Jump to content

Samuel Eliot Morison: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
m Typo and General fixing, replaced: the the → the using AWB
Longsun (talk | contribs)
212 edits
are you people on drugs?? times are hard, please act in a professional manor :)
Line 3: Line 3:
|born= July 9, 1887
|born= July 9, 1887
|died= May 15, 1976
|died= May 15, 1976
|placeofbirth= [[Boston]]
|placeofbirth= [[Boston, Massachusetts]], [[United States]]
|placeofdeath=
|placeofdeath=
|image= [[Image:Rear Adm. Samuel Eliot Morison USNR.jpg|200px]]
|image= [[Image:Rear Adm. Samuel Eliot Morison USNR.jpg|200px]]
|caption=Samuel Eliot Morison in his official U.S. Navy portrait
|caption=Samuel Eliot Morison in his official U.S. Navy portrait
Line 10: Line 10:
|allegiance= [[United States|United States of America]]
|allegiance= [[United States|United States of America]]
|branch=[[United States Navy]]
|branch=[[United States Navy]]
|serviceyears= 1942&ndash;1946 <!-- has WWI service too -- see Navy bio at external links -->
|serviceyears= 1942&ndash;1946
|rank= [[Rear Admiral]] (Reserve)
|rank= [[Rear Admiral]] (Reserve)
|commands=
|commands=
|unit=
|unit=
|battles= [[World War II]]
|battles= [[World War II]]
|awards=[[Legion of Merit]] with Combat Distinguishing Device "V"<br />
|awards=''See article''
Commander of the [[Order of the White Rose]] of Finland<br />
Vuelo Panamericano Medal, awarded by the Republic of Cuba (1943)<br />
Cavaliero Ufficiale of the Italian Order, ''[[Italian orders of merit|Ordine al Merito della Repubblica]]'' (1961)<br />
Commander of the Spanish Order of Isabella the Catholic (1963)
|laterwork=
|laterwork=
}}
}}


'''Samuel Eliot Morison''', [[Rear Admiral]], [[United States Naval Reserve]] (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian noted for works of history (especially maritime history) that were both authoritative and highly readable. A sailor as well as a scholar, Morison garnered numerous literary prizes, military honors, and national awards from both foreign countries and United States, including the [[Presidential Medal of Freedom]].
'''Samuel Eliot Morison''', [[Rear Admiral]], [[United States Naval Reserve]] (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an [[United States|American]] [[historian]], noted for producing works of maritime history that were both authoritative and highly readable. A [[sailor]] as well as a scholar, Morison garnered numerous honors, including two [[Pulitzer Prize]]s, two [[Bancroft Prize]]s, and the [[Presidential Medal of Freedom]]. His general history textbooks were both widely used{{Citation needed|date=July 2010}}, though criticized for their treatment of American slavery.
Some of his textbooks continue to be widely used,{{Citation needed|date=July 2010}} though his treatment of American slavery in early editions was criticised as minimizing its brutality.<ref name=Zimmerman/> <!-- not sure this is the best way to put it, but best I can think of for now. -->


==Life==
==Biography==
===Personal===
Born in Boston to John Holmes Morison (1856–1911) and Emily Marshall (Eliot) Morison (1857–1925), Morison was named for his grandfather [[Samuel Eliot]].
Samuel Eliot Morison was born in [[Boston, Massachusetts]] to John Holmes Morison (1856–1911) and Emily Marshall (Eliot) Morison (1857–1925) and named for his grandfather [[Samuel Eliot]]. His early childhood is charmingly described in a memoir of 1962, entitled "One Boy's Boston."


He married twice and was the father of four children by his first wife, Elizabeth S. Greene. (One of these children, Emily Morison Beck became the editor of ''[[Bartlett's Familiar Quotations]]''.) After his wife Elizabeth's death in 1945, in 1949 he married a Baltimore widow, Priscilla Barton. Morison again became a widower in 1973.
Typically for a [[Boston Brahmin#Eliot|Boston Brahmin]], he attended [[Noble and Greenough School]] (1897–1901) and [[St. Paul's School (Concord, New Hampshire)|St. Paul's]] (1901–03), then earned his AB (1908) from Harvard, where he was a member of the [[Phoenix S.K. Club]].


Morison died on May 15, 1976 of a stroke at the age of 88, and his ashes are buried at Northeast Harbor, Maine.
After studying at the [[École Libre des Sciences Politiques]] (1908–1909) Morison returned to Harvard, earning his Ph.D. in 1912. He became an instructor in history at [[University of California, Berkeley|UC Berkeley]], then in 1915 again returned to Harvard, where he served in the same capacity. After spending 1922–25 at [[Oxford University|Oxford]] as Harmsworth Professor of American History, he was appointed a full professor at Harvard in 1925, then Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History in 1941. He retired from Harvard in 1955.


His grandson Michael Noyes Morison was known as "Franklin D. Churchill," storyline president of the [[Millennium Wrestling Federation]]. He died in June 2006.
With Elizabeth S. Greene, his first wife, he had four children (one of whom, Emily Morison Beck, became editor of ''[[Bartlett's Familiar Quotations]]'').<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/books/31BECK.html Douglas Martin, "Emily Morison Beck, 88, Who Edited Bartlett's Quotations, Dies"], ''New York Times'', 31 Mar 2004.</ref><!--too lazy to format this now-->
Elizabeth died in 1945, and in 1949 Morison married Baltimore widow Priscilla Barton, who died in 1973. Morison himself died of a stroke on May 15, 1976. His ashes are buried at Northeast Harbor, Maine.
<!--much on military service still needed, possibly move major works WWII and history text here-->


===Academic career===
Morison wrote or co-wrote numerous works on history (especially military history) and related subjects.{{Vague|date=January 2011}} In ''History as a Literary Art: An Appeal to Young Historians'' (1946) he urged that vivid writing springs from the synergy of experience and research:{{Citation needed|date=January 2011}} {{quote|American historians, in their eagerness to present facts and their laudable concern to tell the truth, have neglected the literary aspects of their craft. They have forgotten that there is an art of writing history.}} Many of his best works were written after his official retirement from Harvard, and many continue to be reissued.{{Citation needed|date=January 2011}}
His schooling was typical for a member of a [[Boston Brahmin#Eliot|Boston Brahmin]] family: he attended [[Noble and Greenough School]] (1897–1901) and [[St. Paul's School (Concord, New Hampshire)|St. Paul's]] (1901–03) before enrolling at [[Harvard University|Harvard]], where he would remain for much of his academic life.


