Richard B. Morris

Richard Brandon Morris (born July 24, 1904 in New York City , † March 3, 1989 ibid) was an American historian, best known for work on early American colonial history, the American Revolution and the early constitutional history of the United States.

Morris studied at City College of New York with a bachelor's degree in 1924 and at Columbia University with a master's degree in 1925 and a doctorate from Evarts Boutell Greene in 1930. He taught at City College of New York from 1927 and from 1949 until his retirement in 1973 at Columbia University, where he headed the history department from 1959 to 1961.

Dissatisfied with the scientific response to the 200th anniversary of the USA in 1977, he and James MacGregor Burns founded Project 87 for the 200th anniversary of the US Constitution.

In 1988 he received the Bruce Catton Prize and he won the Bancroft Prize for The Peacemakers in 1966 (1965). In 1977 he was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Fonts

• Editor with Henry Steele Commager : The Spirit of Seventy-Six. Bonanza Books, New York 1958
• Editor with James Woodress: The Jeffersonians, 1801-1829. Webster Publishing, St. Louis 1961
• Editor: Encyclopedia of American History. 1953, reprinted Harper and Row 1982
• Studies in the History of American Law, with Special Reference to the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Columbia University Press, 1930 (dissertation)
• Government and Labor in Early America. Columbia University Press, 1946
• The Peacemakers. The Great Powers and American Independence. Harper and Row, 1965
• John Jay , the Nation and the Court. Boston University Press, 1967
• The Emerging Nations and the American Revolution. Harper and Row, 1970
• Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries. Harper & Row, New York 1973 (biographies of Benjamin Franklin , George Washington , John Adams , Thomas Jefferson , John Jay, James Madison , Alexander Hamilton )
• The American Revolution Reconsidered. Harper and Row, 1967 (Phelps Lectures at New York University)
• The Forging of the Union, 1781-1789. Harper and Row, 1987

He also edited unpublished manuscripts by John Jay, which Columbia University acquired.

literature

• Philip Ranlet: Richard B. Morris and American History in the Twentieth Century. University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland 2004.
• Alden T. Vaughan, George Athan Billias (Editors): Perspectives on Early American History: Essays in Honor of Richard B. Morris. Harper & Row, New York 1973

Web links

• Encyclopedia Britannica