"[2] He covered many topics, including Puritanism, political ideas, the American Revolution, slavery, historiography, family life, and numerous notables such as Benjamin Franklin.
Then, at the urging of the jurist and family friend Felix Frankfurter, Morgan began attending lectures at the London School of Economics.
Although a pacifist, Morgan became convinced after the fall of France in June 1940 that only military force could stop Hitler, and he withdrew his application for conscientious objector status.
[6] He was survived by two daughters—Penelope Aubin and Pamela Packard—from his first marriage; his second wife, Marie (née Carpenter) Caskey Morgan, a historian; six grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
[9] From Miller, Morgan learned to appreciate: The intellectual rigor and elegance of a system of ideas that made sense of human life in a way no longer palatable to most of us.
He left me with a habit of taking what people have said at face value unless I find compelling reasons to discount it... What Americans said from the beginning about taxation and just government deserved to be taken as seriously as the Puritans' ideas about God and man.
Morgan described the Puritan as "doing right in a world that does wrong...Caught between the ideals of God's Law and the practical needs of the people, John Winthrop walked a line few could tread.
"[13] In The Stamp Act Crisis (1953) and The Birth of the Republic (1956) Morgan rejected the Progressive interpretation of the American Revolution and its assumption that the rhetoric of the Patriots was mere claptrap.
[16]Morgan claimed that large Virginia plantation owners exerted an outsized influence on poorer white Virginians and their attitude toward the racial divide (color line) which made it possible for Virginian white men as a group to become more politically equal: ("Aristocrats could more safely preach equality in a slave society than in a free one").
"[20] As events evolved, however, the rising number of black slaves and the virtual end to the importation of indentured servants did stabilize Virginia society.
"[24] In 2002 Morgan published a surprise New York Times Bestseller, Benjamin Franklin, which dispels the myth of "a comfortable old gentleman staring out at the world over his half-glasses with benevolent comprehension of everything in it", revealing his true mental makeup.
[25]Massachusetts Institute of Technology American history professor Pauline Maier wrote: As a historian of colonial and revolutionary America, he was one of the giants of his generation, and a writer who could well have commanded a larger nonacademic audience than I suspect he received.
[5]Brooklyn College history professor Benjamin L. Carp describes Morgan as "one of the great historians of early America, with a formidable influence on academic and popular audiences.
[29] "He was out to define something essential in the American character and thereby create a new master narrative, and to achieve that end, he concocted a false portrayal of the colonists’ petitions," Hogeland wrote.
Morgan was awarded the 2000 National Humanities Medal by U.S. President Bill Clinton at a ceremony for "extraordinary contributions to American cultural life and thought."
In 2006 he received a special Pulitzer Prize "for a creative and deeply influential body of work as an American historian that spans the last half century.