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Edmund Morgan (historian)
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Edmund Morgan (historian)
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{{Short description|American historian (1916-2013)}}- the content below is remote from Wikipedia
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Early life and education
Morgan was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the second child of Edmund Morris Morgan and Elsie Smith Morgan.NEWS,weblink Edmund S. Morgan dies at 97; scholar on early America, Associated Press, Associated Press, 2013-07-10, Los Angeles Times,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180225231147weblink">weblink 2018-02-25, His mother was from a Yankee family that practiced Christian Science, though she distanced herself from that faith. His father, descended from Welsh coal miners, taught law at the University of Minnesota.BOOK, Murrin, John M., Edmund S. Morgan,weblink Clio's Favorites: Leading Historians of the United States, 1945â2000, 2000, University of Missouri Press/Google EBook, 9780826213167, His sister was Roberta Mary Morgan (later Wohlstetter), also a historian and, like Edmund, a winner of the Bancroft Prize. In 1925, the family moved from Washington, D.C., to Arlington, Massachusetts, when their father was appointed a professor at Harvard Law School.NEWS,weblink Edmund S. Morgan, Historian Who Shed Light on Puritans, Dies at 97, Grimes, William, 2013-07-09, The New York Times,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180225001450weblink">weblink 2018-02-25, Morgan attended Belmont Hill School in Belmont, Massachusetts, and then enrolled at Harvard College, where he initially intended to study English history and literature. But after taking a course in American literature with F. O. Matthiessen, he switched to the new major of American civilization (history and literature), with Perry Miller as his tutor. He received his bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1937. Then, at the urging of the jurist and family friend Felix Frankfurter, Morgan began attending lectures at the London School of Economics.In 1942, Morgan earned his Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University with Miller as his adviser.Military service
Although a pacifist, Morgan became convinced after the fall of France in June 1940 that only military force could stop Hitler, and he withdrew his application for conscientious objector status. During World War II, he trained as a machinist at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, where he turned out parts for radar installations.Personal life and death
In 1939, he married Helen Theresa Mayer, who died in 1982.Morgan died in New Haven, Connecticut on July 8, 2013, at the age of 97. His cause of death was pneumonia.NEWS,weblink Edmund S. Morgan, historian of early America, dies at 97, Schudel, Matt, 2013-07-10, The Washington Post,weblink 2018-02-25, en-US, 0190-8286, He was survived by two daughtersâPenelope Aubin and Pamela Packardâfrom his first marriage; his second wife, Marie (née Carpenter) Caskey Morgan, a historian; six grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.NEWS,weblink Roundtable: The Legacy of Edmund S. Morgan, Hattem, Michael D., 2013-08-05, The Junto,weblink 2018-02-25, en-US,Career
In 1946â55, Morgan taught history at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island before becoming a professor at Yale University, where he directed some 60 PhD dissertations in colonial history before retiring in 1986.As an undergraduate at Harvard, Morgan was profoundly influenced by historian Perry Miller, who became a lifelong friend. Although both were atheists, they had a deep understanding and respect for Puritan religion.Courtland, pp 349â50 From Miller, Morgan learned to appreciate:The intellectual rigor and elegance of a system of ideas that made sense of human life in a way no longer palatable to most of us. Certainly not palatable to me... He left me with a habit of taking what people have said at face value unless I find compelling reasons to discount it... What Americans said from the beginning about taxation and just government deserved to be taken as seriously as the Puritans' ideas about God and man.BOOK, Edmund S., Morgan, The Genuine Article: A Historian Looks at Early America, 0393059200, 2004, ixâx, W. W. Norton & Company, registration,weblink Morgan's many books and articles covered a range of topics in the history of the colonial and Revolutionary periods, using intellectual, social history, biographical, and political history approaches. Two of his early books, The Birth of the Republic (1956) and The Puritan Dilemma (1958), have for decades been required reading in many undergraduate history courses. His works include American Slavery, American Freedom (1975), which