Morison earned his [[Bachelor of Arts|AB]] from Harvard, where he was a member of the [[Phoenix S.K. Club]], in 1908, studied at the [[École Libre des Sciences Politiques]] in Paris (1908–1909), and returned to Harvard where he obtained his [[Doctor of Philosophy|Ph.D.]] in 1912. His doctoral thesis, ''The Life and Letters of [[Harrison Gray Otis (lawyer)|Harrison Gray Otis]]'', became Morison's first book.
Morison enjoyed considerable recognition during his lifetime, receiving two [[Pulitzer Prize|Pulitzer]] and two [[Bancroft Prize]]s, as well as the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]]' Emerson-Thoreau Medal (1961), a Gold Medal from the [[American Academy of Arts and Letters]] (1962), the [[Balzan Prize]] (1962), and numerous honorary degrees, military awards, and honors from foreign nations.<ref>[http://www.nndb.com/honors/020/000111684/ list of International Balzan Foundation prize winners]</ref><!--check against this list--> In presenting him with the [[Presidential Medal of Freedom]] in 1964, US President [[Lyndon Johnson]] declared of Morison: {{quote|Scholar and sailor, this amphibious historian has combined a life of action and literary craftsmanship to lead two generations of Americans on countless voyages of discovery.<ref>[http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=26496 American Presidency Project] - Remarks by Lyndon B. Johnson, Medal of Freedom Award to Morison and others 14 Sep 1964</ref>}}
The frigate [[USS Samuel Eliot Morison (FFG-13)|USS ''Samuel Eliot Morison'']] is named for Morison, as are the
Samuel Eliot Morison Award of the [[USS Constitution Museum|USS ''Constitution'' Museum]],{{Citation needed|date=January 2011}} the [[Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature]] of the [[Naval Order of the United States]], <!--Are we sure the Consitution award and Naval Lit award are two different things? -->
and the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command's Samuel Eliot Morison Naval History Scholarship.<ref>[http://www.history.navy.mil/prizes/prize3.htm Dept. of the Navy - Samuel Eliot Morison Naval History Scholarship]</ref>
Boston's [[Commonwealth Avenue, Boston|Commonwealth Avenue Mall]] features a bronze statue depicting Morison in sailor's [[oilskin]].


Upon receiving his doctorate, Morison went to [[University of California, Berkeley|Berkeley]] to serve as an instructor in history, and, in 1915, returned to Harvard in the same capacity. After spending 1922–25 at [[Oxford University|Oxford]] as Harmsworth Professor of American History, he became full [[professor]] at Harvard in 1925. Morison was promoted to Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History in 1941 and retired from Harvard in 1955.
==Works==
<!-- format of this section still needs work, my apologies -->
[[Image:Morison-statue.jpg|thumb|right|Statue of Morison on Boston's [[Commonwealth Avenue, Boston|Commonwealth Avenue]].]]


Morison continued writing prolifically after his retirement. He received the [[Balzan prize]] for history 1962 and the [[Presidential Medal of Freedom]] from Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
Morison's Harvard dissertation was the basis for his first book, ''The Life and Letters of [[Harrison Gray Otis (lawyer)|Harrison Gray Otis]], Federalist, 1765–1848'' (1913). His early childhood is charmingly described in ''One Boy's Boston: 1887-1901'' (1962).


===Books===
In 1942, Morison was commissioned a [[Lieutenant Commander]] in the [[United States Naval Reserve]] as part of the military's program (which Morison himself had proposed)<ref name=NavyBio>[http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/morison_s.htm Naval History & Heritage Command - Biographies ]<!--sorry, still to lazy to format cite properly right now--></ref> of careful documentation of World War II. The result was the ''[[History of United States Naval Operations in World War II]],'' fifteen volumes (1947–1962) documenting everything from strategy and tactics to technology and the exploits of individuals—a work which British military historian Sir [[John Keegan]] has called the best to come out of that conflict.{{Citation needed|date=January 2011}} Volume 3 <!--concentrating on ... what? -- see also http://www.usni.org/store/books/history/rising-sun-pacific-1931-april-1942 which has important info re Morison's second thoughts on Kimmel, which will need to be sourced elsewhere, however--> was also issued as ''The Rising Sun in the Pacific''<!--I hope I have this right--> (1948, Bancroft Prize, 1949), and a single-volume abridgement of the series, ''The Two Ocean War,'' appeared in 1963. Morison retired from the Navy in 1951 as a Rear Admiral.<ref name=NavyBio/>
Morison held that experience and research should be combined [[synergy|synergetically]] for writing vivid history. For his Pulitzer-winning ''Admiral of the Ocean Sea'', Morison combined his personal interest in [[sailing]] with his scholarship by chartering a boat and sailing to the various places that [[Christopher Columbus]] was then thought to have visited. He also wrote about the man he described as one of the greatest pioneers, explorers and colonists of all time, [[Samuel de Champlain]]. He followed every of his voyages in the Gulf of Maine and traced others by airplane.


