Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson
About this book
In Turmoil and Tradition Elting Morison has written a wise and subtle exploration of American life and society. Just as Lord David Cecil laid open an era in his Melbourne, just as Henry Adams in The Education exposed the mainsprings of his country and his age so Mr. Morison illuminates the history of a stirring half century in the biography of a man who was concerned in most of its key events.When Henry Lewis Stimson was born, Andrew Johnson was President of the United States; when he died, Harry S. Truman had been in the White House for five years.During those eighty-three years, America, broken loose from its past by the violence of the Civil War,changed spectacularly and chaotically. In this turbulent era Stimson, devoted as he was to principle and firm standards, was able both to resist the vulgarity and to accept the danger of his times. From his apprenticeship in the law under Elihu Root, Stimson was associated with great events and great men. He served the state under seven of the eight Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Harry S. Truman. He was Secretary of War, Secretary of State, Governor General of he Philippines, close contender for the governorship of New York, world statesman -- more than once, as Dwight D. Eisenhower has said of him, "an inspiration at a moment when all of the world seemed black."Elting Morison here not only tells the story of a great public servant; he explores the sources of Stimson's power in his traditions and training and he places him amongst the brilliant and varied men with whom his career was led: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Felix Frankfurter, Leonard Wood, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George C. Marshall, Ernest J. King, Cordell Hull -- these and many more great men engage in historic events in these pages.