Description
Book SynopsisThe title of this book by Perry Miller, a world-famous interpreter of the American past, nearly poses the question it has been his lifelong purpose to answer: What was the underlying aim of the first colonists in coming to America? Miller emphasizes the need for understanding the human sources from which the American mainstream has risen.
Trade ReviewProfessor Miller has assembled materials which would otherwise not be easily accessible and which, taken together, present new perspectives on the dominant Christian origin of American political doctrine and civilization. Beginning with the Puritans and their preoccupation with orthodoxy and continuing with the Quakers, the Congregationalists, Calvinists, and Unitarians, he interprets each from the point of view of its place in social and political change...Dominant figures such as Hooker, Jonathan Edwards, and Emerson are brought to life with understanding. The chapter on the various theories and prophecies on the end of the world brings the record up to the present. The author's impressive knowledge of the subject and his persistent research are evident throughout. * Library Journal *
Perry Miller has corrected the extreme revisionist historians who have overstressed the authoritarian and even totalitarian aspects of Puritan political doctrine. Miller corrects the balance by bringing out the inherent individualism of American Puritanism, its respect for private conscience, and even the revolutionary implications nurtured by Puritan doctrine...He has given us an analysis of the Puritan mind which is subtle and sophisticated, profound and humane, and revised in the light of the most recent scholarship. -- Richard B. Morris * New York Times Book Review *
Table of Contents1. Errand Into the Wilderness 2. Thomas Hooker and the Democracy of Connecticut 3. The Marrow of Puritan Divinity 4. Religion and Society in the Early Literature of Virginia 5. The Puritan State and Puritan Society 6. Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening 7. The Rhetoric of Sensation 8. From Edwards to Emerson 9. Nature and the National Ego 10. The End of the World Index
