The Genuine Article: A Historian Looks at Early America

by Edmund S. Morgan

"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.

Genres: History, American History, American Revolution, Essays, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Edmund Sears Morgan

Reviews

[GoldGato · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a most interesting read. The author, Edmund S. Morgan, was one of the great historians of early American history and he wrote this book to review the works of some eminent figures of Americana. In doing so, he also argues for his own historical perspectives, so the reader gets a double hit of the Puritans and the beginnings of American thought.

Lifelong anxiety and self-deprecation became the hallmarks of the American Puritan. The only way to be sure was to be unsure.

Morgan starts it off with the Pilgrims who came over from the wicked Old World so they could start bossing around anyone available in the New World (including the natives). He argues that without the corruptness of England, they discovered their own sins and their own corrupt nature. This laid a path for the rigid framework of the Scarlet Letter and the incessant work ethic which still defines the United States today. Although the Puritans stayed mostly within the New England area, they defined a view of the New World as one where improvements could be made with hard work. While they no doubt suffered with the first winters and the fears of a new environment, they still improved their life expectancy by up to twenty years. By contrast, the other early American settlers in Virginia were more likely to die in their first year. These same Puritans bequeathed a future nation with a concept of fear that has never gone away. Morgan also sees them as a little too full of themselves. Before leaving England they had made a nuisance of themselves by demanding more sermons than the church was willing to offer.

Where Morgan really makes a hit is his review of the southern American economies. Initially the workers in the South were indentured servants, the poor and the criminal of England, who were cheap enough for the South to build tremendous profits. But in time, slavery became more profitable so that the serfs became the poor white underclass who became too expensive for southern agriculture. The ruling plantation class took advantage of this by instilling the belief of white superiority in the local communities, thus allowing the dispossessed poor whites to pour their fears and anger on to the enslaved blacks.

Oppressors commonly blame the oppressed, and if they or their descendants feel guilt they blame that too on the oppressed.

This leads to the concept of "guilt", which continues to influence the American way of life centuries later. Morgan believed that while there is much feeling of guilt by current Americans, there is little respect for the descendants of slaves. The South instituted a labor system that essentially was a form of a lottery and the winners held all the lucky numbers. This bred a feeling of superiority which bred a feeling of guilt. We still see it today, especially with the hypocrisy of gentrification, or as I like to call it, the Slat Fence Mindset whereby young millennials take over old neighborhoods by kicking out the African American residents and then have the audacity to place anti-racist placards in their front yards (highlighted, of course, by slat fences). There is a HUGE difference between guilt and respect and until America can get to that point, there will never be an equal society for Black Lives.

...they have never quite been confided in as fellow subjects, have never quite been forgiven for the embarrassment of their ancestors' sufferings.

While some of the later essays in the book felt a bit boring, Morgan's writings on the Puritans and the slavery system were great, couldn't stop reading. He also wrote a lovely sentence which is very relevant in today's mind-boggling political environment.

The representative who loses touch with his constituents loses office, but the representative who sacrifices the national trust to local prejudice or to the changing winds of popular opinion betrays all the people for some of the people.

Hallelujah.

Book Season = Autumn (walking the tightrope)

[Tuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

a perfect model of condensing american history books into 5 page reviews/essays. edmund morgan can write like a mf and synthesize and critique what he reads with what he knows/believes into funny, informative and easy-to-understand short essays about early america, comparing and contrasting new england, new dutch, and southern colonies in all kinds of ways, from religion to sex. a must have reference for any serious history readers. i cannot quite figure out if these were all nyrb book reviews or just reviews he has written over the years, but he deserves a gold star for being such a kick ass thinker.

