RIP Gordon Wood

I just heard the news that the historian Gordon Wood has passed away. Apparently he was hit by a motorist. That is tragic, and sadly he is not the first professor who has been killed that way- I think of Claremont’s own Angelo Codevilla.

It’s also a tragic accident given the year- 2026. I am sure Wood had plans for the Declaration’s semiquintennial. He was already honored this past year by AEI, and gave an excellent praise of the creedal aspects of the American nation, citing Lincoln.

I once taught his first big book Creation of the American Republic in a class cover to cover. Even if you disagreed with how far he tried to argue the "republican thesis" in that book (which I and others would), every student of the American founding ought to read it for all of the the citations in his footnotes. He found masses of valuable quotes in those old pamphlets and manuscripts, following his teacher Bernard Bailyn.

Wood took ideas like the public good seriously, and acknowledged that the Founders took them seriously. I especially appreciate how he defended the study of the American founding in the face of the woke, ideological 1619 project bunch.

And for whatever stupid reason, Wood during his life was most known as a name dropped in this scene in a movie… in a scene about name dropping. God bless America

And God bless Gordon Wood- may he rest in the peace of God.