Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

Renaissance of an Early American Poet (2000) is the only other recent full-length study of Morton. While there have been a smattering of journal articles and book chapters that focus on specific elements of Morton’s life, (notably Michael Zuckerman’s “Pilgrims in the Wilderness: Community, Modernity, and the Maypole at Merry Mount,” New England Quarterly (1977), 255–77), Mancall’s comprehensive book-length study is long overdue. Mancall’s publication is timely amid the ongoing 400th anniversaries, including that of Plymouth’s founding (2020), Morton’s first brief trip to New England (2022), and the settlement of Ma-re Mount (2024). As scholars continue to move away from the puritan New England narrative, Mancall’s message is clear: Morton’s vision for New England was one of several options on the table for building a “New” England in the seventeenth century.