[Edgar Raines · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Genuine Article is a collection of essay reviews that Edmund S. Morgan published in the New York Review of Books beginning in the 1970s into the early years of the 21st century. Morgan was already regarded as one of the leading historians of the American colonial period and Revolutionary War at the time he wrote the first of these essays, which of course his why the editors of the Review selected him. His work since has only enhanced that reputation. He groups the essays topically rather than chronologically into four categories: "New Englanders," "Southerners," "Revolutionaries," and the shortest "Questions of Culture." In the process he comments on some of the most important books in colonial and revolutionary war history published during this period and reveals Catholic interests, probing intellect, and a very appealing modesty. He can raise hard questions about books in very measured and gentle prose. Taken collectively, these essays are hardly an overview of the field---at the very least they exclude all mention of his own work---but they offer searching examination of some very important books. My favorite essays include "The First Great American" [John Winthrop], "The Big American Crime" [on slavery], "A Loyal Un-American" [Thomas Hutchinson], "Secrets of Benjamin Franklin," "The Great Political Fiction," [on the House of Commons debate on the Petition of Right, the Continental Congress, the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, and the first federal elections], "The Second American Revolution" [on Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution], and "Who's Really Who." The last, a review of the 24 volumes of the American National Biography contrasted with its 20 volume predecessor, the Dictionary of American Biography written with the assistance of Morgan's wife Marie, is a masterpiece of thoughtful concision and a genuine tour de' force. I highly recommend this book.

[Matt Bender · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are ostensibly book reviews that evaluate academics arguments about pre-revolutionary America. Morgan’s is of course a famous scholar himself and unlike most historical scholarship these essays are engaging, thought provoking and nuanced, and extremely well written. Morgan evaluates and contextualices the authors he critiques in a way that is always searching for implications and evaluating others’ analytical approach.

What the reader gets is a page turning and intellectual look at the community and institutional structure of pre-revolutionary society. This is valuable because it shows the foundational concerns of the Revolutionary generation and by implication how they approached constructing a government. As someone who is deeply engaged in constitutional interpretation and scholarship, this book is also practically useful.

Morgan’s essays are usually high level and introduce ideas about the social norms, neurosis, and lives realities of the Colonial era. For example, the nature of colonial governors meant they had more control in the 18th century nominally than in reality as a distant and somewhat devolved representative of an English King. On the other hand, we get detailed accounts of Cotton Mother’s spiritual quirks and defiance of norms to inoculate his family from smallpox.

The section on NE and the Puritan communities and their approach to social cohesion in a very dogmatic way was may favorite part. I especially enjoyed the approach to punishment—that a person who confesses is absolved of any crime because of such a firm belief in inherent sin. Morgan takes these theological inconsistencies to a literal degree as the Puritans did to show a unique theological, political, and criminal justice perspective. In these opening essays we also get great examples of how witchcraft was a perceived reality of life and use to enforce social norms, how the Puritan testimony was arguably a coping skill or how sex before marriage worked (lots of that apparently).

The essays on the South are not as inspired, although the idea of a negotiated relationship between slaves and whites is explored with nuance and it is stunning to learn about the death rate. Puritan life expectancy significantly increased so grandparents became uniquely involved in life while for first white southerners the life expectancy was 45 years or so and the mortality rate about 50%—or in other words the death rate of the first wave on d-day. The information asymmetry from what we know about present day migration (migration should be more common except for social cohesion and risk aversion) would be interesting research and probably exists since these essays were written.

One argument this is worked pushed back on is that American government had a unique view of the separation of church and state because it the first colonists were religious refugees. Morgan swipes this idea away by showing communities were still so concerned about other dogma’s that they didn’t want theocratic rule on a large level either.

Morgan has a theme of showing how these experiences and cultural quirks weaves together a meaningful set of checks and balances that may let the United States continue its gradual goal of being better—but that this only works if there is a consent based society with agency to be a Democratic or institutional check.

In the end, this is an exceptional set of short essays that surveys several generations of proto-Americans that is often witty and extremely incisive (and a bit too clinical and insensitive on how some subjects are introduced). Morgan occasionally uses the authors who are the nominal subjects of his reviews as strawmen to talk about his own theories but most often the works critiqued are deeply explored in a way that would be hard not to like and lead most readers to a more informed and nuanced view on colonial history and how it informs the current US government.