==Official Historian of US Navy during World War II==
For ''Admiral of the Ocean Sea'' (1942; Pulitzer Prize 1943), Morison combined his personal interest in sailing with his scholarship by actually sailing to the various places that [[Christopher Columbus]] was then thought to have visited. Similarly, his research for ''[[Samuel De Champlain]]: Father of New France'' (1972) including sailing many of the routes taken by Champlain, and tracing others by airplane. Morison's other works on European exploration include:
[[Image:Morison-statue.jpg|thumb|right|Statue of Morison on the [[Commonwealth Avenue, Boston|Commonwealth Avenue mall]].]]
* ''Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century'' (1940)
Unlike World War I, for which the US military had not prepared a full-scale official history of any branch of service, it was decided that World War II would be meticulously documented. Professional historians were attached to all the branches of the US military; they were embedded with combat units to witness the events about which they would later write.
* ''Christopher Columbus, Mariner'' ([[Little, Brown and Company]], 1955)
* ''The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages'' (1971; Bancroft Prize 1972)
* ''The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages'' (1974)


Toward this end, in 1942, Morison was commissioned into the [[United States Naval Reserve]] with the rank of [[Lieutenant Commander]]. The result was the ''[[History of United States Naval Operations in World War II]]'', a work in fifteen volumes that covered every aspect of America's war at sea, from strategic planning and battle tactics to the technology of war and the exploits of individuals during the conflict. A one-volume abridgement of the official history, ''The Two Ocean War'', was published in 1963.
With coauthor [[Henry Steele Commager]], Morison wrote the popular and influential{{Citation needed|date=January 2011}} college textbook ''The Growth of the American Republic,'' first published in 1930. However, the sections treating slavery (penned by Morison)<!-- I think Zimmerman said this --> later came under heavy criticism:{{quote|Starting in 1950, for example, African Americans petitioned well-known race liberals Henry Steele Commager and Samuel Eliot Morison to revise their popular textbook, ''Growth of the American Republic'', which declared that the American slave—or "Sambo," as the text called him—was "adequately fed, well cared for, and apparently happy." Privately, the authors joked about Black complaints—"bushman squawks," Morison called them—against their book. "Felix the nigger-baiter is funny!" Morison told Commager, using the latter's nickname. Miffed by attacks upon his own liberal credentials, Morison stressed that his daughter was married to [the son of] Jewish NAACP President [[Joel Spingarn]]—<ref>Zimmerman's text reads, "Morison stressed that his daughter was married to Jewish NAACP President Joel Spingarn"; in fact Morison's daughter Elizabeth Gray Morison married Joel Spingarn's son Edward ([http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,795129,00.html "Milestones," ''Time,'' Dec. 30, 1940]). In quoting Zimmerman here that error has been corrected.</ref> and that "Sambo" had been Morison's childhood nickname. Eventually, Morison agreed to remove the term "pickanninies"; in future editions, he quipped, Black children would be described only as "nice little seal-brown darlings." But he insisted upon retaining "Sambo," "Uncle Daniel," and several other images of slave docility. "I will be damned if I will take them out for&nbsp;... anybody," Morison told Commager.<ref name=Zimmerman>{{cite web|url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/heq/44.1/zimmerman.html |title=web.archive.org/web/20050318073017/http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/heq/44.1/zimmerman.html<!--INSERT TITLE--> |archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20050318073017/http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/heq/44.1/zimmerman.html |archivedate = 2005-03-18}}</ref>}}
At the same time,{{quote|southern segregationists condemned [Morison and Comanger] as too ''friendly'' to Blacks. The authors provided brief discussions of racial segregation and campaigns against it, causing many southern school districts to blacklist their book.<ref name=Zimmerman/>}}
Morison removed the offending material in the 1962 edition<ref name=Zimmerman/> -- the next earlier edition had been 1951 --{{Citation needed|date=January 2011}} replacing it with a description of slave revolts.<ref name=Zimmerman/>
* ''[[The Oxford History of the United States]]'' (1927)
* ''The Growth of the American Republic'' (with [[Henry Steele Commager]], New York: [[Oxford University Press]], 1930 [as ''Oxford History of the United States''; 7th ed., 1980]. Revised and abridged edition with Samuel Eliot Morison and William E. Leuchtenberg. Published by Oxford University Press in 1980 as ''A Concise History of the American Republic'', rev. 1983.
* ''The Oxford History of the American People'' (1965)
:* "America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy."
:* "But sea power has never led to despotism. The nations that have enjoyed sea power even for a brief period—Athens, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, England, the United States—are those that have preserved freedom for themselves and have given it to others. Of the despotism to which unrestrained military power leads we have plenty of examples from Alexander to Mao." ''The Oxford History of the American People'' (1965)
* ''A Concise History of the American Republic'' (with [[Henry Steele Commager]] and [[William E. Leuchtenberg]]) (1976)


In recognition of his achievements, the Navy awarded him the [[Legion of Merit]] and eventually promoted Morison to the rank of Rear Admiral (Reserve). In addition, the [[Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate|''Oliver Hazard Perry'' class guided-missile frigate]], [[USS Samuel Eliot Morison (FFG-13)|USS ''Samuel Eliot Morison'']], was named in his honor.
Morison wrote a number of works specifically on the history of New England:

The celebrated British military historian Sir [[John Keegan]] has hailed Morison's official history as the best to come out of the Second World War.

One of his research assistants on that project, Henry Salomon, went on to conceive the epic [[NBC]] [[documentary film|documentary]] series ''[[Victory at Sea]]''.

==Criticism==
Morison and his co-author [[Henry Steele Commager]] were criticized by African American intellectuals and other scholars for their very popular and influential textbook "The Growth of the American Republic", first published in [[1930]]. The book's controversial section was written by Morison. The textbook was attacked for it's [[stereotypical]] depiction of [[slavery]] in America and of African American life after [[Emancipation]] and during [[Reconstruction]].

