The historiography of seventeenth-century Puritanism in Massachusetts has evolved into a large field of historical study and debate among Early American historians of the past fifty years.  This evolution of American Puritan Studies has been made possible by the work of the late Perry Miller, an early American historian and Harvard Professor who wrote several works on the Massachusetts Puritans from the mid 1930s to the 1950s.[1]  After his death, most especially during the late 1960s and early 1970s, many historians studied and critiqued Miller’s work, as well as took the opportunity to draw their own unique conclusions.  However, since Miller’s death, his works have become legendary in the field of American Puritan Studies and have influenced much of the study in this area.  The purpose of this historiography is to analyze the framework that Miller established, to show the criticism and support his works have received since his death, and to examine the importance of Miller’s scholarship in today’s field of Early American history.

Miller’s study of Puritanism was unique, especially since he was an atheist and had focused most of his academic career in the study of literature.[2]  However, Miller published his first major study of American Puritanism in 1933 with Orthodoxy in Massachusetts.  In this work, he described the Puritans as having an “orthodox” coherent religious view and determination, and he described these colonists as using their ideas as a utility of their society.[3]  The next major work that Miller published was The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939).  This work, according to Robert Allen Skotheim, “was an exceedingly detailed study of the content and structure of ideas, with almost no attention given to the environment from which the ideas came.”[4]  Miller followed his first volume of New England Mind with a second volume in 1953, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province.  Finally in 1956, Miller published the last of his four major works in the study of American Puritanism, Errand into the Wilderness.  Though Miller authored many books and articles relating to Puritan studies or other areas of American history and literature, these four works form the basis of Miller’s framework of study.

Miller’s work and study of the highly religious colonists of Massachusetts in the seventeenth century was not only unique for an ardent atheist, but also significant because no other historian before him had put such a noteable effort into studying the nature of this colony and religious group.  The most recent historian to address the Puritans in Massachusetts was a Harvard colleague of his, Samuel Morrison, who wrote The Founding of Harvard College.[5]  According to Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, “no one before [Perry Miller had] made a study of [the] history of the Puritan state in Massachusetts as an experiment in a unique and interesting civilization.”[6]

The framework that Miller established in his four major works was built around the tenants of the Puritan religion, their decision to move to North America as a mission from God, the coherence of their ideas and religious thinking and finally, the causes of decline in the Puritan colony (known to historians as the declension theory).  First, Miller describes the American Puritans as Calvinists, however, their religious belief was structured philosophically, which, for Miller, makes them America’s first philosophers.[7]  Second, and more important to this analysis, he described Puritans as determined to create their colony in Massachusetts as a mission from God and to build it in such a way that the rest of the western world would learn from their example.  He described this concept by examining Governor John Winthrop’s famous speech “A Model of Christian Charity” given in 1630 aboard the Arbella where Puritans vowed to build a “city upon a hill” for the world to see.[8]  He also described “The Great Migration of 1630” as being a result of economic and political reasons, however, the “religious aspirations of the early colonists gave them the impetus to migrate to New England.”[9]

Third, he described the first generation of Puritans in Massachusetts as having a coherence of thought and religious piety throughout the colony.  Miller’s Puritans came to New England with an idea of how to build their society, then accomplished the plan and by doing so, achieved a type of spiritual utopia.[10]  Furthermore, they “were ‘intoxicated’ with God; to them, religion or belief was a matter of ‘emotion,’ ‘ecstasy,’ or ‘aesthetic vision.’”[11]  Finally, he addresses the question of the declension in his four major works, examining why such a coherent religious community did not survive through the second and third generations.  According to Miller, the second and third generations of Puritans were troubled because of the lack of economic (agricultural) success and the lack of unity their generation suffered compared to that of their “fathers.”[12]  He evidenced this argument by looking at several “jeremiads,” the literature of these lamenting Puritans after 1660, in which most of it “dwells on the theme of declension and apostasy.”[13]  The term declension was first used by Miller to “refer to a waning of spiritual commitment to the survival of particular ideas and a particular social order” by these children of the first Massachusetts Puritans.[14]