[Billhotto · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of book reviews by a preeminent historian of early American history. These were published in The New York Review of Books, which encourages reviewers to expound on the book's material. The cumulative result is a brief but informative look at the reviewed books subject matter, at Morgan's views and at the state of American history in the late 20th century (the reviews are from the late 1970's to 2002.)
The reviews are divided into sections dealing with the Puritans, the South, and the Revolution. There is much more documentation from New England prior to the 19th century than from the South. The Puritans were given to much introspection, Southerners were more inclined to practical matters. Another reason for Southern reticence was their desire to avoid the embarrassment of discussing slavery. The result was that the Puritan and New England experience became embedded early on as the major strain in the American story. This was altered after the Civil War by Southern apologists, Western myth makers and Progressive debunkers. However, the idea of "a city on a hill" remains basic to our understanding of ourselves.
Morgan was a student of Perry Miller, the historian who in his "The New England Mind" restored the Puritan's intellectual reputation. Although an atheist himself, Miller argued that the beliefs and arguments of men like John Winthrop and Cotton Mather should be taken seriously and at face value. In the 1960's Bernard Bailyn did the same for the Revolutionary generation, as he refuted Progressive historians like Charles Beard, for whom the Founders rebelled for purely economic reasons. Morgan argues that there was a genuine constitutional argument, not understood by England, that led to the Revolution. The most difficult task of the historian is to perceive history in the context of the actors, yet relate them in terms relevant to his contemporaries. Morgan points out that a listing of George Washington's accomplishments cannot explain the awe that his contemporaries held him in. It may be fun to debunk "the marble man" by today's standards, but it cannot be denied that even men who disagreed with him, thought him special.

[Marvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a collection of book reviews from The New York Review of Books (which is unusually generous in allowing long reviews) by one of the preeminent historians of early America from the last third of the 20th century, someone I admire and whose work heavily influenced my own doctoral dissertation. But much of it feels a little quaint in the 21st century. And Morgan, here, is something of a Johnny One-Note. Bear with me as I tell what at first will appear to be an unrelated anecdote. While in grad school at the University of Chicago, I seized an opportunity to take a class co-taught by the eminent religion scholar Mircea Eliade, a readings class covering the classic works in the history of religions (also known as comparative religion). His assessment of nearly every book was, essentially, “It’s good as far as it goes, but it just doesn’t take myth seriously enough.” (I had a similarly disappointing experience in a class taught by John Hope Franklin.) Morgan does something very similar here. He is, at times, gracious in acknowledging the contributions of social history, but he cannot pass up the opportunity to note how much more fruitful it is to rely on documents that tell us explicitly what people in the era under consideration were thinking. In the first section, nearly every review includes a defense of his mentor, Perry Miller. In later sections, even when reviewing books of social history, and even when he appreciates their contribution, he complains that they fail to take the articulated ideas of the time and place seriously enough. Now I believe in the importance of ideas for shaping history--my own dissertation, after all, focused mostly on the ideas of elites of the revolutionary era--but I don’t think every author needs to do that in every book; we can all learn from each others’ differing interests and methods. He’s also a champion of taking people at their word unless compelling evidence indicates that we shouldn’t. In this regard, the essay on Benjamin Franklin, the longest in the book at 22 pages, is brilliant. I also especially appreciated the penultimate review of a Library of America collection of American sermons from the Pilgrims to Martin Luther King Jr.

[Robert Earle · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Genuine Article: A Historian Looks at Early America by Edmund Morgan is one of the best books I I have read about the origins of the United States. This is a compilation of essays published in the New York Review of Books over a period of decades. Morgan is a superb writer. He has enormous intellectual range. He is incisive. And he is bold.

He offers a very close reading of the Puritans. He writes the best essay I have ever read about the origins of racism in white guilt for having enslaved Africans. He refers to anthropologists and makes use of their thought with elegance (Marcel Mauss, Victor Turner). He paints a picture of the corrupt British parliament under George III. He skewers George III knowledgeably and terminally. He dissects the alienation the colonists felt for being taxed without representation, and he meditates incisively about the useful fiction that sustains the notion of representation. Fiction, he would have us understand, is the most useful way of generating and sustaining the consent of the governed; it is the reality we agree upon; it is the source of trust. No one believed in the divine right of kings, for example, except a few dimwit kings. Think Charles I.

This is a used bookshop book, but you can get it in Kindle format, and I advise you to do so.

