Gordon S Wood, the preeminent historian of the American Revolution whose scholarship reshaped how scholars understand the founding era, died Sunday after being struck by a car in a Rhode Island supermarket parking lot. He was 92.
Wood was crossing the lot when the vehicle hit him. East Providence police said the driver remained at the scene and cooperated with authorities. He was taken to Rhode Island Hospital with serious injuries and later died.
For nearly six decades, Wood dominated the field of early American history. His 1993 Pulitzer Prize, awarded in the history category, recognized "The Radicalisation of the American Revolution," a transformative work that argued the break from Britain was fundamentally a social and political upheaval within colonial society, not merely a rejection of imperial rule. The book became essential reading for anyone serious about understanding the founding.
Wood held the position of Alva O Way University Professor and professor of history emeritus at Brown University. His bibliography stretched across the full arc of the revolutionary period and early republic. "The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787" appeared in 1969 and set the template for generations of scholars. "Empire of Liberty" chronicled the young nation's formative years. "Revolutionary Characters" offered intimate portraits of the men who built the republic.
His honors accumulated steadily. The Bancroft Prize came in 1970. In 2011, President Barack Obama presented him with the National Humanities Medal at the White House, citing his "scholarship that provides insight into the founding of the nation and the drafting of the US constitution." Scholars and journalists alike described his works as benchmarks that fundamentally altered how Americans understood their own origins.
In recent years, Wood became a vocal critic of the New York Times' 1619 Project, which examined slavery's role in American history. While acknowledging he had not read most of the project, Wood objected to what he characterized as its emphasis on victimhood and grievance. He argued instead that even slaveholding founders like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison believed slavery would gradually disappear, and that the revolutionary impulse itself energized the abolitionist movement that would eventually end the practice following the Civil War.
His daughter, Amy Louise Wood, a historian at Illinois State University, confirmed his death.
Author James Rodriguez: "Wood's death marks the end of an era in American historical scholarship, and his arguments about slavery and revolution will likely outlive the academic battles he fought."
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