After Miller’s death, and in some cases before, the main theses of his four major works, as described above, became subject to close scrutiny and criticism by several early American historians.  Before addressing the historiography of American Puritan Studies in the 1960s through the present day, two major historians prevail as the first and most significant historians to provide early criticism of the works of Miller – Edmund Morgan and Sacvan Bercovitch.  First, Edmund Morgan is important to this historiography because not only was he one of the first to examine Miller’s works and write his own history of American Puritanism, but he unlike other critics, was a student of Miller’s at Harvard University.[15]  One of Edmund Morgan’s most influential books was published shortly after Miller’s Errand in 1956, The Puritan Dilemma.[16]  In this text, Morgan “connected the struggles of the Puritans to a universal theme, announced in the title.”[17]  He then used this theme to show several “difficulties” in Miller’s conclusions.[18]  In addition, Morgan has criticized his former tutor, specifically in a 1993 article, by stating that the “profundity of [his] research is equaled only with the absurdity of his conclusions.”[19]  Sacvan Bercovitch, however, directly challenged Miller’s work in the 1960s, most especially in his article “Typology in Puritan New England – The Williams-Cotton Controversy Reassessed.”[20]  Although, several historians have recognized that Bercovitch’s criticism of Miller was based on a misreading of his work, the conclusions that Bercovitch made in error provided American Puritan Studies with new ideas not yet explored in this field.[21]  According to Arne Delfs, “Bercovitch played a crucial role in the literary reconstruction of American Puritan Studies.  His typological revision of Miller’s ‘great synthetic work’ served to defend its coherent structure against social historians’ particularizations and, even, against Miller’s own latter-day despair.”[22]

Miller’s works, as well as the early scrutiny of his theses, namely by Morgan and Bercovitch as well as others, opened the path to a new field of American historical study beginning, or to be more descriptive, exploding, in the 1960s.  It was not until after Miller’s death in 1963 that the field of “American Puritan Studies” began to take shape.  According to historian Michael McGiffert, “Puritanism has become the area of American historical work where the greatest sophistication are doing impressive work – and in diverse ways.”[23]  It was during the 1960s that scholarship in American Puritan studies began to “generate its own energy” and re-evaluate Miller’s scholarship by looking at the Puritans as not one synthetic intellectual community as he had stated, but as a diverse and changing society.[24]  One significant factor to Puritan historiography during this time was the creation of the Early American Literature periodical in 1966 that “became one of the most important of the journals that promote American Puritan studies.”[25] 

An important source in studying Puritan historiography in the 1960s is Michael McGiffert’s article “American Puritan Studies in the 1960s” appearing in the William and Mary Quarterly in January 1970.  McGiffert criticizes Miller’s sources and reports how historians have divided on how to interpret and appreciate his work, whether to accept his “monolithic” intellectual community thesis or to criticize him for leaving out social and economic factors of Puritan society.  McGiffert also notes that many historians reveal that Miller left out several important primary sources in his study.[26]  The significance of the 1960s scholarship is that historians divided into two groups of study: intellectual and social.[27]  Intellectual historians followed Miller’s works closely as well as his theses of a coherent Puritan intellectual community and claimed that he set up his thesis of intellectual history and purposely left out the social and economic factors.[28]  Although some of these “intellectual” historians support Miller’s concept and framework for the study of ideas, they do explore other ideas that he did not address.  The second emerging group of historians in the 1960s are the “social” historians who criticize Miller’s works, especially The New England Mind, because his theory of the Puritan “mind” does not apply to all Puritans, but only applies to an “articulated educated few.”[29]  Furthermore, Delfs describes this group as influenced by the Annales School of history[30] and as attacking “Miller’s intellectual history of the New England Mind on the ground that he had been ‘so swayed by the Puritans’ rhetoric that he lost track of New England realities.’”[31]  McGiffert also describes the effect that Miller had on 1960s early American history and credits Miller with setting up the structure in which to study Puritanism in Massachusetts:

Historiographers have begun to assess Miller’s place in the traditions of American history, the evolution of American thought, and the making of American myth, and one critic has boldly suggested that “Miller was primarily an artist whose work, to be rightly appreciated, must be approached from the vantage point of art, not that of historical science…”[32]

Historian David Hall followed McGiffert’s article seventeen years later with “On Common Ground: The Coherence of American Puritan Studies” where he argued that Puritan historiography in the 1970s and early 1980s had lessened the divide between McGiffert’s social and intellectual historians and two new groups, though not always opposed to each other, emerged: literary historians and seminary historians.[33]  Hall described literary historians as looking at “Puritan imagination” through primary source documents.[34]  These historians viewed Puritan writers as reflecting the nature of their community by the use of “physical, earthly and often sensual imagery” in their writings.[35]  The most significant aspect of study for these historians is language and the “role and nature of conversation in Puritan spirituality.”[36]  These historians “affirm that people construct world views that give meaning to their actions, and that language (in the broadest sense) is how they signify these meanings.”[37]  Hall also described the significance of this group in the historiography of 1980s scholarship by the awareness of these scholars to the structure and framework of what the Puritans wrote.[38]  The second group that Hall identified was the “seminary historians” who studied the relationship of Puritanism and Calvinism and the nature of American Puritan religious thought.[39]  These historians agreed with Miller that “Puritans were Calvinists, but with a difference: they were intent on rationalizing an ‘arbitrary’ and deterministic God, they introduced contract, and therefore conditionality, into his relationship with man.”[40]  The significance of these two groups emerging in the 1970s and 1980s is that both groups agreed “that early New Englanders were believing Christians who held certain ideas in common” and both groups “presumed consensus.”[41]  In addition, both groups agreed on the significance of language and writing in order to adequately study Puritanism in America.[42]

