Screwtape, an important official in his Satanic Majesty's
"Lowerarchy," in C. S. Lewis's little classic, said of
Puritanism:

". . . the value we have given to that word is one of the really
solid triumphs of the last hundred years. By it we rescue
annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and
sobriety of life."
-- The Screwtape Letters

A recent historian of Puritan Massachusetts concludes:

"No truthful historian will withhold from New England the
credit due her for her part in the creation and moulding of the
nation. . . . But most of the contributions were made after the
fall of the Puritan oligarchy, and the men to whom the chief
credit is due were not its supporters, but, on the contrary,
those who rebelled against it."

-- T. J. WERTENBAKER: The Puritan Oligarchy

An historian sympathetic to the Puritans disagrees:

". . . the story of the intellectual life of New England in the
seventeenth century is not merely that of a people bravely and
successfully endeavoring to keep up the standards of civiliza-
tion in the New World; it is one of the principal approaches
to the social and intellectual history of the United States."

-- SAMUEL E. MORISON: The Puritan Pronaos

A philosopher attempts a balanced judgment:

"The puritan's harsh insistence on the pre-eminent impor-
tance of salvation was suited to the exigencies of reform, or of
revolution, or of migration and settlement. . . . It was not so
good a gospel to live by over long periods of normal relaxa-
tion. Like all policies adapted to times of emergency, it cur-
tailed liberty and impoverished the content of life."

-- RALPH BARTON PERRY: Puritanism and Democracy

No doubt for many of us, as Longfellow said:

". . . The stern old puritanical character rises above the com-
mon level of life; it has a breezy air about its summits, but
they are bleak and forbidding."