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American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America

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American Heroes is a collection of essays about select individuals who made significant (perhaps even heroic) contributions to the founding of the United States. Most of these pieces were previously published in various magazines and journals (one in 1937!--this guy must be pretty old), but three of them are brand new. Some of the individuals he chooses to spotlight are familiar--John Winthrop, William Penn, Benjamin Franklin --while others will surprise you, such as Anne Hutchinson, who had the temerity to stand up to her Puritan church leaders and thereby plant the seeds of religious liberty; and the Anti-federalists, whose opposition to the adoption of the Constitution induced Congress to quickly approve the first ten amendments, known today as the Bill of Rights.

The contributions made by the cast of characters Morgan trots out in this short tome have been chronicled by countless other authors. But Morgan provides astute explanations and keen analysis that cause you to see these people from a different perspective. You will learn that what Columbus expected to find once he reached his intended destination (the East Indies) greatly influenced his interaction with the people he encountered at his actual destination (the West Indies). You will discover why Native Americans, unlike most conquered peoples, resisted assimilation into the larger American Society (they didn't like our hierarchical form of government and they didn't give a tinker's damn about money). And you will wonder how the same people who extolled the virtues of reasoning and logic that characterized the Age of Enlightenment could turn around and burn someone for practicing witchcraft. But then Mr. Morgan will remind you that "witch hunts" have been a part of the American scene through the current day.

Morgan has made a useful contribution to our understanding of who we are and how we are similar to, and different from, our ancestors. Highly recommended.

Pulitzer Prize winning author and emeritus professor of Yale University Edmund S. Morgan presents American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America, a close examination of notable individuals from seventeenth-century America with particular focus on their ideals, motivations, and beliefs. In addition to the unforgettable stock figures of America's history such as Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, Morgan tells the stories of lesser known individuals who embodied America's highest precepts, sometimes at the cost of their own lives - such as Mary Easty, an accused witch sentenced to death in Salem who refused to spare her own life by confessing her guilt and naming confederates among her neighbors. In addition to individuals, American Heroes also offers a wealth of insight into early American societies and cultures, particularly the Puritan culture. "As marriage was the way to prevent fornication, successful marriage was the way to prevent adultery. The Puritans did not wait for adultery to appear; instead, they took every means possible to make husbands and wives live together and respect each other. If a husband deserted his wife and remained within the jurisdiction of a Puritan government, he was promptly sent back to her." Enthusiastically recommended not only for public and college library collections, but also for any reader curious to better understand early American history and society.

In my estimation, Edmund Morgan is one of the finest American historians of his or any other generation and I have read a number of his earlier books. Morgan is now 93 years old, so I was surprised to see a new book from him on the shelves. And of course, it turns out that the book is a collection of essays written over the past many years. Most of the pieces have been previously published. So, now you are forewarned. How much that matters depends in part on how much you enjoy reading Edmund Morgan, that rarest of birds, an academic historian who can tell a good story elegantly and simply, but not simplistically.

Many of the essays trace familiar ground from Morgan's works on early America. For example, his elucidation of the Puritans as more complicated and interesting than you probably think is familiar to readers of The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (Library of American Biography). Likewise, his views on James Madison's invention of the American people and thus created an American popular sovereignty that were developed in Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America.

His essay Dangerous Books, while it may be familiar to a few readers of Gentle Puritan (judging by the absence of any ratings or reviews I'm guessing that number is very small), was new to me and worth the price of admission by itself. Morgan uses the life of Ezra Stiles at Yale (first as student, later as president) to extol the importance of libraries - and their danger to entrenched belief. Morgan's easy and elegant writing is on display: "It was probably inevitable that Ezra Stiles, placed in reach of the Yale Library, would sooner or later arrive at a number of heretical ideas." Stiles "read himself to the edge of deism with Shaftesbury and then tried to read himself back again...It might seem therefore that Ezra Stiles fully recovered from his bout with the library." But Stiles believed that truth would prevail when it came "forth in the open Field and dispute the matter on an equal Footing....only tyrants need fear the truth."

Morgan concludes, "Ezra Stiles was, as you can see, a dangerous man. But the danger lay less in his own radical views than in the freedom he wanted for others, the freedom to read and from reading to think and speak the thoughts that dissolve old institutions and create new ones. That kind of freedom is as dangerous today [1959] as it was then. If we allow young men and women to read and think, we must expect that their thoughts will not be our thoughts and that they will violate much that we hold dear....The only way to make a library safe is to lock people out of it."

While I felt a bit flimflammed by the book's cover that strongly implied the book contained new material, it is hard to complain when the result is reading a collection of essays on early Americans by Edmund Morgan. 4.5 stars. Highly recommended.

There are American historians, there are great American historians, and then there is Edmund Morgan. Morgan's work has redefined much of the American past, and especially early American history. Only Bernard Bailyn can stand with him as an interpreter of the colonial American past. So it is particularly good news that updated versions of many of Morgan's classic essays are now available in one book -- or in my case, one unabridged CD.

