Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood (review)

Reviewed by: Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood Kate Elizabeth Brown (bio) Keywords American Revolution, Early republic, Constitutionalism, U. S. Constitution, Federalism, Ratification Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution. By Gordon S. Wood. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 228. Cloth, 24. 95. ) When, in the introduction of Power and Liberty, Gordon Wood mentioned that his slim volume was "largely a distillation of my fifty years of work on the subject" (9) rather than a book offering new historical research, I was disappointed. Been there, done that, I thought. But then I was surprised; it turns out that this condensed and rewritten volume of Gordon Wood's greatest hits isn't a warmed-over rehash of previous publications. Power and Liberty is a dense, tightly packed chronology of constitutional development—what seemed to me to be a valedictory summary of Wood's immense contributions to the field of early American history. And the book benefits from the fact that Wood distilled a concentrated constitutional history from the revolutionary era's vast and competing strands of political, economic, diplomatic, social, and cultural histories (see Empire of Liberty, for example) and he kept it short (the opposite approach of The Creation of the American Republic). Power and Liberty covers the revolutionary and early republic eras in a chronology, beginning with the constitutional arguments developed over the 1760s and 1770s between a sovereign British Parliament and American colonists who just will not accept the idea that Parliament can bind them in all cases whatsoever. During the (not-so) Critical Period, states experimented with constitutionalism while causing all sorts of mischief (at least in the eyes of James Madison, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and other Federalists). The various political and economic problems of the 1780s led to the Philadelphia Convention of 1787; there, the assembled delegates scrapped the Articles of Confederation in favor of a new constitutional order, predicated on popular sovereignty and divided power between the states and the national government. From this point, Wood divides the constitutional history of the early republic into thematic chapters on slavery, the emergence of the judiciary, and the most End Page 118 insightful of them all, the bifurcation of society and law into spheres of public and private—an original and distinctly modern American contribution to constitutionalism. This book is a helpful resource in many ways. Wood's chapter on state constitutional experimentation is superb, though I wish he would have detailed more of the exotic varieties of state constitutions past, like New York's version of the House of Lords, the Court for the Trial of Impeachments and the Correction of Errors. This chapter is not only an excellent overview of the variety of institutions and admixtures of republican political science swirling around in the 1770s and 1780s, but, most importantly, it showcases the menu of options that the Philadelphia delegates explored when drafting the U. S. Constitution. That document didn't spring fully formed from the head of Madison, James Wilson, or anyone else—instead, the U. S. Constitution benefitted from the hard-won, functional wisdom gleaned from state experience. Wood reminds us that it is essential to keep the states' roles in developing American constitutionalism top of mind during this period. Similarly, a subsequent chapter detailing the creation and ratification of the U. S. Constitution was excellent too—not because of new insights about the framing of the document, but because of the variety of perspectives, fast pacing, and comprehensive coverage Wood gives to a rather well-known story. This chapter demonstrates, writ small, the key benefit of the entire volume: It serves as an outstanding and concise textbook for undergraduate students and an extremely useful overview in founding-era constitutionalism for any scholar needing a refresher. I also loved the epilogue, which used the example of Rhode Island as a case study in order to summarize the historical themes and developments outlined in the preceding chapters. Rhode Island is somewhat the problem child of the early republic, as it refused to attend the constitutional convention. Why was Rhode Island so difficult? Wood's answer provides a satisfying narrative conclusion to the volume: The. . .