RIP Edmund S. Morgan

I'm getting to this a bit late due to my current work schedule, but here's the New York Times obit for Edmund S. Morgan, one of the major lights in scholarship about 18th century America: Edmund S. Morgan, Historian Who Shed Light on the Puritans, Dies at 97.  That's a good run.  Morgan was a professed atheist who nevertheless acknowledged and studied the key role of religion in colonial America and the early Republic. Most critically, he took the ideas of the people of the past seriously, and looked at their own words and convictions in seeking to understand the motivation for their actions. As he is quoted by the Times as saying, "I argued that the American Revolution was really what the revolutionaries said it was." What a refreshing approach to looking at the people of the past!