The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution

"Edmund Morgan was a great stylist. He knew how to write accessible prose. I love the architecture of this book. He interlaces a chapter about politics, about what’s happening in Parliament and what the King is up to, with chapters about how ordinary Americans’ lives were transformed because of the decisions you read about in the previous chapter. This back and forth between high politics and local response is creative genius. The Stamp Act Crisis is a model for what great historical writing can be. When Morgan rose to prominence in the profession during the 1950s, World War II had just ended. There was a sense that America’s ideology of freedom and liberty propelled us to victory over an alien and evil ideology; many historians projected these feelings against communism. The intellectual environment of the time was oriented around the clash of ideological systems. There was a sense among Cold War historians that the American values of freedom and liberty were not only superior but had also been proved superior in competition with these other systems. That was the world Morgan came from. What I think Morgan meant was that many colonists felt England had been corrupted and that there was a desire for a more virtuous politics. Notions of freedom, liberty and rights became absolutely paramount in the story that historians of Morgan’s generation told. But, let’s be honest, when we talk about American ideas, we have to say: Whose ideas? We’re talking about what white, male Americans thought."