| Samuel Eliot Morison | |
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Samuel Eliot Morison in his official U.S. Navy portrait |
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| Born | July 9, 1887 Boston |
| Died | May 15, 1976 (aged 88) Boston |
| Allegiance | United States of America |
| Service/branch | United States Navy |
| Years of service | 1942–1946 |
| Rank | Rear Admiral (Reserve) |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
| Awards | See article |
Samuel Eliot Morison, Rear Admiral, United States Naval Reserve (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history that were both authoritative and highly readable. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years. He won Pulitzer Prizes for Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), a biography of Christopher Columbus, and John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959). In 1942, he was commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to write a history of United States naval operations in World War II, which was published in 15 volumes between 1947 and 1962. He retired from the navy in 1951 as a rear admiral. Morison wrote the popular Oxford History of the American People (1965), and co-authored the classic textbook The Growth of the American Republic (1930). Over the course of his distinguished career, Morison received eleven honorary doctoral degrees, including degrees from Harvard University (1936), Columbia University (1942), Yale University (1949), and the University of Oxford (1951). Morison also garnered numerous literary prizes, military honors, and national awards from both foreign countries and the United States, including two Pulitzer Prizes, two Bancroft Prizes, the Balzan Prize, the Legion of Merit, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[1]
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Samuel Eliot Morison was born July 9, 1887 in Boston, Massachusetts to John Holmes Morison (1856–1911) and Emily Marshall (Eliot) Morison (1857–1925). He was named for his maternal grandfather Samuel Eliot—a historian, educator, and public-minded citizen of Boston and Hartford, Connecticut. The Eliot Family, which produced generations of prominent American intellectuals, descended from Andrew Eliot, who moved to Boston in the 1660s from the English village of East Coker. The most famous of this Andrew Eliot's direct descendants was poet T.S. Eliot, who titled the second of his Four Quartets "East Coker".[2]
Morison attended Noble and Greenough School (1897–1901) and St. Paul's (1901–1903) prior to entering Harvard University, where he was a member of the Phoenix S K Club. At the age of fourteen, he learned to sail, and soonafter learned horsemanship—both skills would serve him well in his later historical writings.[3] He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1908. After studying at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques (1908–1909), Morison returned to Harvard, earning his Ph.D. in 1912. That year he became an instructor in history at the University of California, Berkeley.
Morison's Harvard dissertation was the basis for his first book, The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Federalist, 1765–1848 (1913). In 1915, he returned to Harvard and took a position as an instructor. During World War I, he served as a private in the US Army. He also served as the American Delegate on the Baltic Commission of the Peace Conference until June 17, 1919.[1]
From 1922–1925, Morison taught at Oxford University as Harmsworth Professor of American History—the first American to hold that position.[4] In 1925, he returned to Harvard, where he was appointed a full professor. One of several subjects that fascinated Morison was the history of New England. As early as 1921, he wrote The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860. In the 1930s, Morison wrote a series of books on the history of Harvard University and New England, including Builders of the Bay Colony: A Gallery of Our Intellectual Ancestors (1930), The Founding of Harvard College (1935), Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (1936), Three Centuries of Harvard: 1636–1936 (1936), and The Puritan Pronaos (1936). In later years, he would return to the subject of New England history, writing The Ropemakers of Plymouth (1950), The Story of the 'Old Colony' of New Plymouth (1956), and editing the definitive work, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647 (1952).[1]
In 1940, Morison published Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century, a book that presaged his succeeding publications on the great explorer, Christopher Columbus. In 1941, Morison was named Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard. For Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), 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. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1943.