won the Society of American Historians' Francis Parkman Prize, the Southern Historical Association's Charles S. Sydnor Prize and the American Historical Association's Albert J. Beveridge Award, and Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (1988), which won Columbia University's Bancroft Prize in American History in 1989. Morgan has written a biography of Benjamin Franklin of which he made extensive use of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin and has written about at length.WEB,weblink Introduction to the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, September 22, 2022, 2005, The American Philosophical Society and Yale University, He has also written biographies on Ezra Stiles and Roger Williams.Puritans
Morgan's trio The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in 17th-Century New England (1944), The Puritan Dilemma (1958), and Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea (1963) restored the intellectual respectability of the Puritans, and exposed their appetite for healthy sex, causing a renaissance in Puritan studies, partly because both Morgan and his mentor Miller were Ivy League atheist professors, which added to their credibility. Visible Saints, dedicated to Miller, was a reinterpretation of the Puritan ideal of the "Church of the Elect." Morgan argued that the criterion for church membership was not fixed in England. Soon after their arrival, the Puritans changed membership to a gathered church composed exclusively of tested Saints.{{Citation |first=Elizabeth T. |last=Van Beek |editor=Kelly Boyd |title=Morgan, Edmund S. |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing |volume=2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0121vD9STIMC&pg=PA837 |isbn=1-884964-33-8 |year=1999 |page=837}}Morgan's 1958 book The Puritan Dilemma raised his notability, and the book became the most assigned textbook in U.S. history survey courses, documenting the change in understanding among Puritans of what it means to be a member of a church. Morgan described the Puritan as "doing right in a world that does wrong...Caught between the ideals of God's Law and the practical needs of the people, John Winthrop walked a line few could tread."WEB,weblink In Memoriam: Edmund Sears Morgan (1916-2013), Butler, Jon, December 2013, Perspectives on History, American Historical Association,weblink 2018-02-25,American Revolution
In The Stamp Act Crisis (1953) and The Birth of the Republic (1956) Morgan rejected the Progressive interpretation of the American Revolution and its assumption that the rhetoric of the Patriots was mere claptrap. Instead Morgan returned to the interpretation first set out by George Bancroft a century before that the patriots were deeply motivated by a commitment to liberty. Historian Mark Egnal argues that:The leading neo-Whig historians, Edmund Morgan and Bernard Bailyn, underscore this dedication to whiggish principles, although with variant readings. For Morgan, the development of the patriots' beliefs was a rational, clearly defined process.BOOK,weblink A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution, Marc Egnal, Marc Egnal, Cornell University Press, 2010, 978-0801476587, 3â5,Slavery
In his 1975 book American Slavery, American Freedom, Morgan explored "the American paradox, the marriage of slavery and freedom":BOOK, Morgan, Edmund S., American Slavery, American Freedom, 1975, 5, Human relations among us still suffer from the former enslavement of a large portion of our predecessors. The freedom of the free, the growth of freedom experienced in the American Revolution depended more than we like to admit on the enslavement of more than 20 percent of us at that time. How republican freedom came to be supported, at least in large part, by its opposite, slavery, is the subject of this book.BOOK, Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, Preface,Legacy and impact
After examining his writings, University of North Florida historian wrote David T. Courtwright wrote that:They are based on exhaustive research in primary sources; emphasize human agency as against historicist forces; and are written in precise and graceful prose. This combination of rigor, empathy, and lucidity is intended for, and has succeeded in capturing, a broad audience. Morgan is read by secondary school students, undergraduates, and graduate students, as well as by his specialist peers â some sixty of whom were trained in his seminars.David T. Courtwright, "Fifty Years of American History: An Interview with Edmund S. Morgan", William and Mary Quarterly (1987): p. 336.Massachusetts Institute of Technology American history professor Pauline Maier wrote:As a historian of colonial and revolutionary America, he was one of the giants of his generation, and a writer who could well have commanded a larger nonacademic audience than I suspect he