Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Summary
This book argues that Americans’ “habit of thinking” that all men are equal in their rights created the American Revolution. The Americans of the Revolutionary generation created not only new forms of government, but also '''new conceptions of politics''', one that took them out of an essentially classical and medieval world of political discussion into one that was recognizably modern. Wood says that the American Revolution was a "republican" revolution and was one of the great “utopian movements in American history.” By that he means that it had intellectual roots ranging from ancient Greece and Rome to the English Commonwealth, and that it was more communal (the public good) than individualistic (liberty) (Republicanism). The political landscape started from that of "classical" republicanism that reflected the immutable ordering of society, moved to a radical Whig reaction towards direct democracy that took place in the 1770s and early 1780s in the form of state constitution-building, and finally resulted in a more conservative Federalist reaction that emphasized government-building based on functionality and tried to restrain democratic excesses through a new separation of powers. An '''intellectual aristocracy, social counterrevolution, thus subverted this radical republic revolution''' (the constitutional crisis as a class conflict; a conflict between aristocracy and democracy).

Republicanism defined: “the sacrifice of individual interests to the greater good of the whole,” the dependence on public virtue, the principal of equality (talent and opportunity rather than family origin) – shaped how Americans understood the Revolution. Republicanism as the “whole character of society.”

See also: Bernard Bailyn (advisor), Gary Nash, Linda Kerber. Challenged by: Woody Holton