Edmund Morgan
Edmund Sears Morgan (b.
1916 in
Minneapolis), an eminent authority on early
American history, is Professor of History
emeritus at
Yale University (
1955-
1986.) He has written many books on Puritan and colonial history, many of which have appealed to a mass audience. These include
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, and
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. Two of his early books,
Birth of the Republic (
1956) and
The Puritan Dilemma (
1958), have for decades been required reading in many
American undergraduate history courses. The historian's other works include biographies of
Ezra Stiles and
Roger Williams, and a book on
George Washington.
In
1971 he 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. One year later, 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. He became a
Sterling Professor, one of Yale's highest distinctions, in
1965. Morgan was awarded the
2000 National Humanities Medal by the
US President Bill Clinton at a ceremony for "extraordinary contributions to American cultural life and thought." In
2006, he received a
Pulitzer Prize special citation "for a creative and deeply influential body of work as an American historian that spans the last half century."
Morgan's own interest in history grew while he was an undergraduate at
Harvard, where he went on to earn his Ph.D in
1942. At Harvard Morgan studied under
Perry Miller. Since he became a historian, he has witnessed a major change in his field. He began by teaching at the
University of Chicago (
1945-
46) and then at
Brown (1946-55) before becoming a professor at Yale.
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, 1763-89 (1956)
The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (1958)
The American Revolution: A Review of Changing Interpretations (1958)
The Mirror of the Indian (1958)
Editor or Contributor: Prologue to the Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764-1766 (1959)
The National Experience: A History of the United States (1963)
Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea (1963)
The Founding of Massachusetts: Historians and the Sources (1964)
The American Revolution: Two Centuries of Interpretation (1965)
Puritan Political Ideas, 1558-1794 (1965)
The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth, 1653-1657: The Conscience of a Puritan (1965)
The Emergence of the American, Educational Services (1965)
The Puritan Family (1966)
Roger Williams: The Church and the State (1967)
Paul Revere's Three Accounts of His Famous Ride (1961) 2nd edition, 1968.
So What about History? (1969)
American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975)
The Challenge of the American Revolution (1976)
The Meaning of Independence: John Adams, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson (1976)
The Genius of George Washington (1980)
The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727-1795 (1984)
Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (1988)
Benjamin Franklin (2002)
The Genuine Article: A Historian Looks at Early America (2004)
* Articles and reviews to historical journals.
* Ed. board, New England Quarterly.he has written 39 books altogether
* John M. Murrin. "Edmund S. Morgan," in Robert Allen Rutland, ed.
Clio's Favorites: Leading Historians of the United States, 1945-2000 U of Missouri Press. (2000) pp 126-137
*
Morgan Bio at Yale*
Morgan bio on History News Network
