The Glorious Revolution shifts power toward Parliament, granting colonists new liberties and beginning a move away from absolute monarchy.

Colonial society establishes a strict vertical class hierarchy, with gentlemen defined by education, manner, and freedom from labor.

Paternalistic family structures dominate colonial communities, with household heads controlling wives, children, and servants as dependents.

Political appointments are filled through personal connections and patronage networks rather than merit or formal qualifications.

Enlightenment republicanism spreads through English-speaking societies via Roman writers and liberal arts education, directly challenging monarchical values.

British forces defeat the French, opening vast western lands and triggering a colonial population movement that strains community bonds.

The colonial economy transforms as farmers produce surplus crops and new import/export trade replaces subsistence agriculture.

Colonists split into patriots and loyalists, and the departure of roughly twenty percent as loyalists weakens the paternalistic social structure.

Post-revolution inheritance laws are reformed to grant more equal rights to sons, daughters, and widows.

The Constitution is drafted to address the social upheaval and fragmentation that followed the Revolutionary War.

The aristocratic class begins to dissolve as paper money, inland trade, and attacks on inherited privilege reshape American society.

Labor becomes a measure of a man's worth, and common men publicly attack aristocrats for their celebrated idleness.

Andrew Jackson appoints party loyalists to government offices, introducing democratic bureaucracy and making broad democratic participation acceptable.

Banks multiply from a handful to hundreds across the country, offering easy credit to ordinary citizens and fueling entrepreneurship.

The founding fathers who live to see the new nation are deeply disappointed, feeling the common man took republican ideals far beyond what was intended.

Wood opens by showing how British colonial society was built on a strict vertical class hierarchy, with gentlemen defined by education and freedom from labor, and government run entirely through personal patronage networks. The spread of Enlightenment republicanism challenged these values just as population growth and economic expansion began to strain the old paternalistic bonds holding communities together. The Revolution forced a decisive split between patriots and loyalists, and the departure of loyalists dismantled the patronage structures that had organized colonial society. After independence, the founding fathers drafted the Constitution to manage a society rapidly moving toward equality, but the aristocracy continued to erode under the pressure of inland trade, paper money, and the common man's demands for a political voice. Andrew Jackson's democratic revolution brought party-based appointments to office, and banks multiplied across the country to serve ordinary citizens, completing a sweeping commercial and social transformation. The founding fathers died disillusioned, having created a republic that turned into a democracy driven by the very common people they once considered inconsequential to national life.

The headline arc from colonial monarchy to American democracy.

State-supported Anglican churches spread through the colonies, reinforcing monarchical authority in religious life and drawing in previously ignored groups.

Colonists favor the entail inheritance law, which keeps family land intact across generations and protects family reputation.

A patronage economy develops in which merchants and artisans depend on wealthy elite patrons for access to markets and credit.

Benjamin Franklin rises in society through the patronage of English aristocrats, undermining his later image as a purely self-made man.

Common people form organized mobs to protest political frustrations, which gentlemen-patrons manage through personal community relationships.

High birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration cause the colonial population to grow explosively, overwhelming established communities.

Land prices skyrocket in desirable areas, with some territory resold for up to ten times its original value in under a decade.

New England villages build workhouses for the poor as the number of transient and wandering poor in cities triples.

Warning-out laws that eject non-community poor are abandoned, and free movement within states is made legal as old community bonds collapse.

Scottish merchant houses open in the Chesapeake, buying directly from farmers and reducing small planters' dependence on aristocratic elites.

John Locke's ideas on child-rearing spread, encouraging parents to replace strict discipline with affection and undermining the logic of paternalistic authority.

Revolutionary committees reshape society through oath-taking and public interrogation of anyone suspected of loyalty to the old regime.

Freemasonry expands dramatically after the Revolution, reaching isolated areas and providing community belonging outside traditional religious and class hierarchy.

The phrase 'self-made man' enters American culture, celebrating social mobility through individual effort rather than patronage or inherited position.

