EAST PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND — Gordon S. Wood, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and professor emeritus at Brown University, died on Sunday at the age of 92 after being struck by a vehicle. The fatal accident occurred in a supermarket parking lot in East Providence, Rhode Island, and was reported by local police.
Wood authored dozens of books and essays focused on early United States history. His first book, "The Creation of the American Republic," won the Bancroft Prize in 1970. Later, his work "The Radicalism of the American Revolution" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Another book, "Empire of Liberty," was an award finalist in 2009. President Barack Obama presented Wood with a National Humanities Medal in 2011.
The National Humanities Medal citation recognized scholarship that provides insight into the founding of the nation and the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. Wood argued in his research that the U.S. Constitution was devised by elites and unintentionally altered traditional social structures. He stated that historians should understand early American history without framing it as strictly a positive or negative moral narrative.
Wood included extensive passages on slavery in "Empire of Liberty," characterizing it as contrary to the principles of liberty and equality. He criticized the 1619 Project and its initial claim that preserving slavery was a primary motivation for the American Revolution, though he acknowledged not having read most of the project. He asserted that founders such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison incorrectly believed slavery would end naturally and that the American Revolution advanced abolitionist efforts. Wood wrote, "We all want justice, but not at the expense of truth." He also wrote, "I don't know of any colonist who said that they wanted independence in order to preserve their slaves."
Wood published "The Idea of America" in 2011. University of South Carolina history professor Woody Holton stated that Wood died less than a month before the 250th anniversary of the United States.
He graduated summa cum laude from Tufts University and earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he studied under historian Bernard Bailyn. His other published works include "Revolutionary Characters" and "The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin." Wood also contributed essays and reviews to The New York Review of Books and The New Republic. He served as a consultant for a PBS documentary about Thomas Jefferson, produced by Ken Burns, and chaired an advisory panel for the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.