In 1946–55, Morgan taught history at
Brown University in
Providence, Rhode Island before becoming a professor at
Yale University, where he directed some 60
PhD dissertations in colonial history before retiring in 1986. As an undergraduate at Harvard, Morgan was profoundly influenced by historian
Perry Miller, who became a lifelong friend. Although both were atheists, they had a deep understanding and respect for
Puritan religion. From Miller, Morgan learned to appreciate: The intellectual rigor and elegance of a system of ideas that made sense of human life in a way no longer palatable to most of us. Certainly not palatable to me... He left me with a habit of taking what people have said at face value unless I find compelling reasons to discount it... What Americans said from the beginning about
taxation and just government deserved to be taken as seriously as the Puritans' ideas about God and man. Morgan's many books and articles covered a range of topics in the history of the colonial and Revolutionary periods, using intellectual,
social history, biographical, and political history approaches. Two of his early books,
The Birth of the Republic (1956) and
The Puritan Dilemma (1958), have for decades been required reading in many undergraduate history courses. His works include
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, and
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. Morgan has written a biography of Benjamin Franklin of which he made extensive use of
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin and has written about at length. He has also written biographies on
Ezra Stiles and
Roger Williams.
Puritans Morgan's trio
The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in 17th-Century New England (1944),
The Puritan Dilemma (1958), and
Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea (1963) restored the intellectual respectability of the
Puritans, and exposed their appetite for healthy sex, causing a renaissance in Puritan studies, partly because both Morgan and his mentor Miller were
Ivy League atheist professors, which added to their credibility. Morgan's 1958 book
The Puritan Dilemma raised his notability, and the book became the most assigned textbook in U.S. history survey courses, documenting the change in understanding among Puritans of what it means to be a member of a church. Morgan described the Puritan as "doing right in a world that does wrong...Caught between the ideals of God's Law and the practical needs of the people,
John Winthrop walked a line few could tread."
American Revolution In
The Stamp Act Crisis (1953) and
The Birth of the Republic (1956) Morgan rejected the
Progressive interpretation of the
American Revolution and its assumption that the rhetoric of the Patriots was mere claptrap. Instead Morgan returned to the interpretation first set out by
George Bancroft a century before that the patriots were deeply motivated by a commitment to liberty. Historian Mark Egnal argues that: The leading neo-Whig historians, Edmund Morgan and
Bernard Bailyn, underscore this dedication to whiggish principles, although with variant readings. For Morgan, the development of the patriots' beliefs was a rational, clearly defined process.
Slavery In his 1975 book
American Slavery, American Freedom, Morgan explored "the American paradox, the marriage of slavery and freedom": Human relations among us still suffer from the former enslavement of a large portion of our predecessors. The freedom of the free, the growth of freedom experienced in the American Revolution depended more than we like to admit on the enslavement of more than 20 percent of us at that time. How republican freedom came to be supported, at least in large part, by its opposite, slavery, is the subject of this book. Morgan claimed that large
Virginia plantation owners exerted an outsized influence on poorer white Virginians and their attitude toward the
racial divide (color line) which made it possible for Virginian white men as a group to become more politically equal: ("Aristocrats could more safely preach equality in a slave society than in a free one"). In a controversial passage, Morgan suggests
Virginia's poor whites felt no racial superiority to poor blacks. He does this by providing evidence that, in 17th-century Virginia, poor white indentured servants and black slaves frequently cooperated with each other and worked together. Morgan cites the 1676
Bacon's Rebellion as evidence of a surprising racial egalitarianism among the poor, since Bacon incorporated runaway black slaves into his army. Despite the assertions of such writers as Michelle Alexander, however, Morgan does not state that Bacon's Rebellion was the reason that rich landowners stopped purchasing white
indentured servants and started increasing their purchase of black slaves; rather, regional changes in labor economics was the reason black slaves began to replace white servants: during the early 1600s, white servants cost less per unit labor than black slaves did; but by the latter 1600s, the situation reversed itself, and black slaves became the more economical investment. And, as Morgan states, "The planters who bought slaves instead of servants did not do so with any apparent consciousness of the social stability to be gained thereby. Indeed, insofar as Virginians expressed themselves on the subject of slavery, they feared that it would magnify the danger of insurrection in the colony." As events evolved, however, the rising number of black slaves and the virtual end to the importation of indentured servants did stabilize Virginia society. And as time went on, according to Morgan, Virginia politicians learned to further pacify poor whites by fostering a sense of white superiority. "Racism made it possible for white Virginians to develop a devotion to the equality that English republicans had declared to be the soul of
liberty." That is, according to Morgan, white men in Virginia were able to become much more politically equal and cohesive than would have been possible without a population of low-status black slaves. Anthony S. Parent commented: "American historians of our generation admire Edmund Morgan's
American Slavery, American Freedom more than any other monograph. Morgan resuscitated American history by placing black slavery and white freedom as its central paradox." In 2002 Morgan published a surprise
New York Times Bestseller,
Benjamin Franklin, which dispels the myth of "a comfortable old gentleman staring out at the world over his half-glasses with benevolent comprehension of everything in it", revealing his true mental makeup. With a wisdom about himself that comes only to the great of heart, Franklin knew how to value himself and what he did without mistaking himself for something more than one man among many. His special brand of
self-respect required him to honor his fellow men and women no less than himself. ==Legacy and impact==