Samuel Eliot Morison

Samuel Eliot Morison (1953)

Samuel Eliot Morison (born July 9, 1887 in Boston , Massachusetts , † May 15, 1976 there ) was an American historian .

Life

Samuel Eliot Morison was the son of John Holmes Morison (1856-1911) and Emily Marshall Morison, nee Eliot (1857-1925). It was named after his maternal grandfather, educator and historian Samuel Eliot . He belongs to the Boston intellectual dynasty, which also includes TS Eliot , Charles William Eliot and Charles Eliot Norton . He attended Noble and Greenough School (1897-1901) and St. Paul's (1901-1903) before studying at Harvard University . He completed his history studies with a bachelor's degree in 1908 , made his master's degree in École libre des sciences politiques in 1909 and received his doctorate in 1912, again at Harvard.

Morison was married twice in his life. His first wife Elizabeth S. Greene, with whom he had four children, died in 1945. In his second marriage, he was married to the previously widowed Priscilla Barton, who died in 1973.

On May 15, 1976, Morison died of a heart attack at the age of 88 . His ashes are buried in Northeast Harbor , Maine . On July 19, 1979, the frigate USS Samuel Eliot Morison (FFG-13) was named after him in his honor. The ship was in service until 2002 and was then transferred to the Turkish Navy, where it sails under the name TCG Gökova (F-496) .

Military career

During World War I he served as a soldier in the United States Army . He later belonged to the American delegation of the Baltic Commission to the 1919 Peace Conference.

He completed his second military service from 1942 to 1952 in the United States Navy Reserve. With entry into service he held the rank of lieutenant commander and with exit of service as rear admiral . This was on his own initiative and that of his friend, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt , back. Morison offered to write a story about all of the events of the United States Navy during World War II . With History of United States Naval Operations in World War II , he published 15 volumes from 1947 to 1962 on battles, strategies, tactics and people who were involved with the US Navy. For volume three, which was published in 1948 under the title The Rising Sun in the Pacific , Morison received a Bancroft Prize in 1949 .

Scientific career

After receiving his doctorate, which served as the basis for his book Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis , published in 1913, Morison worked as a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley . From 1915 he taught again at Harvard and after the First World War he taught from 1922 to 1925 as Harmsworth Professor of American History at the University of Oxford . He then returned to Harvard again, where he received a full professorship. He studied the history of New England and wrote several books on the history of Harvard in the 1930s. In 1941 he was appointed Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History . For his biography Admiral of the Ocean Sea , published in 1942 , he was awarded his first Pulitzer Prize for Best Biography a year later .

Three years after his second military service , Morison retired from his professorship in 1955 and from then on devoted himself to writing historical biographies. He wrote, among others, Nathaniel Homes Morison (1957), William Hickling Prescott (1958) and was awarded his second Pulitzer Prize for John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959). In the 1960s he wrote with books such as The Story of Mount Desert Island, Maine (1960), One Boy's Boston, 1887-1901 (1962) and Introduction to Whaler Out of New Bedford (1962) mainly on the history of New England. His focus only changed again in 1970 when he wrote more and more books about exploration , including The Two Ocean War (1963), The Caribbean as Columbus Saw It (1964) and Spring Tides (1965). In 1950 he was president of the American Historical Association .

Awards

In 1915, Morison was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He has received several honorary degrees, including Amherst College (1936), Harvard University (1936), Columbia University (1942), Yale University (1949) and the University of Oxford (1951). In addition to his two Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes, Morison was awarded the Loubat Prize , the Balzan Prize and, in 1962, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal . In 1954 he was elected a corresponding member of the British Academy . In 1963 he became an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In 1964, US President Lyndon B. Johnson also awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom .

Samuel Eliot Morison Prize

→ Main article : Samuel Eliot Morison Prize

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• Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis (1913)
• A History of the Constitution of Massachusetts (1917, reprinted 1960)
• The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 (1921)
• A Prologue to American History: An Inaugural Lecture (1922)
• Sources and Documents Illustrating the American Revolution, 1764–1788, and the Formation of the Federal Constitution (1923)
• The Class Lives of Samuel Eliot and Nathaniel Homes Morison, Harvard 1839 (1926)
• Oxford History of the United States (1927)
• An Hour of American History: From Columbus to Coolidge (1929)
• Builders of the Bay Colony (1930)
• Historical Background for the Massachusetts Bay Tercentenary in 1930 (1930)
• Historical Markers Erected by Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Commission (1930)
• The Growth of the American Republic (1930)
  • The Becoming of the American Republic: History of the United States from Its Beginnings to the Present , Stuttgart 1950.
• The Proprietors of Peterborough, New Hampshire (1930)
• The Young Man Washington (1932)
• The Founding of Harvard College (1935)
• Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (1936)
• The Events of the Year MDCCCCXXXV (1936)
• The Puritan Pronaos (1936)
• Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636-1936 (1936)
• The Pilgrim Fathers: Their Significance in History (1937)
• Doctor Morison's Farewell to the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (1939)
• The Ancient Classics in a Modern Democracy (1939)
• The Second Voyage of Christopher Columbus (1939)
• Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century (1940)
• Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942)
  • Admiral of the World Ocean: The Life of Christoph Columbus , Bremen 1948.
  • With Columbus on board , Hamburg 1949.
• History As A Literary Art (1946)
• History of United States Naval Operations in World War II , Boston: Little, Brown (15 volumes, published 1947-1962)
• These forty years. (1948)
• Ropemakers of Plymouth (1950)
• Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647 (1952)
• By Land and By Sea (1953)
• 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)
• American Contributions to the Strategy of World War II (1958)
• Strategy and Compromise (1958)
• William Hickling Prescott (1958)
• A New and Fresh English Translation of the Letter of Columbus Announcing the Discovery of America (1959)
• John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959)
• The Story of Mount Desert Island, Maine (1960)
• The Scholar in American: Past, Present, and Future (1961)
• Introduction to Whaler Out of New Bedford (1962)
• One Boy's Boston, 1887-1901 (1962)
• Harvard Guide to American History (1963)
• The Two Ocean War (1963)
• The Caribbean as Columbus Saw It (1964)
• Vistas of History (1964)
• Spring Tides (1965)
• The Oxford History of the American People (1965)
• Old Bruin: Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, 1796-1858 (1967)
• Life in Washington a Century and a Half Ago (1968)
• Harrison Gray Otis, 1765–1848: The Urbane Federalist (1969)
• The European Discovery of America (1971)
• Samuel de Champlain: Father of New France (1972)
• Francis Parkman (1973)
• The Conservative American Revolution (1976)
• Sailor Historian: The Best of Samuel Eliot Morison (1977)

Web links

• Samuel Eliot Morison in the nndb (English)
• Literature by and about Samuel Eliot Morison in the catalog of the German National Library

• Samuel Eliot Morison in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Official United States Navy Biography

Individual evidence

1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 9, 2020 . 
2. ^ Members: Samuel Eliot Morison. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 16, 2019 .