Wood in The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992). Wood argues that instead of increasing in prominence, by 1800 the revolutionary leaders could do little more than watch helplessly as their utopian vision of a republican society based on civic virtue was mutated into a democratic system centered on the self-interest and personal greed of ordinary Americans. The same elites who had made “the interests and prosperity of ordinary people- their pursuits of happiness- the goal of society and government,” found themselves struggling against a wave of corruption they could not hope to stop. These gentlemen of society placed safeguards into the governmental framework to ensure that the “betters” of society, those disinterested individuals, would retain positions necessary to determine the common good. This effort culminated in the ratification of the United States Constitution, which Bouton counters as the embodiment of elitist authoritarianism. By the 1820s however, Wood describes the disillusionment of the surviving revolutionary leaders as the era of Jacksonian democracy saw the complete reversal of their ideological
Wood in The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992). Wood argues that instead of increasing in prominence, by 1800 the revolutionary leaders could do little more than watch helplessly as their utopian vision of a republican society based on civic virtue was mutated into a democratic system centered on the self-interest and personal greed of ordinary Americans. The same elites who had made “the interests and prosperity of ordinary people- their pursuits of happiness- the goal of society and government,” found themselves struggling against a wave of corruption they could not hope to stop. These gentlemen of society placed safeguards into the governmental framework to ensure that the “betters” of society, those disinterested individuals, would retain positions necessary to determine the common good. This effort culminated in the ratification of the United States Constitution, which Bouton counters as the embodiment of elitist authoritarianism. By the 1820s however, Wood describes the disillusionment of the surviving revolutionary leaders as the era of Jacksonian democracy saw the complete reversal of their ideological