F NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT NOR assistance in the publication of this book, I am greatly indebted to Professors Harry de Forest Smith, Frederic L. Thompson, and George D. Olds, of Amherst College. Hearty thanks are also due to Professor John W. Burgess, formerly of Columbia University, Dr. John Franklin Jameson, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Professors Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, of Columbia University, Allen Johnson, of Yale University, and Charles T. Burnett, of Bowdoin College, all of whom have made valuable suggestions as to the life and work of Professor Morse. The index has been prepared by Mr. Karl W. Bigelow, of Harvard University. Finally, I am particularly indebted to Mrs. Margaret D. Morse, the devoted wife of Professor Morse, who rendered invaluable assistance in the selection and the arrangement of Professor Morse's papers, and to Professor Harry Elmer Barnes of Clark University, who has given me unstintedly the benefit of his very wide knowledge of the history and the literature of the subjects about which Professor Morse wrote. D. W. M. A INTRODUCTION NSON DANIEL MORSE was born at Cambridge, first at a district school near his home and later at Johnson Academy and St. Albans Union School. He then taught for a short time in a district school at Fairfax, Vermont, and entered Amherst College in 1866. His college course was interrupted by ill-health and he was graduated with the class of 1871. He taught in Williston Seminary from 1872 to 1875, and spent the year 1875-1876 in foreign study in German universities. In 1876 he began his work as a teacher at Amherst College. During the year 1876-1877 he was instructor in political economy; from 1877 to 1878 he was instructor in history; and from 1878 to 1892 professor of history and political economy. From 1892 to 1907 he was professor of history, and from 1907 until his death in 1916, professor emeritus of history. Professor Morse was above all a student. He took a deep interest in politics, past and present. He wrote little, and, like Lord Acton, shrank from publishing the little that he wrote. Very early in his life he was attracted to the study of party and party government, and he continued his deep interest in that subject until his death. More than thirty years ago he planned a book on the general subject of party government, and he never wholly abandoned that design. A few years before his death he seriously considered the publication of the articles now printed in this book. He planned to revise them thoroughly, to deal especially with Jefferson and with Lincoln, whom he considered the two ideal party leaders for a democratic state, and to treat much more fully of the party history since 1876. Just at this time, however, the Great War came on. Morse's health had never been good, and he had left but two years of his allotted three score years and ten. He gave those two years to his little book Civilization and the World War, published not by himself but by his family after his death. The work on political parties was laid aside and never again resumed. The decision to publish these articles was not reached without some hesitation. If one who has written essays over a period of thirty years is urged to publish them in book form and has failed to do so, it may well be contended that those who come after him should respect his wishes. Especially can this be urged in the case of the writings of a man like Morse, whose whole life was devoted to the search for truth for its own sake, who hated slipshod work, who many times left things unpublished because he himself felt that he had not acquired the knowledge to complete them. Yet, on the other hand, Morse had hoped to publish these articles after a thorough revision. It may, perhaps, be a further argument in support of publication that every article included in the book was published at one time or another by Professor Morse himself. They are merely gathered together in this volume in the form in which he originally gave them to the public. The particular occasion for publishing should also be noted. Amherst College reached its hundredth year in 1921. In connection with the centennial of the college it was decided to publish a series of "Amherst Books." Morse went to Amherst in 1866. He died in 1916. With the interruptions noted above, he was intimately associated with the college for just fifty years. Professor Woodbridge, the Dean of the Graduate Faculty of Columbia University, himself an alumnus of Amherst College, said in a centennial address at Amherst in June, 1921, that the college in its first hundred years had made three significant contributions to education in America. The first the work done in the early years of the college by Professor Edward Hitchcock and his students in geology, the second, the achievements in the middle period in history and political science, and the third the contributions to philosophy not so much in philosophical research as in philosophical teaching - by Professor Garman and his students. Morse