when the federal government has established, and Adams wrote his famous defense of the American constitutions and other pieces that showed that he was a, it looked like he might even be a monarchist Jefferson. Realized that he and Adams had nothing in common intellectually, and they broke.

[00:45:04] And of course the election of 1800 was decisive. Jefferson would beat Adams, who fully expected to have a second turn the way Washington did. And at that point it looked like the break was irreparable. But in 1812, Benjamin Rush, who was a friend of both, he was a famous medical doctor, brought the two men together, exchanging letters.

[00:45:28] They went on to write about 150 letters to each other through the rest of their lives. And in that sense, the friendship was repaired, although they never saw each other again. And of course, they died on the same day, 50 years to the day of July 4th, 1826. But coming up to next year will be the 200 anniversary of their deaths and the 50th anniversary following the declaration, it was the.

[00:45:56] Golden Jubilee and, and the both men died at the same time, seemed to American citizens to be providential. It’s an extraordinary relationship between the two of them. They couldn’t have differed more on everything, on religion, on, on everything you can think of, except they ended up being together on the revolution.

[00:46:16] Kelley Brown: Thank you. Finally, as we celebrate the battles of Lexington in Concord, could you explain how these events impacted the remaining 12 colonies and their commitment to the American cause?

[00:46:28] Gordon Wood: The big thing that really changed everything as I, as I mentioned, was with the intolerable acts, the enforcement that followed the Tea Party.

[00:46:36] The British were so furious, so angry at the Tea Party. That they were out to punish Massachusetts. Now, they didn’t realize that their punishment would be picked up and extended to the whole whole continent because they somehow thought that the opposition was located in Massachusetts, that these.

[00:46:58] Puritans, these republicans already were, you know, anti monarchists. They, they thought everything was localized there, and it took them a while to appreciate that the support for Massachusetts was widespread and that the intolerable acts, the coercive acts. As I said, when Washington heard that and he’s speaking for thousands other economists, if they can do that to Massachusetts, change their charter, replace a civilian with a general, do all of those things, close the port of Boston, they can do that to us.

[00:47:32] And therefore the colonies really were reunited by the coercive acts. The British simply misjudged the reaction they would get from the coercive acts. They, they simply did not understand the colonies. They hadn’t paid much attention to them in the first place, and that in the end, was what ended their empire.

[00:47:52] Of course, in the end it didn’t seem to matter because the colonists continued to buy British goods and we continued to send raw materials to Great Britain, but, and it took a while. It took a century for the two nations to come back together again. It wasn’t until the 1890s that Britain became at all favorably looked upon it by Americans, but the harm was done with the coercive acts.

[00:48:16] That’s the crucial series of events.

[00:48:19] Alisha Searcy: Professor Wood, this has been fascinating and enlightening, appropriate term. So thank you so much for joining us today and helping us to understand all of the more of the history and the context of the Revolutionary War. So thank you. Alright, well you’re welcome.

[00:48:47] Wow. Kelley, that was a great interview and so timely, and it’s good that you’re here today with us. So what did you think?

[00:48:55] Kelley Brown: I always get excited to learn from Gordon Wood. He is absolutely not only one of my favorite historians, but also my students’ favorite historians. We spend so much time looking at his more recent book, power and Liberty, and just the way that he works with both the ideas.

[00:49:14] But also the actions and the events that happen during a revolution and can do it in a way, I think that’s accessible. Some of his books are so detailed and so intense and wonderful for us as scholars, but then also his ability to really. Kind of distill things, ideas down so that we can actually understand them and use ’em with our students is really important to me.

[00:49:39] So I am always excited to hear more from Gordon Wood, and that was amazing. I.

[00:49:45] Alisha Searcy: I love it. I would agree. Absolutely. Well, it’s time for us to head out, but before we go, I wanna talk about our tweet of the week. It comes from education Next. Some states, including Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Wyoming, carry out school visits often referred to as school quality reviews, and typically produce reports based on the findings.

[00:50:08] So very interesting tweet, interesting article, talking about how not just. At the school level, school visits are happening, but actually at the state, they’re going in and doing school quality review, so very interesting. So make sure you guys check that out. Kelley, again, thank you so much for joining us this week.

[00:50:28] It was great. Great to have you.

[00:50:31] Kelley Brown: I am so grateful for you inviting me here. I had a blast, and as I said, never enough. Gordon Wood, just absolutely amazing.

[00:50:39] Alisha Searcy: Yes, I love it. And so make sure you join us. Next week we’ll have Dr. Sheila Herty, the former head of the nationally recognized Massachusetts V Tech School, Worcester Technical High School, visited by both President Obama and the late Secretary of State, Colin Powell.

[00:50:56] So make sure you tune in. See you next week. Hey, this is Alisha. Thank you for listening to the Learning Curve. If you’d like to support the podcast further, we invite you to donate at pioneerinstitute.org/donations.