The first two editions of the textbook echoed the thesis of [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11490 ''American Negro Slavery''] (1918) by [[Ulrich Bonnell Phillips]]. This view, sometimes called the Phillips school of slavery historiography, although subject to intense criticism throughout the years for it's racist underpinnings, remained the most comprehensive and authoritative source on the history of American slavery<ref>Al-Tony Gilmore, introduction to ''Revisiting Blassingame's ''The Slave Community'': The Scholars Respond'', ed. Al-Tony Gilmore (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), pp. x–xi, ISBN 0-8371-9879-8.</ref> until it was successfully challenged by [[Kenneth M. Stampp]] in [[The Peculiar Institution]]: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (1956) and [[Stanley M. Elkins]] in "Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life" (1958). Although [[W.E.B. Du Bois]] had attacked Phillps' views,<ref>W. E. B. Du Bois, review of ''American Negro Slavery'', in ''American Political Science Review'' 12 (November 1918): pp. 722–726, reprinted in ''W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader'', ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1995), ISBN 0-8050-3264-9.</ref>, and had written extensively about slave life, he did not do so using comprehensive, scientific methodology that Phillips had so effectively employed, and which was later adopted by Stampp and Elkins.)(also see: [[The Slave Community]] and [[Slavery in the United States]]

Phillips theories were considered by many to be ground-breaking and progressive when first proposed (Phillips was a member of the [[Progressive party]]) but by [[1940]] they were widely seen by black, and young white intellectuals under reporting the negative human effects of slavery. It relied on the one-sided personal records of rich slave-owners and portrayed slavery as a mainly benign institution.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://web.gc.cuny.edu/ashp/doing/doinghistoriography.html|title=web.gc.cuny.edu/ashp/doing/doinghistoriography.html}}</ref> Criticism of the textbook was begun in 1944 by the [[NAACP]] and was soon taken up by students at [[City College]] where Morison taught. According to Jumonville, Morison was so convinced of the accuracy of his position that he believed for a time that communist agitators were behind the protests against the textbook. Finally, in [[1950]], under relentless pressure from students and younger colleagues, Morison, while denying any racist intent (He noted that his daughter had been married to [[Joel Elias Spingarn]], the former President of the NAACP<ref> Jumonville, ''Commager'' p. 147</ref>) reluctantly agreed to most, but not all, of the demanded changes. There remained in the new edition a few elements from the Phillps school of analysis, such as: slaves were loyal and devoted to their masters because they were treated well, better than, for example, Northern wage laborers and Irish peasants.(also see: [[Wage labor]], [[Wage Slavery]] and [[Famine#Ireland]], and Morison continued to claim that there had been positive, civilizing effects from the American system of slavery. He also refused to remove references to [[stereotypes of African Americans]] such as [[Sambo]], [[Uncle Tom]] and [[Pickaninny]], that he thought were vital in accurately depicting the racist nature of American culture in the 19th and early 20th century, an era when even the most enlightened progressive thinkers routinely explained many aspects of human behavior as being a result of innate racial or ethnic characteristics.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=WUucYTW6ug0C&pg=PP1&dq=Race:+the+history+of+an+idea+in+America&client=opera#v=onepage&q=&f=false|title=Gossett, Thomas F.; Race: The History of an Idea in America}}</ref> (also see: [[Stereotypes_of_groups_within_the_United_States#Black_stereotypes]])

In Morison's view, the vast majority of white Americans during the [[Reconstruction]], and it's aftermath, were big hearted and generous racists, not at all mean spirited -- they believed that blacks were genetically inferior but held no ill will against them, and, in fact, found them charming and wanted to help them to adapt to a more civilized life. (Americans could afford to be generous, they were living in America after all) Morison's rather cartoonish version of the Reconstruction and turn-of-the-century America, with it's cast of black stereotypes, was considered by many to be a highly sanitized and/or naive version of history and was challenged by a rising generation of ethnic and revisionist historians in the late [[1950s]] and [[1960s]] who, continuing the effort begun by Du Bois in his 1935 book [Black Reconstruction: An Essay toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880], would document the rising tide of violence and segregation laws directed against blacks in an effort to rollback their rights. (also see: [[Nadir of American race relations]] and [[Historian]])

Morison did not agree to remove the black racial stereotypes and the remaining references to Phillips until the next edition, which appeared in [[1962]]. However, schools do not immediately dispose of expensive [[textbooks]] when new editions are issued and old versions of the book remained in use for many years, well into the [[1970s]].

==Books by Samuel Eliot Morison==
Most of these have been reprinted and reissued.

* ''The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Federalist, 1765–1848'' (1913)
* ''The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860'' (1921)
* ''The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860'' (1921)
* ''[[The Oxford History of the United States]]'' (1927)
* ''Builders of the Bay Colony: A Gallery of Our Intellectual Ancestors'' (1930; 2nd ed., 1964)
* ''Builders of the Bay Colony: A Gallery of Our Intellectual Ancestors'' (1930; 2nd ed., 1964)
* ''The Growth of the American Republic'' (with [[Henry Steele Commager]], New York: [[Oxford University Press]], 1930 [as ''Oxford History of the United States''; 7th ed., 1980]. Revised and abridged edition with Samuel Eliot Morison and William E. Leuchtenberg. Published by Oxford University Press in 1980 as ''A Concise History of the American Republic'', rev. 1983.
* ''The Founding of Harvard College'' (1935)
* ''The Founding of Harvard College'' (1935)
* ''Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century'' (1936)
* ''Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century'' (1936)
* ''Three Centuries of Harvard: 1636–1936'' (1936)
* ''Three Centuries of Harvard: 1636–1936'' ([[Harvard University Press]], 1936)
* ''The Puritan Pronaos'' (1936)
* ''The Puritan Pronaos'' (1936)
* ''Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century'' (Harvard University Press, 1940)
* ''Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus'' (Little Brown, 1942)
* ''History as a Literary Art: An Appeal to Young Historians'' (1946)
* ''The Ropemakers of Plymouth'' (1950)
* ''The Ropemakers of Plymouth'' (1950)
* ''The Story of the 'Old Colony' of New Plymouth'' (1956)
* ''[[History of United States Naval Operations in World War II]]'' (1947–1962)
* ''[[Of Plymouth Plantation|Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647]]'' (ed., 1952)
* ''[[Of Plymouth Plantation|Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647]]'' (editor) (1952)

