William Lee Miller (April 21, 1926 – May 27, 2012) was an American journalist, academic, and historian who taught in the University of Virginia's religious studies department for 17 years, and remained affiliated with the university after his 1999 retirement.William Lee Miller, Scholar on Abraham Lincoln, Is Dead at 86, The New York Times, June 5, 2012
Early life and education Miller was the son of a Presbyterian minister, and was born in Bloomington, Indiana. Due to his father's profession, Miller grew up in various parts of the United States, including Laramie, Wyoming, Hutchinson, Kansas, and Lincoln, Nebraska. He earned undergraduate degrees from the University of Nebraska and Yale University, and a Ph.D. from Yale.
Political, journalistic, and government work Between 1953 and 1965, Miller contributed to The Reporter. He was on staff at that publication between 1955 and 1958. In 1964, he released a collection of those writings in book form, titled Piety Along the Potomac.
Miller worked as the chief speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson II during the 1956 U.S. presidential election.
Between 1963 and 1969, while an associate professor at Yale University, he was a member of the New Haven Board of Aldermen.
He later worked in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, writing messages to be used by President Lyndon Johnson.
Academic work Miller taught at Smith College, Yale University, and Indiana University before joining the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1982. He described his position in a 1992 Booknotes interview: "I'm not an historian. I'm a political ethicist. My present title is professor of ethics and institutions, which doesn't fit any department, but it fits me."
In the same interview, Miller acknowledged the influence of Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr on his thought and work:
"Reinhold Niebuhr was the greatest -- well, let's put it in the largest way, and then if you make me do it, I'll take it back -- the greatest American political thinker of the 20th century... ...He was a big influence on me, the reason I studied the things I did, and he would be my mentor -- my chief mentor... ...I didn't study directly with him; I studied at Yale under his brother, a man called Richard Niebuhr, who was kind of the Mycroft Holmes to his Sherlock Holmes -- you know, the Sherlock Holmes story, the one who's in the background and is even smarter than his well known brother. But Reinhold was down in New York, and we collaborated in many organizations. I wrote for his magazine. I knew him in various Ford Foundation things and then in Santa Barbara for a while."
His book Arguing About Slavery won the D.B. Hardeman Prize in 1996.
At the time of his retirement from the University of Virginia, Miller was Commonwealth Professor of Political and Social Thought, and after his retirement until his death he was the White Burkett Miller Center Scholar in Residence, professor emeritus.
Bibliography
TitleYearPublisherSubject matterThe Protestant and Politics1960Westminster Press Piety Along the Potomac1964Houghton MifflinThe Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society: An Encounter With a Modern City1966Riverside PressThe East Rock neighborhood of New Haven, ConnecticutOf Thee, Nevertheless, I Sing: An Essay on American Political Values1975Harcourt Brace JovanovichYankee From Georgia: The Emergence of Jimmy Carter1978Times BooksJimmy CarterThe First Liberty: Religion and the American Republic1986KnopfWilliamsburg: Cradle of the First Liberty1988Colonial Williamsburg FoundationHistory of Williamsburg, VirginiaReligion and the Public Good1989Mercer University PressThe Business of May Next: James Madison and the Founding1992University of Virginia PressJames MadisonArguing about Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress1996KnopfJohn Quincy Adams and abolitionismLincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography2002KnopfAbraham LincolnPresident Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman2008KnopfAbraham LincolnTwo Americans: Truman, Eisenhower, and a Dangerous World2012KnopfHarry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower
References
External links
Miller speaking at the 11th annual symposium of the Abraham Lincoln Institute on "President Lincoln's Virtues", March 29, 2008