Two major themes that historians continue to address during this period of scholarship as was addressed in the 1960s, according to Hall as well as others, is the question of Miller’s “monolithic” society concept and the causes of declension.  These historians split on whether to attack Miller or to appreciate his work and expand from the framework that he set up.  These historians do look at the evidence that he used and the other evidence that exists.  One historian criticized his monolithic intellectual community thesis because of his lack of evidence, stating that the only critical evidence that Miller uses is Winthrop’s “Model of Christian Charity” speech.[43]  Miller is seen as ignoring social and economic history altogether and structuring his history of ideas with no mention of why these ideas emerged.[44]  Some historians agree with this concept, David Hall included, and depart from his “monolithic” community thesis altogether and describe a pluralistic society that evolved from the founding of the colony.[45] 

Criticisms of Miller in the 1970s and 1980s included “revisionist” criticism, according to Francis Butts.[46]  Revisionist historians focused on the aspects of his “monolithic” idea and declension and sought to explain how he arrived at the conclusions that he did.[47]  However, Butts does criticize revisionist scholarship of Miller because it fails “to appreciate [his] philosophical assumptions.”[48]  Butts’ primary criticism of these historians is that they have taken their own philosophies and applied them to Miller, therefore misunderstanding his own philosophy of study and therefore, misunderstanding his theses.[49]  Therefore, much of the historiography of Puritan studies since Miller’s death has stereotyped and over analyzed his work, making it difficult, as Butts perceives it, to actually understand the significance of the framework that he established.[50]  The significance of the criticism of Miller since his death is that it has sparked appreciation for his work.  Despite the attacks on his theses, groups of historians have started to appreciate the passion that Miller put into his work as well as the framework he established.[51]  Therefore, the historiography of Puritan studies to the 1980s has established Perry Miller as “a figure in the cultural and intellectual history of mid-twentieth century America.”[52]

Throughout the forty years since Miller’s death, many historians have addressed the seventeenth century Puritans in Massachusetts using his framework, whether following his structure or criticizing his work entirely.  However, the phenomenon of Perry Miller, or as some have called “myth,” is that through his four major works, he created an entire field of historical study.  According to Miller’s student, Edmund Morgan, his “greatness” is that he took what he read from the Puritans and created a synthesis of information and a framework of intellectual history.  Morgan continues to suggest that it is still possible for future historians to appreciate Miller’s intellectual history while continuing to address the social, economic and political history that he “brushed off” or “ignored.”[53]  In addition, as another historian wrote in 1995, “despite decades of revisionist work, Miller’s writings still dominate American Puritan studies, adding their considerable weight to the burden of anyone who wishes to engage the most recent scholarship in the field.”[54]

The past forty years have provided multiple criticisms and supportive arguments of Miller’s work in Puritan studies, as well as providing for the emergence of different schools of thought in this area.  This field of study would not have developed as it did without Miller’s work.  According to Skotheim, his “emphasis upon Puritan intellect as well as piety opened up a new field, or rather one never before so thoroughly cultivated, in American history of ideas.”[55]  However, his effect on American Puritan studies and the wealth of criticism begs the question of whether historians today should either bury Miller or whether they should still use his framework in new historical studies of American Puritanism.  Though historians today disagree on whether to bury Miller or not, from this analysis, I conclude that his works are still valid in today’s scholarship.  The structures of intellectual study that he established, especially with the concepts of the Puritans’ mission, establishment of a religious intellectual community and the reasons for declension, are still useful in studying Puritanism because they provide a framework in which to make further conclusions about the Massachusetts colonists.  The significance of Perry Miller is that he created the field of American Puritan Studies through his four major works and his works still have an effect on the historiography of this field today as they did in the 1960s, after his death.  Without Miller and the reactions to his works, the Massachusetts Puritans might have never received the great amount of attention of early American historians and would have remained an insignificant “blip on the historical screen.”

WORKS CITED

Billington, Ray Allen, ed.  The Reinterpretation of Early American History.  San Marino, California: The Huntington Library, 1966.  286 pp.

Bozeman, Theodore Dwight.  “The Puritans’ ‘Errand into the Wilderness’ Reconsidered.”  New England Quarterly 59:2 (1986): 231 – 251.

