On Tuesday, Dr. Gordon S. Wood gave a talk on his recent book Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different at a luncheon hosted by the North Carolina History Project. Dr. Wood, who teaches at Brown University, is a titan among historians–he is perhaps the leading scholar on the history of the American Revolution.
In his NCHP lecture, Dr. Wood focused on the cultural environment that produced the Founders. While the United States could not have been born without the Founders’ democratic zeal, the Founders were characterized also by aristocratic gentlemanliness.
Dr. Wood compared the greatest Founders–Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and Paine–to the lesser Aaron Burr.
Videos of an interview conducted by NCHP staff can be found here.
