MORSE, JEDIDIAH
(23 August 1761, Woodstock, CT-9 June 1826, -New Haven, C1). Education: B.A., Yale College, 1783; studied theology under Jonathan Edwards, Jr.* and Samuel Wales, New Haven, 1783-85. Career: Teacher and preacher in CT, GA, and NJ, 1785-89; minister, First Congregational Church, Charlestown, MA, 1789-1819; editor, Panoplist, 1805-10.
Through the centuries the Congregational Church was often tested by conflicting opinions among the members. But in most cases the differences were reconciled, ignored, or grudgingly accepted. The major exception is the splitting off of the Unitarian Church in the early nineteenth century. The differences between Unitarians and "orthodox" Congregationalists were so great that a division was perhaps inevitable. But personalities also played a part, and no one contributed more to the schism than Jedidiah Morse. Morse was not the son of person who would "let sleeping dogs lie." An accomplished singer, he once curtly interrupted his church choir in the middle of a psalm, criticized their performance, and told them to sit down. The choir stayed out of church for a few weeks, until resentment wore off, then returned.
An orthodox Calvinist, Morse had long opposed the spread of Arminian and Unitarian ideas among Congregationalists. Then in 1805 Harvard appointed liberal Henry Ware* as Hollis Professor of Divinity. Morse protested that the chair's donor had been orthodox, and Ware had no business occupying it. Bringing into the open a struggle that many Congregationalists had wanted to ignore, he began publishing Panoplist as an oracle for the orthodox. He helped form the General Association of Massachusetts to encourage uniformity and with Leonard Woods he created Andover Theological Seminary (1808) as a bastion against infidelity. By 1815 it was apparent that no single platform would contain both parties of Congregationalists.
Morse was equally self-righteous and divisive in his political views. A staunch Federalist, he opposed Jefferson and the French Revolution. Several of his sermons in 1798 against the "Bavarian Illuminati," a supposed radical group infiltrating America. inspired an early example of what historian Richard Hofstadter calls "the paranoid style" in American politics.
On such issues Morse was almost obsessive in identifying supposed enemies to traditional Congregational and American values. But in many other ways he was an imaginative supporter of religious movements. He helped found and run the American Tract Society, the American Bible Society, and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. He was one of the first proponents of societies to help colonize free blacks and he advocated better treatment for Indians.
In addition to all of these religious activities, Morse lived almost a second life as the "father of American geography." Discontented with European versions of American geography. he published in 1794 Geography Made Easy, the first American geography textbook. It was republished many times, giving Morse the funds to support various charitable causes. His other books, maps. and gazetteers were the standard geographical sources of the time.
Bibliography
A: Geography Made Easy (New Haven. 1784); The American Universal Geography, 2 vols., (Boston, 1793); The American Gazetteer (Boston, 1797); Trill! Reasons on Which the Election of a Hollis Professor of Divinity in Harvard College was Opposed at the Board of Overseers, 14 February, 1805 (Charlestown, Mass., 1805); Review of American Unitarianism (Boston, 1815); An Inquiry into the Right to Change the Ecclesiastical Constitution of the Congregational Churches of Massachusetts (Boston, 1816); Report to the Secretary of War ... on Indian Affairs (New Haven, 1822).
B: AAP 2, 247-56; BSGYC 4, 295-304; DAB 13, 245-47; DARB, 317-18; NCAB 13,353; William B. Sprague, Life of Jedidiah Morse (New York, 1874); James K. Morse, Jedidiah Morse: A Champion of New England Orthodoxy (New York, 1939); John W. Phillips, Jedidiah Morse and New England Congregationalism (New Brunswick, N.J., 1983); Conrad Wright, ''The Controversial Career of Jedidiah Morse," Harvard Library Bulletin, 31 (1983),64-87.
Through the centuries the Congregational Church was often tested by conflicting opinions among the members. But in most cases the differences were reconciled, ignored, or grudgingly accepted. The major exception is the splitting off of the Unitarian Church in the early nineteenth century. The differences between Unitarians and "orthodox" Congregationalists were so great that a division was perhaps inevitable. But personalities also played a part, and no one contributed more to the schism than Jedidiah Morse. Morse was not the son of person who would "let sleeping dogs lie." An accomplished singer, he once curtly interrupted his church choir in the middle of a psalm, criticized their performance, and told them to sit down. The choir stayed out of church for a few weeks, until resentment wore off, then returned.
An orthodox Calvinist, Morse had long opposed the spread of Arminian and Unitarian ideas among Congregationalists. Then in 1805 Harvard appointed liberal Henry Ware* as Hollis Professor of Divinity. Morse protested that the chair's donor had been orthodox, and Ware had no business occupying it. Bringing into the open a struggle that many Congregationalists had wanted to ignore, he began publishing Panoplist as an oracle for the orthodox. He helped form the General Association of Massachusetts to encourage uniformity and with Leonard Woods he created Andover Theological Seminary (1808) as a bastion against infidelity. By 1815 it was apparent that no single platform would contain both parties of Congregationalists.
Morse was equally self-righteous and divisive in his political views. A staunch Federalist, he opposed Jefferson and the French Revolution. Several of his sermons in 1798 against the "Bavarian Illuminati," a supposed radical group infiltrating America. inspired an early example of what historian Richard Hofstadter calls "the paranoid style" in American politics.
On such issues Morse was almost obsessive in identifying supposed enemies to traditional Congregational and American values. But in many other ways he was an imaginative supporter of religious movements. He helped found and run the American Tract Society, the American Bible Society, and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. He was one of the first proponents of societies to help colonize free blacks and he advocated better treatment for Indians.
In addition to all of these religious activities, Morse lived almost a second life as the "father of American geography." Discontented with European versions of American geography. he published in 1794 Geography Made Easy, the first American geography textbook. It was republished many times, giving Morse the funds to support various charitable causes. His other books, maps. and gazetteers were the standard geographical sources of the time.
Bibliography
A: Geography Made Easy (New Haven. 1784); The American Universal Geography, 2 vols., (Boston, 1793); The American Gazetteer (Boston, 1797); Trill! Reasons on Which the Election of a Hollis Professor of Divinity in Harvard College was Opposed at the Board of Overseers, 14 February, 1805 (Charlestown, Mass., 1805); Review of American Unitarianism (Boston, 1815); An Inquiry into the Right to Change the Ecclesiastical Constitution of the Congregational Churches of Massachusetts (Boston, 1816); Report to the Secretary of War ... on Indian Affairs (New Haven, 1822).
B: AAP 2, 247-56; BSGYC 4, 295-304; DAB 13, 245-47; DARB, 317-18; NCAB 13,353; William B. Sprague, Life of Jedidiah Morse (New York, 1874); James K. Morse, Jedidiah Morse: A Champion of New England Orthodoxy (New York, 1939); John W. Phillips, Jedidiah Morse and New England Congregationalism (New Brunswick, N.J., 1983); Conrad Wright, ''The Controversial Career of Jedidiah Morse," Harvard Library Bulletin, 31 (1983),64-87.