Butts, Francis T.  “The Myth of Perry Miller.”  American Historical Review 87:3 (1982): 665 – 694.

Courtwright, David T.  “Fifty Years of American History: An Interview with Edmund S. Morgan.”  William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. 44:2 (April 1987): 336 – 369.

Crilly, Mark W.  “John Winthrop: Magistrate, Minister, Merchant.”  The Midwest Quarterly 40:2 (Winter 1999): 187.

Delfs, Arne.  “Anxieties of Influence: Perry Miller and Sacvan Bercovitch.”  New England Quarterly 70:4 (December 1997): 601 – 615.

Hall, David D.  “A Reader’s Guide to The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century.”  American Quarterly 34:1 (Spring 1982): 31 – 36.

Hall, David D.  “On Common Ground: The Coherence of American Puritan Studies.”  William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. 44:2 (April 1987): 193-229.

McGiffert, Michael.  “American Puritan Studies in the 1960s.”  William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. 27:1 (January 1970): 36 – 67.

Miller, Perry.  “Errand Into The Wilderness.”  William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. 10:1 (January 1953): 3 – 32.

Miller, Perry.  The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century.  New York: Macmillan Publishers, 1939.

Morgan, Edmund S.  “An Address to the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, On the Occasion of its Centennial.”  New England Quarterly, 66:3 (1993): 335-364.

Morgan, Edmund S.  “The Historians of Early New England.” in The Reinterpretation of Early American History.  Edited by Ray Allen Billington.  San Marino, California: The Huntington Library, 1966.  pp. 41 – 64.

Morgan, Edmund S.  The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop.  Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1958.  224 pp.

Peterson, Mark A.  “From Founding Fathers to Old-Boy Networks: The Declension of Perry Miller’s Puritans.”  Reviews in American History 23:1 (March 1995): 13 – 19.

Pfitzer, Gregory M.  “Resurrecting the Fathers: The Revisionist Movement in American Studies Historiography.”  American Quarterly 43:1 (September 1991): 534 – 540.

Rutland, Robert Allen, ed.  Clio’s Favorites: Leading Historians of the United States: 1945 – 2000.  Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2000.  191 pp.

Skotheim, Robert Allen.  American Intellectual Histories and Historians.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966.  326 pp.

Sobczak, Margaret.  “Hoopes’s Symposium on Perry Miller.”  American Quarterly 34:1 (Spring 1982): 43 – 48.

Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson.  The Puritan Oligarchy: The Founding of American Civilization.  New York: Charles Scrubner’s Sons, 1970.  359 pp.

Wise, Gene.  “Implicit Irony in Perry Miller’s New England Mind.”  Journal of the History of Ideas 29:4 (October – December 1968): 579 – 600.

REFERENCES

These sources were used in the research for this historiography, however, were not directly cited in the text.

Brown, B. Katherine.  “The Controversy over the Franchise in Puritan Massachusetts, 1954 to 1974.”  William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. 33:2 (April 1976): 212 – 241.

Dunn, Richard S.  “John Winthrop Writes His Journal.”  William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. 41:2 (April 1984): 185 – 212.

Jennings, Francis. “Virgin Land and Savage People.”  American Quarterly 23:4 (October 1971): 519 – 541.

Jones, Howard Mumford and Bessie Zaban Jones.  The Many Voices of Boston: A Historical Anthology, 1630-1975.  Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1975.  447 pp.

Maclear, J. F.  “New England and the Fifth Monarchy: The Quest for the Millennium in Early American Puritanism.”  William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. 32:2 (January 1975): 223 – 260.

Miller, Perry.  Errand into the Wilderness.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956.

Miller, Perry.  The New England Mind: From Colony to Province.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953.

Miller, Perry.  Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630 – 1650.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933. 

Moran, Gerald F. and Maris A. Vinovskis.  “The Puritan Family and Religion: A Critical Reappraisal.”  William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. 39:1 (January 1982): 29 – 63.

† Reinitz, Richard.  “Perry Miller and Recent American Historiography.”  British Association for American Studies Bulletin 8 (1964): 27 – 35.

Rutman, Darrett B.  Winthrop’s Boston: Portrait of a Puritan Town 1630-1649.  Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1965.  324 pp.

Scobey, David M.  “Revising the Errand: New England’s Ways and the Puritan Sense of the Past.”  William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. 41:1 (January 1984): 3 – 31.

Wall, Jr., Robert Emmet.  Massachusetts Bay: The Crucial Decade, 1640-1650.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972.  292 pp.

Weber, Donald.  “Historicizing the Errand.”  American Literary History 2:1 (1990): 101 – 118.