Jump to content

Samuel Eliot Morison

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Longsun (talk | contribs) at 21:53, 24 February 2011 (→‎Criticism: added references). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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
Awardssee article

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.

Life

Born in Boston to John Holmes Morison (1856–1911) and Emily Marshall (Eliot) Morison (1857–1925), Morison was named for his grandfather Samuel Eliot.

Typically for a Boston Brahmin, he attended Noble and Greenough School (1897–1901) and St. Paul's (1901–03), then earned his AB (1908) from Harvard, where he was a member of the Phoenix S.K. Club.

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 UC Berkeley, then in 1915 again returned to Harvard, where he served in the same capacity. After spending 1922–25 at 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.

With Elizabeth S. Greene, his first wife, he had four children (one of whom, Emily Morison Beck, became editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations).[1] 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.

Morison wrote or co-wrote numerous works on history (especially military history) and related subjects.[vague] 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]

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] Morison enjoyed considerable recognition during his lifetime, receiving two Pulitzer and two Bancroft Prizes, 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.[2] In presenting him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, US President Lyndon Johnson declared of Morison:

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.[3]

The frigate USS Samuel Eliot Morison is named for Morison, as are the Samuel Eliot Morison Award of the USS Constitution Museum,[citation needed] the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature of the Naval Order of the United States, and the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command's Samuel Eliot Morison Naval History Scholarship.[4] Boston's Commonwealth Avenue Mall features a bronze statue depicting Morison in sailor's oilskin.

Books by Samuel Eliot Morison

Most of these have been reprinted and reissued.

Statue of Morison on Boston's Commonwealth Avenue.

Morison's Harvard dissertation was the basis for his first book, The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Federalist, 1765–1848 (1913). His early childhood is charmingly described in One Boy's Boston: 1887-1901 (1962).

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)[5] 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] Volume 3 was also issued as The Rising Sun in the Pacific (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.[5]

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:

  • Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century (1940)
  • 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)
  • 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)

Morison wrote a number of works specifically on the history of New England:

  • The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 (1921)
  • Builders of the Bay Colony: A Gallery of Our Intellectual Ancestors (1930; 2nd ed., 1964)
  • The Founding of Harvard College (1935)
  • Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (1936)
  • Three Centuries of Harvard: 1636–1936 (1936)
  • The Puritan Pronaos (1936)
  • The Ropemakers of Plymouth (1950)
  • The Story of the 'Old Colony' of New Plymouth (1956)
  • Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647 (ed., 1952)

Other works by Morison include:

  • By Land and By Sea (1953)
  • John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959; Pulitzer Prize 1960)
  • The Story of Mount Desert Island (1960)

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.[6] 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[7] 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,[8], 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)[9] 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.[10] 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[11]) 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.[12] (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 inferior but held no ill will against them, and, in fact, 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.

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. ^ Douglas Martin, "Emily Morison Beck, 88, Who Edited Bartlett's Quotations, Dies", New York Times, 31 Mar 2004.
  2. ^ list of International Balzan Foundation prize winners
  3. ^ American Presidency Project - Remarks by Lyndon B. Johnson, Medal of Freedom Award to Morison and others 14 Sep 1964
  4. ^ Dept. of the Navy - Samuel Eliot Morison Naval History Scholarship
  5. ^ a b Naval History & Heritage Command - Biographies
  6. ^ [1], pg. 31
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ 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.
  9. ^ [2], pg. 67
  10. ^ "web.gc.cuny.edu/ashp/doing/doinghistoriography.html".
  11. ^ Jumonville, Commager p. 147
  12. ^ "Gossett, Thomas F.; Race: The History of an Idea in America".
  13. ^ 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=415759607"