Other reviewers correctly note that the book's title and cover page are misleading. I really don't BLAME Morgan for that, because usually the publisher is responsible for such things. That said, Morgan's name is on the book, too, and he should have changed things.

But that is really the ONLY thing wrong with this book. These essays are as fresh and vivid as when they were first written, and Morgan's updating of them make them come alive even more. For me, the chapter of the Salem witch trials is especially spectacular. Morgan demonstrates that the only reason why the trials moved ahead was due to the decision to use "spectral evidence," normally deemed inadmissible, to convict people, all of whom were of course innocent. He then makes the obvious connection with the modern use of torture to condemn people; he might have had eloquent things to say about DOJ's recent decision not to discipline the authors of the infamous torture memo. But then he comes an observation that truly makes Morgan the best of his time: he notes that five years after, all New England congregations observed a day of fasting and prayer in atonements for the sins of the trials, and wonders whether we could ever see modern society doing the same. The answer, of course, is no, and gives us pause at facile notions of progress in history.

This is a Morgan not often in evidence in his books, at times angry and slashing. His essay on the genocide of the Arawak Indians on Hispaniola persuasively speculates on just what it was that made Europeans feel the need to exterminate them. The very innocence and happiness of the Arawaks cast doubt on the entire frame of life that Christianity gave the Europeans. Yet at the same time, he is scrupulously non-presentist. He sees historical figures in THEIR context, not ours. Toward the end of the book, he takes on the standard account of the differing Yale presidencies of Ezra Stiles and Timothy Dwight, showing how a careful reconstruction of context can make one see facts completely differently from when they first appear. He brilliantly connects the leadership styles of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin demonstrating how their ability NOT to act when everyone else demanded that they take some sort of premature action set them apart. This is the sort of history writing that all scholars should aspire to, carefully noting the differences between time periods while also finding commonalities.

Quite simply, this book is full of treats, whether it is his classic essay on The Puritans and Sex; connecting widely disparate Indian tribes and their relations with the British; showing how William Penn could combine Quakerism with political realism and then with political fantasy; or detailing how the complex ideological changes in the meaning of representation led to the split between Federalist and Anti-Federalists. And all with the most extraordinary graceful yet unpretentious writing style I have ever seen in any historian, popular or academic.

Morgan is 93 years old. I don't know if he will ever write another book. Yet it is hard to come away from American Heroes without thinking of the phrase "a scholar at the height of his powers." And perhaps that demonstrates his greatness as a historian: from writing about the Puritan Family before the Second World War to this book, he has been at the height of his powers for the better part of SEVEN decades. What an accomplishment. Read this book; you will be the better for it.

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States has done much to establish that the "history" of popular mythology (and, sadly, as it has been widely taught in schools) not only leaves a lot of gaps, but is in some instances at best distorted, and sometimes totally false. This collection of 17 essays, drawn from seven decades of Edmund S Morgan's published and other work, could be seen as a companion to Zinn's, taking the examination of what really happened several steps further. Morgan writes, "The national identity of any people generally rests, if not on their history as it actually happened, at least on a shared popular opinion about that history". If we are to be true to ourselves, the record should be set straight where that is needed. Necessarily, this deeper study cannot in a single volume also be as broad as Zinn's, but for those whose appetite is whetted sufficiently to seek out more from Morgan, many of his earlier volumes are still in print.

A particular area of interest for Morgan is the Puritans of New England. However, like Zinn, he opens with a sad, and still highly topical essay on the discovery, enslavement and ultimate extermination of the original Arawak inhabitants of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, discovered by Columbus in 1492. Morgan concedes that Columbus sits oddly with his revisionist definition of hero, and one might also question how American this Spanish discover of the Caribbean and the north coast of South America actually was. A similar query might be placed against William Penn, that most militant of Quakers, who gave his name to Pennsylvania but spent only about two years in America before returning to England. Nevertheless, Morgan devotes his longest essay to Penn, and lively and informative it is too. Clearly, just as he declares he did for his study of Benjamin Franklin, Morgan has submerged himself for a matter of years in all the original documentation he can find written by and about his subject.

But the majority of Morgan's heroes are furnished by the early settlers of New England. They include Mary Easty, who in the Salem witch trials of 1692-93 went to the gallows rather than falsely implicate others, and Giles Cory, who endured being pressed to death without pleading either guilty or not guilty (thereby avoiding forfeit to the state of his children's inheritance). And in what is perhaps the raciest chapter of the book we learn of Anna Keayne, in 1656 "the most eligible debutante in Boston", who was subject to a long and complicated conspiracy to rob her of her inheritance, but triumphed in the end.

There are many other unexpected gems in this collection, and many individuals of whom it is unlikely we ever previously heard who we can now adopt as heroes. Morgan too should be adopted, as Zinn has been, as an American hero.

I'm no history buff - but I enjoyed this book. It's filled with essays on various people - stories you probably never heard. It was informative and thorough.

