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

Apart from the intrinsic interest of the complex system of beliefs the Puritans carried with them, their lives give a clue to what it meant at the beginning to be American. And the level of scholarship dealing with them has reached a point where it can address the human condition itself.

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.

Edmund Morgan Quotes