Edmund Morgan Quotes - BrainyQuote

American - Historian January 17, 1916 - July 8, 2013

The three hundredth anniversary of the Salem witch trials of 1692 comes at a time when witchcraft commands a scholarly attention that would have been puzzling in 1892 or even in 1792.

Time Anniversary Attention Trials

In 1787, many Americans were convinced that the 'perpetual union' they had created in winning independence was collapsing. Six years earlier, in the Articles of Confederation, the thirteen state governments had surrendered extensive powers to a congress of delegates from each state legislature.

Winning Independence Congress Years

What was the American Revolution? The people who joined to carry it out had different views of what they had done.

People Revolution Done American

The American Revolution was carried out in the name of the people, and it was supposedly 'We, the people,' who created the government that Americans still live under.

People Government Name Live

Both European and American historians have done away with any conceptual limits on what in the past needs and deserves investigating. The result, among other things, has been a flood of works on gender history, black history, and ethnic history of all kinds.

History Black Past Gender

To make a successful film from a successful play is probably much more difficult than making one from scratch, just as any carpenter will tell you that it is more difficult to restore an old house than to build a comparable new one.

You New House Will

The men and women who occupied the east coast of North America between 1607 and 1800 have been more closely scrutinized than any other collection of people in American history.

Men History Women People

Thomas Paine, so celebrated and so despised as he traveled through the critical events of his time, has long appealed to biographers. Paine was present at the creation both of the United States and of the French Republic. His eloquence, in the pamphlet 'Common Sense,' propelled the American colonists toward independence.

Time Long Independence Creation

The southern colonists were not preoccupied with their own historical significance and mostly did not bother even to make the records of births, marriages, and deaths that they required of themselves by law. Nor did they write accounts of what they were up to for the benefit of posterity.

Law Own Historical Bother

The Puritans left behind so full a record of what they thought and did that scholars cannot resist the temptation to make the most of it.

Thought Behind Temptation Left

Top 10
Edmund Morgan
Quotes

Apart from the intrinsic interest of the complex system of beliefs the Puritans carried with them, their lives give a clue to what it meant at the beginning to be American. And the level of scholarship dealing with them has reached a point where it can address the human condition itself.

Beginning American Human Complex

It is hard for anyone who discovers George Washington not to write about him, perhaps because he is so hard to discover and such a surprise when you do.

You Surprise Hard Who

Washington presided at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and is often credited with its success. But he had no known part in drafting its provisions.

Success He Washington Part

Throughout his long career, Washington earned the adulation not merely of ordinary people but of the other luminaries whom we now hail as 'founding fathers.'

People Long Career Now

There is something about guns that inhibits understanding. It is not just that they can put an end to argument. They somehow generate beliefs that are obviously contrary to observable fact.

End Understanding Argument Something

The musket could not be aimed except in a general direction; a bow in the hands of a skilled archer could regularly hit and kill an enemy completely beyond musket range.

Hands Enemy Direction Beyond

The musket, always a muzzleloader, took minutes to reload; an archer could aim and fire up to a dozen arrows in a minute. Muskets required continual cleaning and repair; bows were quickly made and easily maintained.

Fire Aim Always Cleaning

In 1595, by order of the Privy Council, the English armed services abandoned the longbow and fought with muskets for the next two centuries and more. Nobody is sure why.

Nobody English More Next

Liberty had many friends in the eighteenth century.

Friends Liberty Many Century

Americans, perhaps more than most people, have pondered the question of who they are and what their country is.

People Country Question More

The American world had - seemingly, at least - become a Jeffersonian world by the election of 1800, which placed Thomas Jefferson in the presidency. Jefferson had been Hamilton's rival in the new government's early years, and Hamilton has figured in the public memory almost as much for that rivalry as for his positive achievements.

Positive Memory Government Election

Few words in any language carry such a load of meaning as 'honor.' It is an old word, unchanged even in its spelling from classical Latin to modern English. Spoken or written, it does not seem to require much explanation; most people think they know what it means.

People Words Honor Language

No one escapes from the past without bearing some of its burdens.

Past Some Without Bearing

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the Ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.

Wisdom Men Age Look

Between 1776 and 1789, Americans replaced a government over them with a government under them. They have worried ever since about keeping it under. Distrust of its powers has been more common and more visible than distrust of the imperial authority of England ever was before the Revolution.

Government Revolution More Authority

In America, we may acknowledge Washington and Lincoln as great men, and probably Franklin and Jefferson and maybe Franklin Delano Roosevelt and possibly even several more, but we would probably disagree about precisely what it was that made them great, what it was that enabled them to give a lasting direction to the course of events.

Men Great Direction America

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