[Andrew Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a compilation of essays that Morgan wrote from 1974-2002 in the New York Review of Books. He took the occasion to write these essays as he was reviewing new history books that appeared in the literary journal. The articles, except for two, all concern books in the early national or colonial history of the United States. Morgan was a student of Perry Miller at Harvard in the 1930s and he retained the influence Miller gave him on intellectual history. Morgan makes ideas come alive in these essays because it is those ideas which compel people to action. The old saw that everything in politics is local is true but it is the formulation of ideas in the lifestyles and wallets of people that make them hue to one ideology or another. In this day and time, we must be careful to separate ideas that benefit the country at large from ideas that ideas that only benefit a person's sense of themselves. In other words, we should be able to think of our country as a whole with all of its people as an integral part of the nation. Too many times, people confuse "me" with "we". Morgan's essays are a corrective to that and we should all be thankful for his diligence in truth finding in history.

[Paul Quick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays written by prominent historians along with their critical review by one of America's most famous historians Edmund Morgan. This is very challenging both for the Author and Reader.

I especially enjoyed his insight into the South which like England had its own Aristocracy (Planters, Plantation Owners) versus the North and West whose people were much more mobile in class, wealth. It was as if the last vestiges of England in USA were being defeated in our Civil War.

The books name refers to an essay on George Washington (Genuine Article) where the insight is that his greatest skill is an uncanny ability to perform all tasks in such a way to establish his legacy. He was not a great military man nor political; neither was he amazing intellectual nor writer but he was a man possessing all of the foremention as solid skills but his timing to employ those skills to maximum legacy effect was extraordinary.

This is easily a four star plus book. Not for the light reader in history but excellent for the Reader who loves history and craves deeper insight.

[NanceM · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the witches section, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington the most interesting. I only got through this book by having to re-read 50% of the sentences due to the verbiage. This book is mostly analyzing the way history has been documented through subjective and objective historians with extremely very little documented personal accountings and will make assumptions where facts are missing to make some sense from events. Retrieving history is complex and sometimes even historians trying their best to provide an accurate accounting of the past can show different perceptions of the same story.

[Neil Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is a collection of his reviews in The New York Review of Books, which is one of its strong points. The essays are fairly short, generally around ten pages, and are focused on one or more works by other historians. He summarizes the book or books and then gives his own assessment. Morgan is a deep thinker and a clear writer. I found myself thinking very differently about the early history of America by the time I was done. Who know that Benjamin Franklin, who preached about hard work and thrift, retired at 42 and lived on his savings the remaining 40 years of his life?

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author, Edmund Morgan, obviously knows his history. And is as expert an historian I've read when it comes to knowing previous historical works and what they covered. So in that sense, this book is more for historians than the layman. It also repeatedly professes his admiration of one of Morgan's former professors and comrades, Perry Miller, who I am not familiar with. Some good information and essays abound, but most of it is above my area of knowledge.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book collects reviews published in the New York Review over twenty or thirty years. Morgan is an excellent book reviewer. He places the book in a larger background--both the historical period covered and the academic trends that affect it. He finds something new or interesting or novel in every book, even those he doesn't ultimately like much.

[Breck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ended up being a great book. I sort of skipped around and read the chapters that sounded most interesting as it was a collection of essays. Morgan is sort of the authority on the American Revolution, so it was interesting to hear his take. A good refresher on Early America, specifically John Winthrop, Salem Witch Trials, Puritans, Ben Franklin, Madison & Jefferson, and Washington.

[Michael Hattem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ultimately a charming compendium of reviews written by Morgan, one of the most important early American historians of the 20th century. Morgan has always had a knack for distilling complex ideas in rather straightforward language and the same holds true in his reviews for the New York Review of Books.

[Priscilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it is strange to read historians reviewing other history books or essays, I found it interesting how the author would critique others' works. It certainly made me realize that history is somewhat subjective and makes me wonder how much historical knowledge that we hold as truth is based upon the "coloring" of the particular author.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Its pretty hard to go wrong with a book that compiles NYRB articles on pre-revolutionary America. That said, I find that some of Morgan's reviews provide less background information and/or analysis of the subject matter than the strongest of NYRB efforts.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

The chapters on Ben Franklin and George Washington were the best.