In 1942, Morison met with his friend President Franklin Roosevelt and offered to write a history of United States Navy operations during the war from an insider's perspective by taking part in operations and documenting them. The President and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox agreed to the proposal. On May 5, 1942, Morison was commissioned Lieutenant Commander, US Naval Reserve, and was called at once to active duty.[1] The result of Morison's proposal was the History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, published in 15 volumes between 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. Issued as The Rising Sun in the Pacific in 1948, Volume 3 won the Bancroft Prize in 1949.[1]
Morison went on to the rank of Captain on December 15, 1945. On August 1, 1951 he was transferred to the Honorary Retired List of the Naval Reserve, promoted to Rear Admiral on the basis of combat awards.[1]
In History as a Literary Art: An Appeal to Young Historians (1946), Morison argued that vivid writing springs from the synergy of experience and research:
| “ | 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.[5] | ” |
In 1955, Morison retired from Harvard University.[1] He devoted the rest of his life to writing. In quick succession, Morison wrote Christopher Columbus, Mariner (1955), Freedom in Contemporary Society (1956), The Story of the 'Old Colony' of New Plymouth, 1620–1692 (1956), Nathaniel Homes Morison (1957), William Hickling Prescott (1958), Strategy and Compromise (1958), and John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959), which earned Morison his second Pulitzer Prize.
In the early 1960s, Morison's focus returned to his New England youth, writing The Story of Mount Desert Island, Maine (1960), One Boy's Boston, 1887–1901 (1962), Introduction to Whaler Out of New Bedford (1962), and A History of the Constitution of Massachusetts (1963). In 1963, The Two Ocean War was published, a one-volume abridged history of the United States Navy in World War II.
In 1964, Morison received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Johnson. In presenting the distinguished historian with the highest civilian award in the United States, Johnson noted:
| “ | 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.[6] | ” |
Morison's later years would also be devoted to books on exloration, such as The Two Ocean War (1963), The Caribbean as Columbus Saw It (1964), Spring Tides (1965), The European Discovery of America (1971–1974), and Samuel de Champlain: Father of New France (1972). His research for the latter book included sailing many of the routes taken by Champlain, and tracing others by airplane.
Morison's first marriage to Elizabeth S. Greene produced four children—one of whom, Emily Morison Beck, became editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.[7] Elizabeth died in 1945. In 1949, Morison married Baltimore widow Priscilla Barton. Priscilla died in 1973.
Samuel Eliot Morison died of a stroke on May 15, 1976. His ashes are buried at Northeast Harbor, Maine. He enjoyed considerable recognition during his lifetime, receiving two Pulitzes, two Bancroft Prizes, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Emerson-Thoreau Medal (1961), and numerous honorary degrees, military awards, and honors from foreign nations.[8]
On July 19, 1979, the frigate USS Samuel Eliot Morison was launched, honoring Morison and his contributions to the United States Navy. Morison's legacy is also sustained by the United States Naval History and Heritage Command's Samuel Eliot Morison Naval History Scholarship.[9] Boston's Commonwealth Avenue Mall features a bronze statue depicting Morison in sailor's oilskin.
Morison was criticized by some African-American scholars for his treatment of American slavery in early editions of his book The Growth of the American Republic, which he co-wrote with Henry Steele Commager and William E. Leuchtenburg.[10] First published in 1930, the first two editions of the textbook, according to these critics, echoed the thesis of American Negro Slavery (1918) by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips. This view, sometimes called the Phillips school of slavery historiography, was considered an authoritative source on the history of American slavery during the first half of the twentieth century,[11] despite the intense criticism by some African-American scholars for its alleged racist underpinnings. Phillips' theories were considered by many to be ground-breaking and progressive when first proposed. In 1944, the NAACP began its criticism of The Growth of the American Republic. In 1950, Morison, while denying any racist intent—he noted his daughter's marriage to the son of Joel Elias Spingarn, the former President of the NAACP—reluctantly agreed to most of the demanded changes.[12] Morison refused to eliminate references to slaves who were loyal and devoted to their masters because they were treated well, and to some positive "civilizing" effects of the American system of slavery. Morison also refused to remove references to stereotypes of African Americans that he believed were vital in accurately depicting the racist nature of American culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—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.[13] In the 1962 edition of the textbook, Morison removed additional content that these critics found offensve.[10]
Military, civilian, and foreign honors
Honorary degrees
Literary prizes
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