This is an odd little book by the well-known--and respected--historian, Edmund Morgan. This is a collection of brief essays, focusing on what the author refers to as "men and women who shaped early America."

The essays really aren't tied together, but many of these are still interesting reflections that trigger the reader's reflections about subjects covered. Subjects considered run from Christopher Columbus (and his imposition of slavery on native Americans), to the Puritans of New England (e.g., essays focus on such various topics as "The Puritans and Sex," "John Winthrop's Vision" [of the City on the Hill], Salem witch trials), to the Quakers (and William Penn), to revolutionary leaders (an interesting comparison of Washington versus Franklin, rather flattering to both).

A couple important essays in the section on Revolutionary leaders stand out for me. One chapter focuses on a key issue in the understanding of representative democracy--the nature of representation. Morgan makes the intriguing point that representation is a "fiction," (page 225) "by which the larger fiction of popular sovereignty has been itself sustained." A fiction. . . . And with that, what of democracy as a form? That is why the chapter immediately following makes so much sense--the role of the Antifederalists, those who opposed the Constitution because of their fears that it would undermine some of the democratic impulses of the time.

Like many collections, sometimes this does not hold together too well. There are some idiosyncratic judgments by Morgan. Still, if you want to read a book that will make one reflect, this does its job well.

I found the title and the concept -- personal profiles of early Americans who shaped our country -- to be tempting but I was VERY disappointed to find, on reading, that this book is simply a collection of edited lectures thrown together by Edmund Morgan to make a "book", or, rather a bound collection of unrelated academic monologues. Part academic fodder, part unsupported commentary, and part half-formed opinion. All the opinions are conventional, what you would hear from any academic. If you're tired of hearing that stuff you'll be bored with this fresh repetition. And, worse, the essays are not interesting. The Puritans approved of sex, as long as it was within marriage? Yes, this is explained in twenty pages. And worse than that, some of the lectures end in non-sequiturs, that's right, the "huh?" type you get from professors who are unused to being interrupted or contradicted, and who enjoy throwing off unsupported assertions as revelation. We're told in the chapter on the Salem witch trials (The Courage of Giles Cory and Mary Easty) an interesting story of how New Englanders later stood up and admitted their error in conducting, supporting and allowing these trials. We should be proud of them. But then we are subjected to a gratuitous reference to Sacco and Vanzetti at the end of the chapter. What's it got to do with the witch trials? Beats me. Why was/ is it an injustice? Not explained. What shows their innocence? Not even asserted. Not supported. Not related. Just on Morgan's mind. Not interesting. This is one example, there are a half dozen. I scanned the last 100 pages of this book then tossed it. I love history and can't remember the last time I didn't finish a book on American History. I tossed this one. Skip it.

Edmund S. Morgan gives us a lengthy sample of his written musings from a period of many years (most have the dates they were published at the end) about various notable people in America's early history. Mr. Morgan often sounds like a typical on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand professor imparting his words of wisdom to a class of nodding students -- but that doesn't necessarily make the book uninteresting to read.

However, I question his choice of the word "heroes" to describe some of these people. The cover illustration shows what appears to be George Washington and several of his generals, staring heroically off toward ... something. This is a bit misleading, since his discussion of Washington and Benjamin Franklin does not begin until page 197, in a book of 258 pages of text. But then, a picture of Cotton Mather, Anne Hutchinson and Michael Wigglesworth might not have attracted the attention of nearly as many potential readers. Morgan talks at some length about the Puritan divine, the Massachusetts religious rebel in petticoats and the "examplar of Puritanism" after a lofty opening section about Christopher Columbus and his voyages of discovery. He finds Columbus unheroic in a number of ways, along with his European followers, for their treatment of the "Indians" they found in the New World.

Mr. Morgan concludes his book with a piece he wrote about a colleague and fellow academic named Perry Miller -- whom he terms a "genius" -- an essay that is mostly self-indulgent since few outside of academia will have heard of the late Mr. Miller.

It is interesting that, in this era of debate over a federal government out of touch with the people back home in the congressional districts, Mr. Morgan also discusses how the early Americans struggled with the question of local interests vs. the most good for the largest number. He appears to lean toward the "strong central government" side, but indulges in a convoluted discussion about it that could be labeled "too clever by half."

Despite these quibbles, for those interested in American history, the book is diverting in its way. Professor Morgan, who has a long list of his previously published works listed inside the front cover, seems in this book to have collected all the essays he wrote over the years, that he hadn't published somewhere else.

I normally enjoy history books, and read a favorable reference to this book in the WSJ, so I bought it. However, it seems to be basically an edited collection of the author's old essays, most of which don't seem particularly poignant in the first place. The whole theme of the book (basically, a new interpretation of "American heros,") doesn't even really seem cohesive... I can't find much of a unifying point to the various essays. The articles are fairly interesting, and pretty well-written, but this is the kind of book that makes me think the publisher put it together mainly to generate money. Anyone who rates this a 4 or 5 star book really needs to get out and read more. Anyway, that's my opinion.