| Samuel Eliot Morison |
Article Index for Samuel |
Website Links For Samuel Eliot |
Information AboutSamuel Eliot Morison |
|
Samuel Eliot Morison, Rear Admiral , 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 Prize s, two Bancroft Prize s, and the Presidential Medal Of Freedom . His general history textbooks were both widely used and criticized by the parents of African American children and Civil Rights leaders for justifying 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 . 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, he married again to a Mrs. Pricilla B. Shakelford. Morrison died on May 15, 1976 of a stroke at the age of 88, and his ashes are buried at Northeast Harbor, Maine. Academic career His schooling was typical for a member of a (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 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 Columbus was then thought to have visited. OFFICIAL HISTORIAN OF US NAVY DURING WORLD WAR II .]] Unlilke 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 , he was commissioned into the Naval Reserve with the rank of Lieutenant Commander . 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 America's war at sea, from strategic planning and battle tactics to the technology of war and the exploits of individuals in conflict. A one-volume abridgement of the official history, ''The Two Ocean War'', was published in 1963. In recognition of his achievements, the Navy promoted Morison to the rank of Rear Admiral (Reserve). In addition, the Frigate , USS ''Samuel Eliot Morison'' (FFG-13), was named in his honor. A bronze statue of Morison is on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall in Boston , between Exeter and Fairfield Streets. 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 OF TEXTBOOK FOR JUSTIFYING SLAVERY Morison and his ''Growth of the American Republic'' co-author Henry Steele Commager were asked by delegations of African Americans {Link without Title} to remove racist passages from the 1950 edition of their widely used history textbook. The following is an excerpt from the passages targeted as a false and objectionable justification for slavery. :As for “Sambo,” whose wrongs moved the abolitionists to wrath and tears, there is some reason to believe that he suffered less than any other class in the South for its “Peculiar Institution.” … Although brought to America by force, the incurably optimistic Negro soon became attached to the country, and devoted to his white folks. According to several sources, the entry was not removed until 1962 despite requests for change to the earlier editions."Statement of Principle" (ms, 15 June 1944), frames 265–66; press release by Benjamin J. Davis, Jr., 15 June 1944, frame 264, both in reel 22, Part 16B, Papers of the National Association For the Advancement of Colored People (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1994). In the Spring 2004 edition of ''History of Education Quarterly'', Jonathan Zimmerman wrote the following[http://web.archive.org/web/20050318073017/http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/heq/44.1/zimmerman.html :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 Jewish NAACP President Joel Spingarn—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'll be damned if I'll take them out for ... anybody," Morison told Commager. {Link without Title} The authors finally removed the passage in the 1962 version of their text book. The passage echoes the thesis of ''American Negro Slavery'' by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips . This view, popularized by most white historians until the mid twentieth century, relied on the one-sided personal records of slave-owners and and portrayed slavery as a mainly benign institution.[http://web.gc.cuny.edu/ashp/doing/doinghistoriography.html] "The Phillips school of slavery historiography was not limited to the South or to a faction within the historical profession; as recently as 1950, for instance, Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, of Harvard and Columbia Universities respectively, propagated the traditional interpretation in one of the leading college textbooks of the era," according to the American Social History Project at the City University Of New York . {Link without Title} Pulitzer Prize winning historian , 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} TREATMENT OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS In his book, ''Declarations Of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology'' ''Declarations Of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology'' by Howard Zinn (HarperPerennial, 1990) p.57. ISBN 0-060-92108-0, left-wing historian Howard Zinn writes: :"The closest we have to a contemporary source on what happened after that first landing is the account by Bartolomeo de las Casas, who as a young priest participated in the conquest of Cuba. In his ''History of the Indies'', las Casas wrote, "Endless testimonies . . . prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives. . . . But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle, and destroy. . . . The admiral . . . was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians." B. de las Casas, ''History of the Indies'' (Harper & Row, 1971). Zinn continues: :"The "admiral" was Columbus. One of the few historians even to mention the atrocities committed by Columbus against the Indians was Samuel Eliot Morison, who wrote the two-volume biography of Columbus, ''Admiral of the Ocean Sea.'' Samuel Eliot Morison, ''Admiral of the Ocean Sea'' (Little Brown, 1942). In his shorter book, written for a wider audience in 1954, ''Christopher Columbus, Mariner'', Morison says, "The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide." Samuel Eliot Morison, ''Christopher Columbus, Mariner'' (Little Brown, 1955). Zinn comments: :"But this statement is on one page, buried in a book that is mostly a glowing tribute to Columbus. In my book A People's History of the United States I commented on Morison's quick mention of Columbus's brutality: Outright lying or quiet omission takes the risk of discovery which, when made, might arouse the reader to rebel against the writer. To state the facts, however, and then to bury them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but it's not that important—it should weigh very little in our final judgments; it should affect very little what we do in the world. Zinn, ''A People's History of the United States'', p. 8. :Is my own emphasis on Columbus's treatment of the Indians biased? No doubt. I won't deny or conceal that Columbus had courage and skill, was an extraordinary sailor. But I want to reveal something about him that was omitted from the historical education of most Americans. My bias is this: I want my readers to think twice about our traditional heroes, to reexamine what we cherish (technical competence) and what we ignore (human consequences). I want them to think about how easily we accept conquest and murder because it furthers "progress." ''Declarations Of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology'' by Howard Zinn (HarperPerennial, 1990) p.57. ISBN 0-060-92108-0 BOOKS BY SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON Most of these have been reprinted and reissued.
AWARDS Lifetime achievement honors
Military and foreign honors
Book prizes
(years listed are when prizes were awarded) Honorary degrees
QUOTES
REFERENCES
|
|
|