Benjamin Rush burns his personal notes on the Revolution rather than write a planned memoir, symbolizing the founding fathers' deep disillusionment.

Wood traces the foundations of colonial paternalism through the spread of Anglican churches, entail inheritance laws, and patronage networks that kept artisans and merchants dependent on wealthy elites. Even celebrated figures like Benjamin Franklin relied on aristocratic patronage to rise in society, while common people's political frustrations were channeled into controlled mob protests that gentlemen-patrons managed through personal relationships. Population explosions, skyrocketing land prices, and the arrival of Scottish merchant houses in the Chesapeake began breaking the dependencies that had structured colonial life. As communities grew and movement became common, New England workhouses filled with the transient poor and warning-out laws were finally abandoned, making free movement within states legal. Locke's ideas about child-rearing eroded paternalistic household authority, and revolutionaries replaced old patron bonds with oaths and public committees, while Freemasonry gave the socially displaced a new sense of worth and belonging. By the early nineteenth century, the ideal of the self-made man had entered American culture, and Benjamin Rush's decision to burn his personal notes on the Revolution embodied the founding generation's profound disillusionment.

The social and economic undercurrents that dismantled colonial paternalism.

Benjamin Rush describes overwhelming awe at seeing the king's throne in London, revealing colonists' near-celebrity reverence for the distant monarch.

Troops fighting in the Seven Years' War mutiny and desert en masse, arguing their contracts did not require joint service with royal forces.

Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense, calling the king a brute who falsely pretended to be the 'Father of His People.'

George III becomes king and shows open disrespect for Parliament and the constitution, pushing colonial sentiment decisively against crown officials.

Thomas Jefferson proposes giving fifty acres to men who lack property, aiming to create a republic of independent and uncorrupted voters.

George Washington composes a personal list of etiquette rules at age sixteen, showing how first-generation gentlemen deliberately constructed their public reputations.

Washington voluntarily resigns his military command after the Revolutionary War rather than seize power, stunning contemporaries and foreign observers alike.

Washington declines the presidency of the Order of the Cincinnati because its hereditary character would damage his republican reputation.

Washington overcomes his hesitation and attends the Philadelphia Convention, where he enthusiastically supports the new constitution as its presiding officer.

Merchant Robert Morris sheds his commercial wealth to build a landed aristocracy but falls into catastrophic debt and ends up in debtors' prison.

Abraham Bishop publicly accuses the Federalists of using patronage to build a financial structure too closely resembling the British monarchy.

Sailmaker George Warner publicly attacks aristocrats for looking down on working men who never attended college.

The Philadelphia Convention debates whether to pay public officials, with Franklin arguing that offering salaries would attract the wrong kind of people.

Aaron Burr kills Alexander Hamilton in a duel, triggering widespread criticism that effectively discredits the old aristocratic code of honor.

Wood concludes that the American Revolution succeeded beyond the founders' own intentions, producing a democracy they neither predicted nor fully approved.

Wood begins with the colonists' near-worshipful reverence for the distant monarchy, illustrated by Benjamin Rush's awe at seeing the king's throne, revealing how far colonists would have to travel intellectually before embracing republicanism. Specific acts of resistance — soldiers mutinying in the Seven Years' War and Thomas Paine declaring the king a brute — mark the fracturing of monarchical loyalty, while George III's disrespect for Parliament accelerated the break. Jefferson's proposal to give land to landless men and Washington's series of deliberate personal choices — resigning his command, declining the Order of the Cincinnati, and carefully attending the Philadelphia Convention — reveal how deeply republican virtue shaped the founders' individual decisions. After the Revolution, dramatic personal outcomes exposed the contradictions of the new order, from Robert Morris's fall into debtors' prison to Aaron Burr's killing of Alexander Hamilton, which discredited the aristocratic code of honor altogether. The debate over whether to pay public officials laid bare the tension between old disinterested virtue and the new commercial democracy taking shape. Wood closes by arguing that the Revolution worked too well, producing a democratic society the founders neither predicted nor fully approved of.