Other works by Morison include:<!--honestly, I don't know what By Land and Mt Desert are really about, so maybe they go in groups above. -->
* ''By Land and By Sea'' (1953)
* ''By Land and By Sea'' (1953)
* ''Christopher Columbus, Mariner'' ([[Little, Brown and Company]], 1955)
* ''John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography'' (1959; Pulitzer Prize 1960)
* ''The Story of the 'Old Colony' of New Plymouth'' (1956)
* ''John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography'' (Little, Brown and Company, 1959)
* ''The Story of Mount Desert Island'' (1960)
* ''The Story of Mount Desert Island'' (1960)
* ''One Boy's Boston: 1887-1901'' (Houghton Mifflin, 1962)
* ''The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War'' (1963)
* ''The Oxford History of the American People'' (1965)
* ''The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages'' (1971)
* ''Samuel De Champlain: Father of New France'' (1972)
* ''The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages'' (1974)
* ''A Concise History of the American Republic'' (with [[Henry Steele Commager]] and [[William E. Leuchtenberg]]) (1976)

==Awards==
(years listed are when prizes were awarded)

===Lifetime achievement honors===
*Emerson-Thoreau Medal from the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] (1961)
*Gold Medal from the [[American Academy of Arts and Letters]] (1962)
*[[Balzan prize]] for history (1962)
*[[Presidential Medal of Freedom]] (1964)


==Military and foreign honors==
===Military and Foreign Honors and Awards===
*[[Legion of Merit]] with Combat Distinguishing Device "V"
*[[Legion of Merit]] with Combat Distinguishing Device "V"
*[[World War I Victory Medal]]
*[[World War I Victory Medal]]
Line 90: Line 119:
*[[Philippine Liberation Ribbon]]
*[[Philippine Liberation Ribbon]]
*Commander of the [[Order of the White Rose]] of Finland
*Commander of the [[Order of the White Rose]] of Finland
*Vuelo Panamericano Medal, awarded by the Republic of Cuba (1943)<ref>[http://www.fad.mil.do/vuelopanamericano.htm Fuerza Aerea Dominicana: Vuelo Panamericano]: ''"Acontecimientos de significativa trascendencia histórica, que repercutó en todos los países latinoamericanos, del [C]aribe y Europa, lo fue el Vuelo Panamericano[.] El recorrido aéreo por los cielos americanos fue una proyección de la Quinta Conferencia Internacional Americana, donde los Estados Unidos pertenecientes en el cónclave aprobaron por unanimidad la Resolución mediante la cual se recomendó a los Gobiernos de las Repúblicas Americanas, honrar la memoria del Gran Almirante Don Cristóbal Colón con la erección de un Faro Monumental en su honor [...]. Los gobiernos de Cuba y la República Dominicana, receptivos de esa directiva, se decidieron por mancomunar esfuerzos para crear una escuadrilla aérea que rasgara los espacios etéreos en recorrido de Buena Voluntad por los países americanos, haciendo de ese modo un llamado fraternal [...]. La Escuadrilla Panamericana estuvo integrada por cuatro aviones. Tres de ellos procedían de Cuba y pertenecían a la Sociedad Columbista Panamericana, al Ejército Constitucionalista de Cuba y a la Marina Constitucional Cubana, respectivamente."'' ("An event of important historical significance that had an impact on all the Latin American countries, of the [C]arribean and Europe, was the Pan-American flight through the (South) American airspace. It was a project of the Fifth International American Conference where the United States was included in a meeting that approved unanimously the resolution by which they recommended that the governments of the American republics honor the memory of the great Admiral Christopher Columbus with the erection of a memorial lighthouse in his honour. [...] The governments of Cuba and The Dominican Republic receptive to this suggestion decided between themselves to unite forces to create an air squadron that would rip through the ether in a flypast of good faith for the American countries in a gesture of friendship. [...] The Panamerican Squadron was formed of four planes. Three of them came from Cuba and belonged to the Panamerican Columbist Society, the National Army of Cuba and the Cuban National Navy respectively.")</ref> <!-- tranlsation from [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Pages_needing_translation_into_English&diff=408044575&oldid=407941044] then slightly edited. But what does this have to do with Morison? following link to url above I don't see any ref to Morison offhand. -->
*Vuelo Panamericano Medal, awarded by the Republic of Cuba (1943) <ref>[http://www.fad.mil.do/vuelopanamericano.htm Fuerza Aerea Dominicana: Vuelo Panamericano]<br />''Acontecimientos de significativa trascendencia histórica, que repercutó en todos los países latinoamericanos, del [C]aribe y Europa, lo fue el Vuelo Panamericano[.] El recorrido aéreo por los cielos americanos fue una proyección de la Quinta Conferencia Internacional Americana, donde los Estados Unidos pertenecientes en el cónclave aprobaron por unanimidad la Resolución mediante la cual se recomendó a los Gobiernos de las Repúblicas Americanas, honrar la memoria del Gran Almirante Don Cristóbal Colón con la erección de un Faro Monumental en su honor [...]. Los gobiernos de Cuba y la República Dominicana, receptivos de esa directiva, se decidieron por mancomunar esfuerzos para crear una escuadrilla aérea que rasgara los espacios etéreos en recorrido de Buena Voluntad por los países americanos, haciendo de ese modo un llamado fraternal [...]. La Escuadrilla Panamericana estuvo integrada por cuatro aviones. Tres de ellos procedían de Cuba y pertenecían a la Sociedad Columbista Panamericana, al Ejército Constitucionalista de Cuba y a la Marina Constitucional Cubana, respectivamente.''</ref>