received. He characteristically took on big issues and had a knack for conveying complex, sophisticated truths in a way that made them seem, if not simple, at least easily understandable.Brooklyn College history professor Benjamin L. Carp describes Morgan as "one of the great historians of early America, with a formidable influence on academic and popular audiences."JOURNAL, Carp, Benjamin L., March 2016, Edmund S. Morgan and the Urgency of Good Leadership,weblink Reviews in American History, 44, 1, 1â18, 10.1353/rah.2016.0014, 147313665,weblink 2018-02-25, Jill Lepore called Morgan "one of the most influential American historians of the 20th century."NEWS,weblink Tell Me What You See: Jill Lepore Salutes Historian Edmund S. Morgan, Jill Lepore, Jill Lepore, 2013-07-10, The Daily Beast,weblink 2018-02-25, According to Joseph Ellis, Morgan was "revered" by other members of the profession.NEWS,weblink Author Joseph J. Ellis Pays Tribute to Edmund S. Morgan, Joseph Ellis, Joseph Ellis, 2013-07-10, Newsweek,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180225231518weblink">weblink 2018-02-25, en, Historian and author William Hogeland affirms Morgan's success in enshrining a "consensus approach" to U.S. history, where colonists' ideas, rather than their possible economic interests, were worthy of inspection by 20th century historians.MAGAZINE, Hogeland, William, 25 January 2021, Against the Consensus Approach to History, The New Republic,weblink 27 January 2021, 0028-6583, "He was out to define something essential in the American character and thereby create a new master narrative, and to achieve that end, he concocted a false portrayal of the colonistsâ petitions," Hogeland wrote. The essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates credits Morgan with greatly influencing his own views about race in American history.NEWS,weblink We should have seen Trump coming, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2017-09-29, The Guardian, en,Awards and honors
Morgan was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1964WEB, APS Member History,weblink 2022-11-03, search.amphilsoc.org, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1966.WEB, Edmund Sears Morgan,weblink 2022-11-03, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, en, In 1971 Morgan was awarded the Yale chapter of Phi Beta Kappa's William Clyde DeVane Medal for outstanding teaching and scholarship, considered one of the most prestigious teaching prizes for Yale faculty. In 1971â1972 Morgan served as president of the Organization of American Historians.WEB,weblink Past Officers of the OAH, Organization of American Historians, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20120610045234weblink">weblink 2012-06-10, In 1972, he became the first recipient of the Douglass Adair Memorial Award for scholarship in early American history, and in 1986 he received the Distinguished Scholar Award of the American Historical Association. He has also won numerous fellowships and garnered a number of honorary degrees and named lectureships. In 1965 he became a Sterling Professor, one of Yale's highest distinctions. Morgan was awarded the 2000 National Humanities Medal by U.S. President Bill Clinton at a ceremony for "extraordinary contributions to American cultural life and thought." In 2006 he received a special Pulitzer Prize "for a creative and deeply influential body of work as an American historian that spans the last half century."WEB,weblink 2006 Special Award, Pulitzer Prize, In 2008 the American Academy of Arts and Letters honored him with a gold medal for lifetime achievement.Books
- The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in 17th-Century New England (1944) read online
- Virginians at Home: Family Life in the Eighteenth Century (1952)
- The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (1953), with Helen M. Morgan
- The Birth of the Republic, 1763â89 (1956; 4th ed. 2012) read online
- The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (1958) read online
- The American Revolution: A Review of Changing Interpretations (1958)
- The Mirror of the Indian (1958)
- Editor, Prologue to the Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764â1766 (1959)
- The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727â1795 (1962) read online
- The National Experience: A History of the United States (1963) coauthor of textbook; several editions
- Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea (1963)
- Editor, The Founding of Massachusetts: Historians and the Sources (1964)
- The American Revolution: Two Centuries of Interpretation (1965)
- Puritan Political Ideas, 1558â1794 (1965) read online
- The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth, 1653â1657: The Conscience of a Puritan (1965)
- The Puritan Family ([1944] 1966)
- Roger Williams: The Church and the State (1967) read online
