The Genuine Article: A Historian Looks at Early America

by Edmund S. Morgan

Overview

"A masterly quarter-century of commentary on the discipline of American history."—Allen D. Boyer, New York Times Book Review

"This book amounts to an intellectual autobiography....These pieces are thus a statement of what I have thought about early Americans during nearly seventy years in their company," writes historian Edmund S. Morgan in the introduction to this landmark collection. The Genuine Article gathers together twenty-five of Morgan's finest essays over forty years, commenting brilliantly on everything from Jamestown to James Madison. In revealing the private lives of "Those Sexy Puritans" and "The Price of Honor" on Southern plantations, The Genuine Article details the daily lives of early Americans, along with "The Great Political Fiction" that continues to this day. As one of our most celebrated historians, Morgan's characteristic insight and penetrating wisdom are not to be missed in this extraordinarily rich portrait of early America and its Founding Fathers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393327144
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/17/2005
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Edmund S. Morgan (1916–2013) was the Sterling Professor Emeritus at Yale University and the recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the Pulitzer Prize, and the American Academy’s Gold Medal. He was the author of The Genuine Article; American Slavery, American Freedom; Benjamin Franklin; and American Heroes, among many other books.

Table of Contents

	Preface	IX
Part 1	New Englanders	1
Chapter 1	America's First Great Man	5
Chapter 2	Heaven Can't Wait	15
Chapter 3	Those Sexy Puritans	22
Chapter 4	The Chosen People	31
Chapter 5	Subject Women	40
Chapter 6	Witch-Hunting	54
Chapter 7	Bewitched	61
Part 2	Southerners	71
Chapter 8	Our Town	75
Chapter 9	The Fall of the Gentry	83
Chapter 10	The Big American Crime	90
Chapter 11	Plantation Blues	108
Chapter 12	The Price of Honor	122
Part 3	Revolutionaries	133
Chapter 13	How the French Lost America	137
Chapter 14	A Loyal Un-American	147
Chapter 15	The Oedipal Revolution	156
Chapter 16	Secrets of Benjamin Franklin	163
Chapter 17	Don't Tread On Us	185
Chapter 18	The Fixers	197
Chapter 19	The Great Political Fiction	207
Chapter 20	Power to the People?	225
Chapter 21	The Second American Revolution	236
Chapter 22	The Genuine Article	248
Part 4	Questions of Culture	261
Chapter 23	Persuading the Persuaded	265
Chapter 24	Who's Really Who (with Marie Morgan)	275
	Notes	295
	Index	301

Editorial Reviews

In this collection of previously published pieces, Morgan's sweeping gaze extends far: from John Winthrop's diaries of Colonial Boston to the Hollywood version of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, from Francis Parkman's dramatic portrait of Rogers's Rangers to the American National Biography's sketches of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, from the Old South's code of honor to the bloodless disputes of modern academia. Morgan describes this book as ''a kind of intellectual autobiography''; it also offers a masterly quarter-century of commentary on the discipline of American history.
— The New York Times

Allen D. Boyer

A venerable historian considers and reconsiders topics ranging from slavery to the Constitution to the Founding Fathers. Morgan (Emeritus History/Yale; Benjamin Franklin, 2002) displays in eminently impressive pieces (all of which appeared over the past 25 years in the New York Review of Books) not only his vast knowledge of early American history but also his transparent style and his generous reviewing philosophy. In only one of these 24 essays-the penultimate one, dealing with the Library of America's 1999 collection of American sermons-does he wax wholly negative. (He calls it a "strange work" whose selection criteria baffle him.) Generally, Morgan endeavors to understand the author's intent and then, in true NYRB fashion, expatiates. Nobody does it better. Divided into four parts (for each Morgan provides a sketchy, and perhaps superfluous, introduction), the collection begins with searching assessments of the Puritans. Acknowledging repeatedly his debt to former teacher Perry Miller, Morgan insists on the enduring importance of these folks in American culture and politics but reminds us (in a piece from 2002) that it is inaccurate to call the Massachusetts Bay Colony a theocracy: "The existence of real theocracies in the Near East today should call our attention to the care that New England Puritans took not to create one." He discusses slavery and race with refreshing frankness ("The Big American Crime") and describes clearly how, during the Seven Years' War, the American Indians horrified their European allies with their ferocity (and cannibalism). Unsurprisingly, Morgan writes eloquently about Benjamin Franklin and the other Founding Fathers, offering an especially cogent pieceon the significance of George Washington, who, after all, did not really distinguish himself on the battlefield and did not participate much in the creation of those seminal American declarations and documents. (A single caveat: the thematic-rather than chronological-arrangement can make it difficult to follow the evolution of Morgan's remarkable mind.)First-rate thinking and writing. (6 b&w illustrations)

Kirkus Reviews