Edmund Morgan

Notable Quotes



In 1595, by order of the Privy Council, the English armed services abandoned the longbow and fought with muskets for the next two centuries and more. Nobody is sure why.

From Edmund Morgan

Liberty had many friends in the eighteenth century.

From Edmund Morgan

Both European and American historians have done away with any conceptual limits on what in the past needs and deserves investigating. The result, among other things, has been a flood of works on gender history, black history, and ethnic history of all kinds.

From Edmund Morgan

Americans, perhaps more than most people, have pondered the question of who they are and what their country is.

From Edmund Morgan

The American world had - seemingly, at least - become a Jeffersonian world by the election of 1800, which placed Thomas Jefferson in the presidency. Jefferson had been Hamilton's rival in the new government's early years, and Hamilton has figured in the public memory almost as much for that rivalry as for his positive achievements.

From Edmund Morgan

What was the American Revolution? The people who joined to carry it out had different views of what they had done.

From Edmund Morgan

Few words in any language carry such a load of meaning as 'honor.' It is an old word, unchanged even in its spelling from classical Latin to modern English. Spoken or written, it does not seem to require much explanation; most people think they know what it means.

From Edmund Morgan

No one escapes from the past without bearing some of its burdens.

From Edmund Morgan

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the Ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.

From Edmund Morgan

Between 1776 and 1789, Americans replaced a government over them with a government under them. They have worried ever since about keeping it under. Distrust of its powers has been more common and more visible than distrust of the imperial authority of England ever was before the Revolution.

From Edmund Morgan

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