A myth buster profiles heroes of our nation’s early years
The name Edmund Sears Morgan is not as well-known as the cadre of very talented popular historians who are called upon at times of important national events to lend perspective to the stories on PBS.
That’s too bad because Morgan, professor emeritus at Yale where he was full-time faculty for 30 years, is often described as the authority on early American history, a giant without flash. He has authored 18 books on this often misunderstood period of history in a career that began before most of us could read.
Morgan, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize a few years back for his “deeply influential body of work. . . . that spans the last half century,” is 93 years old and undoubtedly looking to his next book.
Morgan has been a myth buster for most of his career but his style doesn’t lend itself to the likes of the popular TV show of that name. He uses meticulous research into primary documents to uncover the formative years of our nation, and if his findings happen to conflict with the popular perception of early America, so be it.
In this book, a collection of 17 essays, most never published in book form, Morgan analyzes what our founders believed, and what they didn’t believe.
Life in 17th and 18th century New England was not sterile. Its inhabitants would hardly recognize what we call America’s Puritan attitudes toward marriage and sexuality. To the Puritans, it was the Papists who were hung up on chastity and celibacy.
Morgan describes Puritanism as zealous, suspicious of pleasure and heavy with guilt, yet he argues it is a myth that they did not seek personal wealth and gratification. And to say they fled Europe to escape religious prosecution is a lopsided view. He would argue they left England because they could not convert the Roman-leaning Church of England to their Calvinist view.
We tend to measure early American history as a quick skip and a jump from the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the Boston Tea Party. We forget those terminal events were as far removed from each other as life today is from the Civil War. Harvard had been around for a century before the colonies broke with the mother country. There were a million people of European stock on this side of the Atlantic by 1776.
Forward-looking people in the colonies, and a few along the Thames, were coming to realize that by sheer math alone — these prolific people married young and had children young — the American tail would be wagging the British lion in another century even without the inevitable Germanic immigration.
Of course, these rough-hewn New Englanders were backward when compared to the Europeans.
Just look at the Salem witch trials and the executions of innocent women (and men).
Here Morgan explains that 17th century Americans, like 17th century Europeans, believed in personal devils and their victims, witches recruited to carry out the work of Beelzebub. The witches executed in this country were a drop in the bucket compared to the 1,500 or so recorded executions for witchcraft in Protestant Europe.
Morgan describes the horror of Salem as an epidemic, a general panic, in which all the rules of law were suspended temporarily for the common good. One can’t help but think of the Joe McCarthy hunt for Communists, eventually ending when some cooler heads prevailed. Those cooler heads acted heroically. Thus we have American heroes named Anne Hutchinson, Giles Corey and Ezra Stiles.
But where are the real American heroes, the Founding Fathers? In this book, Morgan analyzes two of them — Washington and Franklin — as leaders who did not allow ideology to blind their vision of a great nation.
At a time when John Adams’ historical stock is on the rise, when impetuosity is a virtue, Morgan defends Washington’s and Franklin’s quality of knowing when not to act, when to lie in wait. For Washington, it was on the battlefield; for Franklin, in the diplomatic field. And in the case of Washington, he was a heroic figure because he did not carry a scepter, because he would not sit on a throne, because he would not allow people to bow and kowtow before him.
Franklin initially envisioned the might of the American Colonies as England’s great strength into the 19th century, but once convinced the monarchy and Parliament could not read the handwriting on the wall, it was as if he determined: If we cannot become the greatest source of power for Great Britain, then we will become the greatest source of power for ourselves.
This book is on the must-read list for anyone who teaches history, religion or politics at any level — is American history still taught in grade schools? — as well as for anyone who cares about where we came from as a nation.
But despite this book’s patriotic dust jacket and simple title, don’t be fooled into picking it up for your favorite high school student unless your favorite high school student dreams of becoming a Rhodes Scholar. Professor Morgan presumes his readers already know the stories behind the characters he is analyzing.
Edward Cuddihy is the retired Buffalo News managing editor.
NONFICTION
AmericanHeroes
By Edmund S. Morgan
Norton 278 pages, $27.95
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