The United States maintains a unique fascination with its historical figures, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon Wood.
In his most recent book, Revolutionary Characters, Wood reminds us that we alone look to our Founders for clues about ways we should handle modern-day problems.
Wood also discussed that theme during today’s address before about 140 people at a N.C. History Project luncheon in Raleigh (video):
We became a nation in 1776, and thus in order to know who we are, we need to know who the Founders are. The United States was founded on a set of beliefs and not as were other nations on a common ethnicity or common language or common religion. Since we’re not a nation in any traditional sense of the term, in order to establish our nationhood, we have to I think reaffirm and reinforce periodically the values and the institutions of the men who created them. I think that’s why we go back to this generation, to look and find out what kind of people are we — who are we? — by looking at the values and the institutions of this generation that really made us a nation. And as long as our republic endures, we’re destined I think to look back to these Founders. And that will go on and on and on no matter … We’ll never get entirely tired of them, at least as long as we’re the United States of America.
