Samuel Flagg Bemis

He was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes. Combs says he was "the greatest of all historians of early American diplomacy."

Samuel Flagg Bemis studied at Harvard University and Clark University. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is history. Employment is recorded with Yale University. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship, Pulitzer Prize for History, Pulitzer Prize for Biography and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

• Name — Samuel Flagg Bemis • Born — 20 October 1891 • Birthplace — Worcester, Massachusetts, US • Died — 26 September 1973 • Place of death — Bridgeport, Connecticut, US • Children — 1 • Awards — Pulitzer Prize (1927; 1950) • Alma Mater — * Clark University • Harvard University • Doctoral Advisor — Edward Channing • Academic Advisors — J. Franklin Jameson • Discipline — History • Sub Discipline — Diplomatic history • Workplaces — * Colorado College • Whitman College • George Washington University • Yale University • Doctoral Students — * Robert H. Ferrell • John A. DeNovo • William W. Kaufmann • Notable Works — Pinckney's Treaty: America's Advantage from Europe's Distress, 1783–1800, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, John Quincy Adams and the Union, The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy series

Bemis was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, on what he remembered as "the wrong side of the hedge". He received his B.A. degree in 1912 from Clark University. Influenced by George Hubbard Blakeslee of the Clark faculty, Bemis also acquired an A.M. from Clark the following year. In 1916 he was granted his Ph.D. by Harvard University. He first taught at Colorado College from 1917 to 1921. From 1921 to 1923, he taught at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. In 1923–1924, he served as a research associate at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Division of Historical Research. Bemis joined the faculty at George Washington University in 1924, remaining there a decade, and accepted the history department's chairmanship in 1925. From 1927 to 1929, he led the Library of Congress's European Mission. He left George Washington University in 1934, first serving as lecturer at Harvard University for the 1934–1935 academic year while James Phinney Baxter III was on research leave. Then, in 1935, he took up his position at Yale University, where he remained through the end of his career. He was first the Farnham Professor of Diplomatic History and then in 1945 became the Sterling Professor of Diplomatic History and Inter-American Relations. In 1958, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He retired in 1960, and served as president of the American Historical Association in 1961. His presidential address for the AHA engaged the topic of "American Foreign Policy and the Blessings of Liberty". He died in Bridgeport, Connecticut, aged 81. He originally supported the League of Nations but after two decades changed his mind: The League of Nations has been a disappointing failure.... It has been a failure, not because the United States did not join it; but because the great powers have been unwilling to apply sanctions except where it suited their individual national interests to do so, and because Democracy, on which the original concepts of the League rested for support, has collapsed over half the world.

Samuel Flagg Bemis is recorded as having received Guggenheim Fellowship, Pulitzer Prize for History and Pulitzer Prize for Biography.