Samuel Eliot Morison

63
Samuel Eliot Morison bigraphy, stories - United States admiral

Samuel Eliot Morison : biography

July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976

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) with Henry Steele Commager. 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.

The scholar and historian (1913–1941)

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.

From 1922–1925, Morison taught at Oxford University as Harmsworth Professor of American History—the first American to hold that position. 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).

In 1938 Morison was elected as an honorary member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.

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.

The war years and military service (1942–1952)

In 1942, Morison met with his friend President Franklin D. 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. 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.