The Radicalism of the American Revolution

by Gordon S. Wood

If parents and masters were kind and caring, children and servants would naturally obey. If the political rulers were men of merit and talent and governed only in the public interest, they would naturally command the affection and respect of the people, and the crises of authority bedeviling American society would end.

a society could not long remain republican if only a tiny minority controlled most of the wealth and the bulk of the population remained dependent servants or landless laborers. Equality

“the same vanity which gave rise to that strange religious Dogma, that God elected a precious few (of which few, however, every Man who believes the doctrine is always One) to Life eternal without regard to any for seen Virtue, and reprobated all the Rest, without regard to any forseen Vice.”