Revolutionary Characters: When Words Change Society

What kind of personality is necessary when taking on an empire?

What personality is necessary when taking on an empire? During the Revolution, was extroversion preferable to introversion?

There was a place for every kind of personality. The book Revolutionary Characters by Gordon Wood explains this. It offers fantastic perspective. With vignettes on several important characters, he shows how every sort of person made a contribution.

I enjoyed this read, because it was short. I’ve been working through entire books about important heroes. While I enjoy the extra detail, sometimes I just want a quick read.

Revolutionary Characters is a collection of essays. Each essay attempts to tell us about these men, their lives, and their legacies.

These men include Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin. I already knew about them, since I’d read their biographies. Others mentioned are Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Paine (who I was fond of, as he is pictured as a writer for the people).

Wood’s essays aim to identify what was important about these characters and their achievements. This book was extremely valuable, in spite of its short length. In fact, its brevity means it packs an effective punch. With short books, I’ve found that I am more likely to remember things.

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Wood asks a question at the start of this book: Why are we still fascinated by men who lived so long ago? What was it that led them to shed sweat, blood, and tears, in a war for independence—a war that most people thought they would lose?

The author suggests it’s a matter of identity. When we learn about America’s Founding Fathers, we are offered perspective about our identity. Since our nation is so young, we do not have centuries of history, in the way that France or Spain do.

Our roots are strong, and they can be found in the courage of men—and women!—who risked reputations, lives, and fortunes. They all felt a longing for independence, and chose to battle a giant.

Wood writes:

Since we are not a nation in any traditional sense of the term, in order to establish our nationhood, we have to reaffirm and reinforce periodically the values of the men who declared independence from Great Britain and framed the Constitution. As long as the Republic endures, in other words, Americans are destined to look back to its founding.

Revolutionary Characters attempts to answer another question: Why have there been no more Presidents like Washington or Jefferson? Wood suggests that these men lived during a time when, in spite of what the Declaration of Independence says, not everyone was the same.

A man born in Virginia might not have been an aristocrat. He still cared about how his neighbors perceived him. Men not born into wealth or ‘good families’ found other ways to polish their character. Like Washington, those who did not have expensive educations, took pains in educating themselves. Though they did not have royal blood, their behavior set them apart.

Wood explains that honor meant everything:

Preoccupied with their honor or their reputation, or, in other words, the way they were represented and viewed by others, these revolutionary leaders inevitably became characters, self-fashioned performers in the theater of life. Theirs was not character as we today are apt to understand it, as the inner personality that contains hidden contradictions and flaws. (This present-day view of character is what leads to the current bashing of the founders.) Instead their idea of character was the outer life, the public person trying to show the world that he was living up to the values and duties that the best of the culture imposed on him.

In America, there might not have been an aristocratic divide. There still existed divides; not everyone was alike.

First, there’s the obvious: There were servants and landowners—not to mention slaves and slave-masters. Women hadn’t achieved the equality we enjoy now. As I’ve mentioned, George Washington did not have the same education as Jefferson. Washington never learned to speak another language, which was one reason why he chose not to travel outside of the country (he did not wish for the indignity of requiring a translator).

Washington taught himself with books, making himself into a man whose honor was visible. He did not believe himself to be equal to everyone else. He was extraordinary, and he knew it.

George Washington was able to do these things. He lived in a time when men still aspired to be gentlemen, in the original sense of the term:

Being a gentleman was the prerequisite to becoming a political leader. It signified being cosmopolitan, standing on elevated ground in order to have a large view of human affairs, and being free of the prejudices, parochialism, and religious enthusiasm of the vulgar and barbaric. It meant, in short, having all those characteristics that we today sum up in the idea of a liberal arts education. Indeed, the eighteenth century created the modern idea of a liberal arts education in the English-speaking world.

Revolutionary Characters ends with a compelling theory: There have not been more men like the Founding Fathers, because the nature of their victory made it impossible to create such men. With the rise of newspapers, diverse opinions made themselves known. When political parties began to emerge, it was obvious that people had begun to think for themselves.

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Did the Founders’ success make it impossible to bring up another such generation?

The theory makes sense—after the war, there was an aversion to any system that might encourage more Washingtons or Jeffersons. Common people had broken free from a government that did not encourage them to aspire for high places. There was a fear that George Washington might establish a throne (though he did not wish to be king. To the astonishment of many, he made a point of not running for a third term when peers begged him to).

Signing the Declaration of Independence (1818), John Trumbull

Once the common people—farmers, shopkeepers, fishermen—knew what it was like to have control over their lives, they were unwilling to resume a society like that of the past. They would not go back, regardless of which brave men had been produced by that society.

Literacy and free speech change societies. Therefore, I agree: The explosion of newspapers played a crucial role in the downfall of that era, the time of ‘true gentlemen’.

Fast forward to today—we all have smartphones! We can achieve relative anonymity, but it is also possible to post an opinion and have it go viral. This all started with newspapers that were willing to print the opinions of ordinary people who, before the Revolution, might not even have been literate.

After newspapers became widespread and accessible, the “recipe” for such a brand of leader became impossible. The Founders who lived to see this were chagrined, because:

The liberty they had fought for was achieved—at a cost that none of them had expected. The Founders who lived long enough to see their country changing did not like it. They did not like the party system, among other things.

It was too late to go back; the world had changed. They had succeeded. An era had ended.

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If you ask me, it’s a wonderful thing that we all have a chance to speak and be heard.

However, let us not abuse our free speech. Let us make an effort to be informed, fair, and level-headed. The Founders achieved something great; what greater way to honor it than by promoting truth nationwide?

Revolutionary Characters is a wonderful read for those who are interested in Revolutionary history, but don’t have time for thick biographies. I will be going back to it often.

I suggest that you add it to your 2025 summer reading list. You’ll learn things that you didn’t know before!