The southern colonists were not preoccupied with their own historical significance and mostly did not bother even to make the records of births, marriages, and deaths that they required of themselves by law. Nor did they write accounts of what they were up to for the benefit of posterity.

The Puritans left behind so full a record of what they thought and did that scholars cannot resist the temptation to make the most of it.

The preoccupation of American historical and literary scholars with the New England Puritans must seem to outsiders like an obsession.

Edmund Morgan Quotes