*Cavaliero Ufficiale of the Italian Order, ''[[Italian orders of merit|Ordine al Merito della Repubblica]]'' (1961)
*Cavaliero Ufficiale of the Italian Order, ''[[Italian orders of merit|Ordine al Merito della Repubblica]]'' (1961)
*Commander of the Spanish Order of Isabel la Catolica (1963)
*Commander of the Spanish Order of Isabel la Catolica (1963)


==Honorary degrees==
===Book prizes===
*[[Pulitzer Prize]] in biography for ''Admiral of the Ocean Sea'' (1943)
*[[Pulitzer Prize]] in biography for ''John Paul Jones'' (1960)
*[[Bancroft Prize]] for ''The Rising Sun in the Pacific'' (1949)
*[[Bancroft Prize]] for ''The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages'' (1972)

===Honorary degrees===
*[[Trinity College, Hartford]] (1935)
*[[Trinity College, Hartford]] (1935)
*[[Amherst College]] (1936)
*[[Amherst College]] (1936)
Line 107: Line 141:
*[[Boston College]] (1961)
*[[Boston College]] (1961)
*[[College of the Holy Cross]] (1962)
*[[College of the Holy Cross]] (1962)

===In honor of Samuel Eliot Morison===
* [[USS Samuel Eliot Morison (FFG-13)|USS ''Samuel Eliot Morison'' (FFG-13)]].
* Samuel Eliot Morison Award of the [[USS Constitution Museum|USS ''Constitution'' Museum]].
* Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature of the [[Naval Order of the United States]].
* [http://www.history.navy.mil/prizes/prize3.htm Samuel Eliot Morison Naval History Scholarship] of the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command.
* A bronze statue of Morison is on the [[Commonwealth Avenue, Boston|Commonwealth Avenue mall]] in [[Boston, Massachusetts]], between Exeter and Fairfield Streets.

==Quotes==
*"American historians, in their eagerness to present facts and their laudable concern to tell the truth, have neglected the literary aspects of their craft. They have forgotten that there is an art of writing history." ''History as a Literary Art: An Appeal to Young Historians'' (1946)

*"America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy." ''The Oxford History of the American People'' (1965)

*"But sea power has never led to despotism. The nations that have enjoyed sea power even for a brief period—Athens, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, England, the United States—are those that have preserved freedom for themselves and have given it to others. Of the despotism to which unrestrained military power leads we have plenty of examples from Alexander to Mao." ''The Oxford History of the American People'' (1965)


==References==
==References==
Line 112: Line 160:


* Official U.S. Navy biography (http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/morison_s.htm)
* Official U.S. Navy biography (http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/morison_s.htm)

*[[John Keegan|Keegan, John]]. ''The Price of Admiralty'' <!-- Please supply enough information to identify the edition of this book that was used. -->
*[[John Keegan|Keegan, John]]. ''The Price of Admiralty'' <!-- Please supply enough information to identify the edition of this book that was used. -->
*{{cite book
*{{cite book
| last = Pfitzer
| last = Pfitzer
| first = Gregory M.
| first = Gregory M.
| coauthors =
| coauthors =
| year = 1991
| year = 1991
| title = Samuel Eliot Morison's Historical World: In Quest of a New Parkman
| title = Samuel Eliot Morison's Historical World: In Quest of a New Parkman
| publisher = Northeastern
| publisher = Northeastern
| location =
| location =
| isbn = 1555531016
| isbn = 1555531016
}}
}}
Line 135: Line 184:


==External links==
==External links==
*[http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/morison_s.htm Official United States Navy Biography] <!-- check exact title etc --> including [http://www.history.navy.mil/library/guides/morison_bib.htm Bibliography of Morison's writings] <!-- clarify source -->
*{{Find a Grave|6691313}}
*{{Find a Grave|6691313}}


Line 153: Line 201:
[[Category:1887 births]]
[[Category:1887 births]]
[[Category:1976 deaths]]
[[Category:1976 deaths]]
[[Category:American maritime historians]]
[[Category:American naval historians]]
[[Category:Eliot family (America)]]
[[Category:Harvard University alumni]]
[[Category:Harvard University faculty]]
[[Category:Historians of New York City]]
[[Category:Historians of the United States]]
[[Category:People from Boston, Massachusetts]]
[[Category:People from Boston, Massachusetts]]
[[Category:Presidents of the American Historical Association]]
[[Category:St. Paul's School (New Hampshire) alumni]]
[[Category:St. Paul's School (New Hampshire) alumni]]
[[Category:Historians of the United States]]
[[Category:American naval historians]]
[[Category:Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners]]
[[Category:Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners]]
[[Category:United States Navy admirals]]
[[Category:United States Navy admirals]]
[[Category:Harvard University alumni]]
[[Category:Harvard University faculty]]
[[Category:Presidents of the American Historical Association]]
[[Category:Eliot family (America)]]


[[fr:Samuel Eliot Morison]]
[[fr:Samuel Eliot Morison]]

Revision as of 03:36, 24 February 2011

Samuel Eliot Morison
Samuel Eliot Morison in his official U.S. Navy portrait
AllegianceUnited States of America
Service / branchUnited States Navy
Years of service1942–1946
RankRear Admiral (Reserve)
Battles / warsWorld War II
AwardsLegion of Merit with Combat Distinguishing Device "V"

Commander of the Order of the White Rose of Finland
Vuelo Panamericano Medal, awarded by the Republic of Cuba (1943)
Cavaliero Ufficiale of the Italian Order, Ordine al Merito della Repubblica (1961)

Commander of the Spanish Order of Isabella the Catholic (1963)

Samuel Eliot Morison, Rear Admiral, United States Naval Reserve (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian, noted for producing works of maritime history that were both authoritative and highly readable. A sailor as well as a scholar, Morison garnered numerous honors, including two Pulitzer Prizes, two Bancroft Prizes, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His general history textbooks were both widely used[citation needed], though criticized for their treatment of American slavery.

