Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 340 of Gordon Wood’s great 1991 book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (footnote deleted):

If everyone in the society was involved in moneymaking and exchanging, then to that extent they were all alike, all seeking their own individual interests and happiness…. All this commercial activity did promote equality, yet not, of course, equality of wealth. Quite the contrary, wealth was far more unequally distributed in the decades following the Revolution than it had been before. Nonetheless, early-nineteenth-century Americans felt more equal, and for many of them that was what mattered..