- So What About History? (1969)
- (American Slavery, American Freedom|American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia) (1975)
- The Meaning of Independence: John Adams, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson (1976, reprint with new foreword, 2004)
- The Genius of George Washington (1980)
- Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (1988)
- Benjamin Franklin (Yale University Press, 2002) read online
- The Genuine Article: A Historian Looks at Early America (2004), selected review essays from New York Review of Books read online
- American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America (2009), biographical essays read online
Selected articles
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., The Case against Anne Hutchinson, The New England Quarterly, 1937, 10, 4, 635â649, 10.2307/359929, 359929,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., The Puritans and Sex, The New England Quarterly, 1942, 15, 4, 591â607, 10.2307/361501, 361501,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., Colonial Ideas of Parliamentary Power 1764-1766, The William and Mary Quarterly, 1948, 5, 3, 311â341, 10.2307/1923462, 1923462,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., Thomas Hutchinson and the Stamp Act, The New England Quarterly, 1948, 21, 4, 459â492, 10.2307/361566, 361566,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., The Postponement of the Stamp Act, The William and Mary Quarterly, 1950, 7, 3, 353â392, 10.2307/1917228, 1917228,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., Ezra Stiles: The Education of a Yale Man, 1742-1746, Huntington Library Quarterly, 1954, 17, 3, 251â268, 10.2307/3816428, 3816428,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., The American Revolution: Revisions in Need of Revising, The William and Mary Quarterly, 1957, 14, 1, 3â15, 10.2307/1917368, 1917368,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., Ezra Stiles and Timothy Dwight, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1957, 72, 101â117, 25080517,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., The Puritan Ethic and the American Revolution, The William and Mary Quarterly, 1967, 24, 1, 4â43, 10.2307/1920560, 1920560,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., The First American Boom: Virginia 1618 to 1630, The William and Mary Quarterly, 1971, 28, 2, 170â198, 10.2307/1917308, 1917308,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., The Labor Problem at Jamestown, 1607-18, The American Historical Review, 1971, 76, 3, 595â611, 10.2307/1851619, 1851619,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox, The Journal of American History, 1972, 59, 1, 5â29, 10.2307/1888384, 1888384,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., The World and William Penn, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1983, 127, 5, 291â315, 986499,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., Safety in Numbers: Madison, Hume, and the Tenth 'Federalist', Huntington Library Quarterly, 1986, 49, 2, 95â112, 10.2307/3817178, 3817178,
- JOURNAL, Morgan, Edmund S., John Winthrop's 'Modell of Christian Charity' in a Wider Context, Huntington Library Quarterly, 1987, 50, 2, 145â151, 10.2307/3817255, 3817255,
Notes
{{Reflist|30em}}Further reading
- Carp, Benjamin L. "Edmund S. Morgan and the Urgency of Good Leadership." Reviews in American History 44.1 (2016): 1â18.
- JOURNAL, Courtwright, David T., Fifty Years of American History: An Interview with Edmund S. Morgan, The William and Mary Quarterly, 1987, 44, 2, 336â369, 10.2307/1939669, 1939669,
- Liddle, William D. "Edmund S. Morgan (1916â )" in Clyde N. Wilson, ed., Twentieth-Century American Historians (Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. XVII) (Detroit, 1983), pp 285â95.
- Middlekauff, Robert. âIn Memoriam: Edmund S. Morgan 1916-2013.â New England Quarterly 964 (2013), pp. 685â687. online.
- Murrin, John M. "Edmund S. Morgan," in Robert Allen Rutland, ed. Clio's Favorites: Leading Historians of the United States, 1945â2000 U of Missouri Press. (2000) pp 126â137
- JOURNAL, Nawotka, Edward, Edmund Morgan: The Historian's Historian, Publishers Weekly, 249, 49, December 2002, 57,
- NEWS, Grimes, William, Edmund S. Morgan, Historian Who Shed Light on Puritans, Dies at 97,weblink The New York Times, 9 July 2013,
- Washington Post obituary
- Boston Globe obituary
- American Historical Association obituary
- Obituary by Thomas Kidd
- Obituary by Jill Lepore
External links
- weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20050915123413weblink">Morgan Bio at Yale
- weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20060426060715weblink">Morgan bio on History News Network
- Morgan author page and archive from The New York Review of Books
- {{C-SPAN|82720}}
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