Biography

Personal

Samuel Eliot Morison was born in Boston, Massachusetts to John Holmes Morison (1856–1911) and Emily Marshall (Eliot) Morison (1857–1925) and named for his grandfather Samuel Eliot. His early childhood is charmingly described in a memoir of 1962, entitled "One Boy's Boston."

He married twice and was the father of four children by his first wife, Elizabeth S. Greene. (One of these children, Emily Morison Beck became the editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.) After his wife Elizabeth's death in 1945, in 1949 he married a Baltimore widow, Priscilla Barton. Morison again became a widower in 1973.

Morison died on May 15, 1976 of a stroke at the age of 88, and his ashes are buried at Northeast Harbor, Maine.

His grandson Michael Noyes Morison was known as "Franklin D. Churchill," storyline president of the Millennium Wrestling Federation. He died in June 2006.

Academic career

His schooling was typical for a member of a Boston Brahmin family: he attended Noble and Greenough School (1897–1901) and St. Paul's (1901–03) before enrolling at Harvard, where he would remain for much of his academic life.

Morison earned his AB from Harvard, where he was a member of the Phoenix S.K. Club, in 1908, studied at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques in Paris (1908–1909), and returned to Harvard where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1912. His doctoral thesis, The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, became Morison's first book.

Upon receiving his doctorate, Morison went to Berkeley to serve as an instructor in history, and, in 1915, returned to Harvard in the same capacity. After spending 1922–25 at Oxford as Harmsworth Professor of American History, he became full professor at Harvard in 1925. Morison was promoted to Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History in 1941 and retired from Harvard in 1955.

Morison continued writing prolifically after his retirement. He received the Balzan prize for history 1962 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Books

Morison held that experience and research should be combined synergetically for writing vivid history. For his Pulitzer-winning Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Morison combined his personal interest in sailing with his scholarship by chartering a boat and sailing to the various places that Christopher Columbus was then thought to have visited. He also wrote about the man he described as one of the greatest pioneers, explorers and colonists of all time, Samuel de Champlain. He followed every of his voyages in the Gulf of Maine and traced others by airplane.

Official Historian of US Navy during World War II

Statue of Morison on the Commonwealth Avenue mall.

Unlike World War I, for which the US military had not prepared a full-scale official history of any branch of service, it was decided that World War II would be meticulously documented. Professional historians were attached to all the branches of the US military; they were embedded with combat units to witness the events about which they would later write.

Toward this end, in 1942, Morison was commissioned into the United States Naval Reserve with the rank of Lieutenant Commander. The result was the History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, a work in fifteen volumes that covered every aspect of America's war at sea, from strategic planning and battle tactics to the technology of war and the exploits of individuals during the conflict. A one-volume abridgement of the official history, The Two Ocean War, was published in 1963.

In recognition of his achievements, the Navy awarded him the Legion of Merit and eventually promoted Morison to the rank of Rear Admiral (Reserve). In addition, the Oliver Hazard Perry class guided-missile frigate, USS Samuel Eliot Morison, was named in his honor.

The celebrated British military historian Sir John Keegan has hailed Morison's official history as the best to come out of the Second World War.

One of his research assistants on that project, Henry Salomon, went on to conceive the epic NBC documentary series Victory at Sea.

Criticism

Morison and his co-author Henry Steele Commager were criticized by African American intellectuals and other scholars for their very popular and influential textbook "The Growth of the American Republic", first published in 1930. The book's controversial section was written by Morison. The textbook was attacked for it's stereotypical depiction of slavery in America and of African American life after Emancipation and during Reconstruction.

The first two editions of the textbook echoed the thesis of American Negro Slavery (1918) by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips. This view, sometimes called the Phillips school of slavery historiography, although subject to intense criticism throughout the years for it's racist underpinnings, remained the most comprehensive and authoritative source on the history of American slavery[1] until it was successfully challenged by Kenneth M. Stampp in The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (1956) and Stanley M. Elkins in "Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life" (1958). Although W.E.B. Du Bois had attacked Phillps' views,[2], and had written extensively about slave life, he did not do so using comprehensive, scientific methodology that Phillips had so effectively employed, and which was later adopted by Stampp and Elkins.)(also see: The Slave Community and Slavery in the United States

Phillips theories were considered by many to be ground-breaking and progressive when first proposed (Phillips was a member of the Progressive party) but by 1940 they were widely seen by black, and young white intellectuals under reporting the negative human effects of slavery. It relied on the one-sided personal records of rich slave-owners and portrayed slavery as a mainly benign institution.[3] Criticism of the textbook was begun in 1944 by the NAACP and was soon taken up by students at City College where Morison taught. According to Jumonville, Morison was so convinced of the accuracy of his position that he believed for a time that communist agitators were behind the protests against the textbook. Finally, in 1950, under relentless pressure from students and younger colleagues, Morison, while denying any racist intent (He noted that his daughter had been married to Joel Elias Spingarn, the former President of the NAACP[4]) reluctantly agreed to most, but not all, of the demanded changes. There remained in the new edition a few elements from the Phillps school of analysis, such as: slaves were loyal and devoted to their masters because they were treated well, better than, for example, Northern wage laborers and Irish peasants.(also see: Wage labor, Wage Slavery and Famine#Ireland, and Morison continued to claim that there had been positive, civilizing effects from the American system of slavery. He also refused to remove references to stereotypes of African Americans such as Sambo, Uncle Tom and Pickaninny, that he thought were vital in accurately depicting the racist nature of American culture in the 19th and early 20th century, an era when even the most enlightened progressive thinkers routinely explained many aspects of human behavior as being a result of innate racial or ethnic characteristics.[5] (also see: Stereotypes_of_groups_within_the_United_States#Black_stereotypes)

