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What Made The Founders Different By Gordon S Wood Sparknotes

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Our founding fathers are known to be some of the most important men in our nation's history. These men collectively shaped our great country and helped make it what it is today. You can say their name, and most anyone would know them and be able to rattle off a list of facts they probably learned in grade school. But how much do we really know these men…the men beyond the elementary school lessons? Gordon S. Wood set out to go below the surface and look further into some of the most well know American founders in his book Revolutionary Characters, What Made the Founders Different. Using previously published material and expanding on their thoughts, he wanted to provide a more detailed view of the founders. Gordon S. Wood received his …show more content…

He shows how the founders were collectively a set of men who worked at establishing their reputations and made sure they left a lasting impression. The founders had a lot of similarities. They each strived to be great in what they thought made a leader most important…whether that be being an intellectual, a gentleman, or a wealthy elite. Each of the founders went about this in a different way and each Wood thinks is known for personal qualities as well. These very qualities though, Wood thinks may have been the very thing that makes our great forefathers unique and unable to be replicated. "The founders had succeeded only too well in promoting democracy and equality among ordinary people; indeed, the succeeded in preventing any duplication of themselves (p.28)". After a preface and introduction to the ideas of the book, he dedicates a chapter to each of the founders he will talk about, beginning with the most notable, George Washington and ending with perhaps the least known Arron Burr. The book is then concluded with an epilogue for a neat wrapping up of …show more content…

I found his passage the most surprising due to his being "both the most American and the least American of the revolutionary leaders (p.68)." It seems shocking that someone who is known as one of the very founders of our nation was actually very much a loyalist to his British roots much of the time and already world-renowned for his accomplishments in science philosophy. It was only because of his miscalculations during the imperial crisis, where his good intentions actually worked against him and brought him disgrace with the British, that he did a total turn around and became all in where America was concerned. It's interesting to think that had his intentions been interpreted as he had intended, he may very well have not become a founding father or our nation's great diplomat at

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