Gordon Wood, the 1619 Project, and the Radical Nature of the American Revolution

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/28/wood-n28.html

Given Gordon Wood's recent death (1933-2026), I thought it worth revisiting his comments on the 1619 Project - the attempt to cast colonial and Revolutionary War history in terms of attempts to promote and preserve slavery. For those who don't know, 1619 signifies the year slaves were first brought to colonial Virginia.

In other words (according to 1619), the whole reason there was a revolution to begin with was to defend slavery (against Britain's growing anti-slavery advocacy) and in fact British colonization was (to begin with) little more than a platform for profiting from slavery.

Now Wood is hardly some Right-wing Heritage Foundation-type and yet it's worth noting his work on Early America is esteemed and utilized on an Ivy League level. In other words he's reckoned a centrist or even left-leaning historian that is in good standing with the Establishment. If you think he's the type of historian that would be on board with something like the 1619 Project, you'd be wrong. We'll return to that momentarily.

For my part, I find Wood interesting in that he represents a complete contrast with someone like conservative icon Russell Kirk (1918-1994) who attempted to revise the American Revolution, suggesting that it was 'conservative' and (similar to Burke) did not represent a break with the old European Order or Christendom, but was in fact a 'conservative' reaction to innovations and tyranny on the part of the British Crown - not a revolution at all, but a revolution prevented as it were. As such, the American Revolution (Kirk argues) was of a completely different character than the French Revolution of 1789 which exploded within a decade of the 1781Yorktown surrender and the Treaty of Paris signed two years later.

A study of the American Founders and their relationship with someone like the Marquis de Lafayette and the latter's part in both the American and French Revolutions reveals Kirk's thesis to be spurious. More could be said about Washington's ongoing friendship with Lafayette as well as Jefferson's support for the French Revolution. Given that Jefferson was the author of the Declaration only accentuates the flawed nature of Kirk's narrative. One of the problems is the French Revolution started as one thing in 1789 but soon migrated into something else - moving on to the Reign of Terror and ending with the dictatorship of Bonaparte and finally the unstable Bourbon Restoration.

Wood pushed much further and actually insisted on the radical nature of the American Revolution and its elimination of aristocracy. Of course, tensions in Early America remained as seen in the Jeffersonian vs. Federalist traditions and their approaches to central power as well as their attitudes vis-à-vis the British and the UK's aristocratic order.

The point being Gordon Wood (who is no friend to conservatives) completely discounts the premise of the 1619 Project. The answer to such revisionist history (in this case driven by Identity Politics) is not to answer it with counter-revisionism (as seen with the Right) but to simply expose and dismantle it. I think the episode also reveals something of what occurs with hyper-politicised readings of history - something that seems to dominate the moment in American cultural discourse. Both sides are (necessarily) resorting to revisionism. Wood, on the contrary is trying to be a historian. One need not agree with all of his conclusions or ways of framing the issues but he's not driven by some agenda - at least not in the same way we find with the other polarized examples.

My personal frustration is that the farce that is 'worldview' teaching has driven many 'conservative' Christians into the arms of the revisionists or (in not a few cases) to engage in the practice themselves.

Now this gets tricky as in some respects I too am rather keen on revisionist history or narratives that are counter-Establishment - all the more when it comes to Church history. These exchanges should drive us to reflection and caution.

The 1619 folks recognize that so much extant history (and the assumptions that undergird it) has been written by the victors and by those who are invested in the Establishment order - and they're right. It's true both in the academy and in media.

The Right has its own self-serving narratives and remains critical of any kind of non-triumphant or non-hagiographic history when it comes to key persons and events connected to America and all its supposed glory. History for them is akin to a romanticized monument and like the cultural movement from which it seems to take its inspiration - it strays into fantasy.

But the 1619-types are driven by their narratives which take on a life of their own and consequently lead them misinterpret, oversimplify, and caricature both people and events.

I openly admit that I too am driven by commitments. In my case it's not Christian America, but New Testament Christianity. This leads me to interpret things differently and affects and shapes how I read and understand Church history.

I have no dog in the fight over the American Revolution and while I would probably disagree with Wood in that I don't support or justify the colonial rebellion - I would still trust his handling of the data and his interpretations more than I would the Identitarians of the 1619-type history, or the Right-wing historians likely to receive attention on the FOX channel - let alone the egregious propagandists (and often heretics) that dominate the Christian Right.

And once again I note how sad it is that the Wood interview (with all its insight) has to be found at a place like the World Socialist Website. Why aren't we finding such sober assessment in Christian media and publications? That's also a huge question that warrants both investigation and deep reflection.

I read this article years ago and filed it away, meaning to come back to it. It's tempting to interact more with the Wood interview as he raises many intriguing points, but his recent death, combined with the 1619 Project, and some recent thoughts on Russell Kirk, is what brought me here and desirous of raising these issues for readers to continue exploring.