In Morison's view, the vast majority of white Americans during the Reconstruction, and it's aftermath, were big hearted and generous racists, not at all mean spirited -- they believed that blacks were genetically inferior but held no ill will against them, and, in fact, found them charming and wanted to help them to adapt to a more civilized life. (Americans could afford to be generous, they were living in America after all) Morison's rather cartoonish version of the Reconstruction and turn-of-the-century America, with it's cast of black stereotypes, was considered by many to be a highly sanitized and/or naive version of history and was challenged by a rising generation of ethnic and revisionist historians in the late 1950s and 1960s who, continuing the effort begun by Du Bois in his 1935 book [Black Reconstruction: An Essay toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880], would document the rising tide of violence and segregation laws directed against blacks in an effort to rollback their rights. (also see: Nadir of American race relations and Historian)

Morison did not agree to remove the black racial stereotypes and the remaining references to Phillips until the next edition, which appeared in 1962. However, schools do not immediately dispose of expensive textbooks when new editions are issued and old versions of the book remained in use for many years, well into the 1970s.

Books by Samuel Eliot Morison

Most of these have been reprinted and reissued.

  • The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Federalist, 1765–1848 (1913)
  • The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 (1921)
  • The Oxford History of the United States (1927)
  • Builders of the Bay Colony: A Gallery of Our Intellectual Ancestors (1930; 2nd ed., 1964)
  • The Growth of the American Republic (with Henry Steele Commager, New York: Oxford University Press, 1930 [as Oxford History of the United States; 7th ed., 1980]. Revised and abridged edition with Samuel Eliot Morison and William E. Leuchtenberg. Published by Oxford University Press in 1980 as A Concise History of the American Republic, rev. 1983.
  • The Founding of Harvard College (1935)
  • Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (1936)
  • Three Centuries of Harvard: 1636–1936 (Harvard University Press, 1936)
  • The Puritan Pronaos (1936)
  • Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century (Harvard University Press, 1940)
  • Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (Little Brown, 1942)
  • History as a Literary Art: An Appeal to Young Historians (1946)
  • The Ropemakers of Plymouth (1950)
  • History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (1947–1962)
  • Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647 (editor) (1952)
  • By Land and By Sea (1953)
  • Christopher Columbus, Mariner (Little, Brown and Company, 1955)
  • The Story of the 'Old Colony' of New Plymouth (1956)
  • John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (Little, Brown and Company, 1959)
  • The Story of Mount Desert Island (1960)
  • One Boy's Boston: 1887-1901 (Houghton Mifflin, 1962)
  • The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War (1963)
  • The Oxford History of the American People (1965)
  • The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages (1971)
  • Samuel De Champlain: Father of New France (1972)
  • The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages (1974)
  • A Concise History of the American Republic (with Henry Steele Commager and William E. Leuchtenberg) (1976)

Awards

(years listed are when prizes were awarded)

Lifetime achievement honors

Military and Foreign Honors and Awards

Book prizes

Honorary degrees

In honor of Samuel Eliot Morison

Quotes

  • "American historians, in their eagerness to present facts and their laudable concern to tell the truth, have neglected the literary aspects of their craft. They have forgotten that there is an art of writing history." History as a Literary Art: An Appeal to Young Historians (1946)
  • "America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy." The Oxford History of the American People (1965)
  • "But sea power has never led to despotism. The nations that have enjoyed sea power even for a brief period—Athens, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, England, the United States—are those that have preserved freedom for themselves and have given it to others. Of the despotism to which unrestrained military power leads we have plenty of examples from Alexander to Mao." The Oxford History of the American People (1965)

References

  1. ^ Al-Tony Gilmore, introduction to Revisiting Blassingame's The Slave Community: The Scholars Respond, ed. Al-Tony Gilmore (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), pp. x–xi, ISBN 0-8371-9879-8.
  2. ^ W. E. B. Du Bois, review of American Negro Slavery, in American Political Science Review 12 (November 1918): pp. 722–726, reprinted in W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1995), ISBN 0-8050-3264-9.
  3. ^ "web.gc.cuny.edu/ashp/doing/doinghistoriography.html".
  4. ^ Jumonville, Commager p. 147
  5. ^ "Gossett, Thomas F.; Race: The History of an Idea in America".
  6. ^ Fuerza Aerea Dominicana: Vuelo Panamericano
    Acontecimientos de significativa trascendencia histórica, que repercutó en todos los países latinoamericanos, del [C]aribe y Europa, lo fue el Vuelo Panamericano[.] El recorrido aéreo por los cielos americanos fue una proyección de la Quinta Conferencia Internacional Americana, donde los Estados Unidos pertenecientes en el cónclave aprobaron por unanimidad la Resolución mediante la cual se recomendó a los Gobiernos de las Repúblicas Americanas, honrar la memoria del Gran Almirante Don Cristóbal Colón con la erección de un Faro Monumental en su honor [...]. Los gobiernos de Cuba y la República Dominicana, receptivos de esa directiva, se decidieron por mancomunar esfuerzos para crear una escuadrilla aérea que rasgara los espacios etéreos en recorrido de Buena Voluntad por los países americanos, haciendo de ese modo un llamado fraternal [...]. La Escuadrilla Panamericana estuvo integrada por cuatro aviones. Tres de ellos procedían de Cuba y pertenecían a la Sociedad Columbista Panamericana, al Ejército Constitucionalista de Cuba y a la Marina Constitucional Cubana, respectivamente.

Template:Maritime writers

Template:Persondata

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Samuel_Eliot_Morison&oldid=415630181"