Overall, Wood wrote that equality was the most important legacy of the American Revolution, one that many people would likely agree with. Some might argue that this was not an effective strategy, since the social structure, specifically the relationships between the people and their government, became so drastically different. This concept involved trying to temper the monarchy that had existed, while still leaving social hierarchies intact. A noteworthy aspect of his argument is that the colonies were trying to “republicanize monarchy”. He delves into these conditions, both the ones before and after the Revolution and how it affected the people of the newly formed United States. He is not as interested in the complications of the day-to-day during the Revolution, but rather how did the society compare at the beginning and at the end, and most importantly, how did we get there. Rather, he spends the majority of the book discussing the before and after aspect of the Revolution.
Wood does not spend much volume of his work recounting the events of the revolution itself- the battles, the strategies, the casualties. He delineates the changes in the hierarchy of society, between patricians and plebeians, patriarchal dependence, and political authority. Relationships are a key factor in many social upheavals, and Wood insists that this Revolution is no different, and certainly not lesser. Wood argues that the American Revolution was radical in the way of social change and in the transformation of relationships that bound people to each other. Many historians consider a true revolution to be one that turned the social and economic structure upside down, completely altering society. Wood challenges the notion that the American Revolution did not constitute a true “revolution”.
In his 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Gordon S.
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