| Samuel Eliot Morison |
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Samuel Eliot Morison, RAdm , USNR ( July 9 , 1887 – May 15 , 1976 ) was an American Historian , notable for producing scholarly works that were both authoritative and highly readable, an ability recognized with two Pulitzer Prize s. BIOGRAPHY Born in Boston, Massachusetts to John Holmes Morison (1856–1911) and Emily Marshall Eliot (1857–1925) and named for his grandfather Samuel Eliot , he attended Harvard University , acquiring a BA in 1908 and a Ph.D. in 1912 . Although he taught at the University Of California, Berkeley and Oxford University (1922–1925), he spent most of his 40-year career at Harvard, starting in 1915 , chairing the title ''Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History'' in 1941 , and retiring in 1955 . He received the Balzan Prize for history 1962 and the Presidential Medal Of Freedom in 1964 . Morison combined his personal interest in Sailing with his professional activities when he chartered a boat and sailed to the various places that Christopher Columbus had supposedly visited. In 1942 , he was appointed into the United States Naval Reserve with the rank of Lieutenant Commander , for the purpose of developing first-hand knowledge of the war. The result was the unmatched '' History Of United States Naval Operations In World War II '', a work in 15 volumes that covered every aspect of the war, from strategic planning to individual exploits. For his efforts, the Navy rewarded Morison with the rank of Rear Admiral. The celebrated British military historian Sir John Keegan has hailed Morison's official history one of the best ever written. One of his research assistants on that project, Henry Salomon, went on to conceive the epic NBC Documentary series '' Victory At Sea ''. The Frigate , USS ''Samuel Eliot Morison'' (FFG-13), was named in his honor. A large bronze statue of Morison is on the Commonwealth Avenue mall in Boston . TEXTBOOK CRITICIZED FOR THE WAY IT CHARACTERIZED AFRICAN AMERICANS Morison was criticized by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Leon F. Litwack for saying of slavery in the widely used high school textbook he wrote with Henry Steele Commager : "Sambo suffered less than any other class in the South. Although brought here by force, the incurably optimistic negro soon became attached to the country and devoted to his 'white folks.'" {Link without Title} Litwack said, "The textbook was my first confrontation with history. I asked my 11th grade teacher for the opportunity to respond to the textbook’s version of Reconstruction, to what I thought were distortions and racial biases.(I had already read Howard Fast ’s ''Freedom Road''.) The research led me to the library—and to W.E.B. Du Bois ’s ''Black Reconstruction'', with that intriguing subtitle: ''An Essay Toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880.'' Armed with that book, I presented what I thought to be a persuasive rebuttal of the textbook." {Link without Title} WORKS Most of these have been reprinted and reissued numerous times.
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