Jordan Dobies
Professor Barth
History 109
March 15th 2016
Revolutionary Characters: What Made The Founders Different
Throughout the process of ridiculing the founding fathers, many historians agreed that these
men did many great things for the country, but they never truly completed the tasks that would
benefit the country beyond what they had already done. Gordon Wood goes on to say how much
the founding fathers actually did for the country with all of their ideas that would make America
what it is today. He also mentions that they can almost get anything done due to the fact that they
were so loved and influential to the American people. Wood sums it up as they could be the
greatest Americans we have ever seen.
Gordon Wood pretty much uses this book to admire the founding fathers and what they did
for us. He states that these men are the greatest Americans that ever graced the earth. He thinks
what they did changed the lives of the people of America back than and led to the nation we now
have. He may even go out on such a reach that they were the greatest men to ever grace our earth
as whole. He does express briefly about how the founding fathers made a couple of mistakes and
how they could have went about certain situations differently. His opinion didn’t change because
he felt these men should have been treasured in history for what they did.
The question at hand is did Gordon Wood achieve his goal of saying what he needed to say in
regards to giving the founding fathers enough credit? He most certainly did, but maybe he gave
the founding fathers a little too much credit. There were certain points throughout the book
where it seemed like he was giving them too much credit and even kissing up to them a bit.
Throughout certain points he was treating these men as if they were gods amongst men. An ex-
ample of this kind of behavior was naming a chapter “The Greatness of George Washington”. In
this chapter he would go on about how every move George Washington made was the right move
for the country and the only way the country would be sufficient is with him leading the way. It
is easy to agree that George Washington completed a great task in obtaining our freedom from
the British rule and also a great president. At the same time he had his fair share of flaws such as
not really helping with the constitution. Although he agreed to what the constitution said, he re-
ally did not have much of a say in what went into it. He was pretty much forced into going to the
Constitutional Convention. Another flaw Washington had was due to the lack of education he
had. He could only speak one language and did not have the best people skills. Give him the
credit where it is due, he was a superb leader of the army, but there were men who were just as
good if not better an example being Nathaniel Greene. Some of his policies did not help America