was one of the men of the middle period who represented history and political science. Amherst has always been a small college, but in the period between 1860 and 1880 it was much smaller than it is now. The classes rarely ran above fifty. The equipment was meagre. The teachers were few. In those years, however, this small college started on their subsequent careers a remarkable group of men in history and political science: Herbert Baxter Adams, John William Burgess, Munroe Smith, John Bates Clark, Anson Daniel Morse, Herbert Levi Osgood, Richmond Mayo-Smith, Frank Johnson Goodnow, John Franklin Jameson. Morse was the only one of this group whose life work was to be done at Amherst. Johns Hopkins may claim Adams and Jameson; Columbia may claim Burgess, Clark, Munroe Smith, Osgood and Mayo-Smith; both Columbia and Hopkins may claim Goodnow - despite the fact that Amherst gave flight to all of them. But Morse belongs peculiarly to 1 It is worthy of note that there was no regular department of history at Amherst College until Professor Burgess returned to Amherst to found the department in 1873. Professor Burgess in a private letter makes the following interesting comment upon the instruction at Amherst in his day: "Two men at Amherst had great influence in holding me in the line of study to which I had consecrated myself on the battlefield at Chattanooga. They were Professor Julius Seelye and Professor Tuckerman. Seelye's exposition of Schwegler's History of Philosophy was, as every Amherst man of the last half of the 19th century knows, a veritable history of civilization. Tuckerman was the Professor of Botany, but he was a great reader of History and he gave the only instruction in general history afforded in the College at that period. All this, however, was but a foretaste, and, on graduation in 1867, I felt that I must look elsewhere and afar for the disciplines and knowledges, which would enable me to realize my vow and plan of 1863." After leaving Amherst in 1867, Professor Burgess first studied law and was admitted to the bar of Massachusetts, then taught for a short time at Knox College in Illinois. In 1871, after advising with the Honorable George Bancroft, Professor Burgess went to Germany and studied in Göttingen under Lotze and Waitz, then in Leipzig with Roscher in economic history, and with Wenck and Wuttke in general political history, and finally in Berlin, where for two years he worked with Zeller, Curtius, Mommsen, Droysen, von Trietschke and von Gneist. Professor Morse had left Amherst before Professor Burgess returned to found the history department. He was never a pupil of Professor Burgess, but he was a pupil of the German teachers of Professor Burgess. Amherst. No collection of Amherst Books published as an outgrowth of the centennial could be complete if such of his writings as are available were not collected and published. It will be remembered, therefore, that this book is brought out primarily for the benefit of those two generations of men who sat at Morse's feet, and who received from him their first impulse to know for themselves and to appraise independently the vital factors in the development of men and societies of men upon this earth. If the writings are of interest or of value to a wider audience, it will be a source of added gratification and a further justification of their publication. A great diversity will be noted in the nature and content of the articles published in this book. This is accounted for, not only by the periods at which the articles were written, but, what is more important, by the different audiences addressed. For example, the earliest article was written in 1886 to the limited group reached by the Political Science Quarterly, the latest article was written in 1912 for the large audience reached by the Encyclopedia Britannica. Uniformity of style or analysis will hardly be expected. It is believed, however, that there is a philosophic unity to the articles which warrants putting them in one book. Morse's studies in the history and theory of political parties go back to the beginning of his teaching at Amherst. Some of his writings on party leaders and party movements appeared prior to 1891. It was in 1891, however, that he published his first theoretical article on party with the title "The Place of Party in the Political System." At that time little had been written on the theory or philosophy of the political party. In the words of Professor Merriam: "Although the 1 Much in the way of pertinent comment on parties and their function is to be found in writings of English essayists from Swift, Bolingbroke and Hume to Macaulay, Bagehot and Leslie Stephen, and in the writings of the actual participants in government from Halifax to Lord Morley. De Tocqueville had written his Democracy in America in 1835. This notable study of the American political system was primarily descriptive. There was, however, a significant analysis of voluntary political and civil associations and of their importance in democratic countries. To De Tocqueville "parties are |
