Morse, Anson Daniel, , Vermont 1846 1916 Male Educator Historian educator and historian, brother of Harmon Northrop Morse [q. v. ], was born at Cambridge in one of the most rugged parts of Vermont, the son of Harmon and Elizabeth Murray (Buck) Morse of ancestry reaching back to the earliest years of the settlement of New England.
His early training was obtained in the schools of the neighborhood and he was graduated from Amherst College with high honors in the class of 1871.
From 1872 to 1875 he taught at Williston Seminary, Easthampton, Massachussets, then, after a year of study at Heidelberg, he was brought back to teach at his alma mater, to which he was to give more than forty years of most devoted and useful service.
In 1876 he was a lecturer on political economy in Amherst College; in the following year he became professor of political economy and instructor in history, in 1879 he was appointed Otis Professor of History and Political Science and in 1885 he was transferred to the Winkley chair.
He had studied again at Heidelberg in 1883.
After almost fifty years of residence in Amherst, he died in 1916, a greatly beloved figure.
In three notable articles: "The Place of Party in the Political System" (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol.
II, no. 3, 1892); "What is a Party" (Political Science Quarterly, March 1896); and "The Natural History of Party" (Yale Review, May 1893), Morse presented a philosophical study of the conditions which bring parties into existence, of their nature and organization, their behavior in and out of power, and, finally, the causes and circumstances of their dissolution.
The most important of these studies were collected and published in 1923 in a volume entitled Parties and Party Leaders.
His method was profoundly suggestive and provocative of discussion; he was never didactic.
[The Introduction to Parties and Party Leaders by Dwight W. Morrow and to Civilization and the World War by John B. Clark contain biographical information.
See also: Amherst Grads. '
Quart. , May 1916; Amherst Coll. , Biog.
Record of the Grads.
and Nongrads.
(1927); Who's Who in America, 1914-15. ]
Morse was a leader in a small group of scholars who in the last quarter of the nineteenth century began to teach that the political party is the most effective organ for expressing and enforcing the popular will.
They further pointed out that the United States, through its freedom from deeply rooted antagonistic customs and institutions, offers the most favorable field for the study of the sweep toward democracy, which has characterized the development of civilized government since the eighteenth century.
Throughout his life he was a most thorough and diligent student of history but he was often reluctant to commit his thought to print.
Morse was married, on Sept. 3, 1878, to Margaret Duncan Ely.
She, with six of their seven children, survived him.
