Richard B. Morris
Encyclopedia
Richard Brandon Morris (July 24, 1904 - March 3, 1989) was an American historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 best known for his pioneering work in colonial American legal history and the early history of American labor. In later years, he shifted his research interests to the constitutional, diplomatic, and political history of the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...

 and the making of the U.S. Constitution.

Education and early career

Morris was educated at Townshend Harris High School in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 and received his B.A. degree from the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

. He attended Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in...

 and at the same time earned his Ph.D. degree in history at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, with Evarts Boutell Greene
Evarts Boutell Greene
Evarts Boutell Greene was an American historian, born in Kobe, Japan, where his parents were missionaries. He graduated Harvard University , and began teaching American history at the University of Illinois, where he was also dean of the college of arts and literature.Called to Columbia...

 as his dissertation advisor. His dissertation, published by Columbia University Press as Studies in the History of American Law, with Special Reference to the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1930), still defines the research agenda for historians working on early American law, thought at the time it attracted the bitter denunciations of such law-school practitioners of legal history as Julius Goebel, Jr., and Karl Llewellyn, both on the faculty of Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in...

. Morris taught at City College until in 1946 he was named to the faculty of Columbia University, having published his massive and definitive Government and Labor in Early America (1946).

Career at Columbia University

Eventually becoming Gouverneur Morris Professor of History at Columbia (he was no relation to the Revolutionary and founding father Gouverneur Morris
Gouverneur Morris
Gouverneur Morris , was an American statesman, a Founding Father of the United States, and a native of New York City who represented Pennsylvania in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He was a signatory to the Articles of Confederation. Morris was also an author of large sections of the...

), Richard B. Morris continued his pioneering research and writing. In 1966 he won the Bancroft Prize
Bancroft Prize
The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. It was established in 1948 by a bequest from Frederic Bancroft...

 in History for his book on the diplomacy of the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...

, The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence (1965). This project, and the acquisition by Columbia University of the papers of John Jay
John Jay
John Jay was an American politician, statesman, revolutionary, diplomat, a Founding Father of the United States, and the first Chief Justice of the United States ....

, led him into one of his most productive scholarly ventures. Two volumes of an unfinished four-volume edition of the previously unpublished papers of John Jay followed (1976, 1980), taking Jay's life from his birth in 1745 to his return to the United States in 1784 to become the Confederation's Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Morris also quarried from his work on Jay a series of lectures in the Gaspar G. Bacon Lecture Series at Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...

, which in 1967 he published as John Jay, the Nation, and the Court, focusing on Jay as a committed nationalist in his work as a diplomat and as the first Chief Justice of the United States. Morris's Phelps Lectures at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 resulted in his 1966 book The American Revolution Reconsidered, which he followed in 1970 with his The Emerging Nations and the American Revolution. In 1973, preparing for the impending bicentennial of the American Revolution, he published Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, a collection of biographical essays about Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

, George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

, John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...

, Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

, John Jay
John Jay
John Jay was an American politician, statesman, revolutionary, diplomat, a Founding Father of the United States, and the first Chief Justice of the United States ....

, James Madison
James Madison
James Madison, Jr. was an American statesman and political theorist. He was the fourth President of the United States and is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being the primary author of the United States Constitution and at first an opponent of, and then a key author of the United...

, and Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...

.

He was opposed to the Columbia University protests of 1968
Columbia University protests of 1968
The Columbia University protests of 1968 were among the many student demonstrations that occurred around the world in that year. The Columbia protests erupted over the spring of that year after students discovered links between the university and the institutional apparatus supporting the United...

, and the agenda of the radicals.

In 1976, following the general scholarly disappointment with the bicentennial of the American Revolution, Morris, then president of the American Historical Association
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association is the oldest and largest society of historians and professors of history in the United States. Founded in 1884, the association promotes historical studies, the teaching of history, and the preservation of and access to historical materials...

, joined with James MacGregor Burns
James MacGregor Burns
James MacGregor Burns is an historian and political scientist, presidential biographer, and authority on leadership studies. He is the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government Emeritus at Williams College and Distinguished Leadership Scholar at the of the School of Public Policy at the University...

, then president of the American Political Science Association
American Political Science Association
The American Political Science Association is a professional association of political science students and scholars in the United States. Founded in 1903, it publishes three academic journals...

, to found Project '87—a joint effort to mark the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution. Project '87 brought together historians, political scientists, and legal scholars and managed to salvage the Constitution's bicentennial as an occasion for the publication of groundbreaking new historical and legal scholarship on the Constitution and its origins. Morris's own contribution to the Bicentennial, and the culmination of his life's work as a historian, was The Forging of the Union, 1781–1789, his 1987 volume for the New American Nation series that he coedited with his longtime friend and colleague Henry Steele Commager
Henry Steele Commager
Henry Steele Commager was an American historian who helped define Modern liberalism in the United States for two generations through his forty books and 700 essays and reviews...

.

In 1930, Morris married Berenice Robinson, and their marriage lasted the rest of his life; she died in 1990. They had two sons, Jeffrey B. Morris, a constitutional and legal historian who teaches at the Touro Law School in New York, and Donald R. Morris, a teacher in Wyoming.

Works

  • Richard B. Morris, Studies in the Early History of American Law, With Special Reference to the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. New York: Columbia University Press, 1930; reissue, with new foreword, Philadelphia: J. M. Mitchell Co., 1959.
  • Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America, 1946. -- originally published, New York: Columbia University Press, 1946.
  • Richard B. Morris, The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.
  • Richard B. Morris, John Jay, the Nation, and the Court. Boston: Boston University Press, 1967.
  • Richard B. Morris, The American Revolution Reconsidered. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
  • Richard B. Morris, The Emerging Nations and the American Revolution. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
  • Richard B. Morris, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
  • Richard B. Morris, ed., John Jay: Unpublished Papers, 1743-1780. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
  • Richard B. Morris, ed., John Jay: Unpublished Papers, 1780-1784. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.
  • Richard B. Morris, The Forging of the Union, 1781–1789. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.
  • Philip Ranlet, Richard B. Morris and American History in the Twentieth Century. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004.
  • Alden T. Vaughan and George Athan Billias, eds., Perspectives on Early American History: Essays in Honor of Richard B. Morris. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

External links

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