William Lee Miller

William Lee Miller
Born	April 21, 1926 Bloomington, Indiana
Died	May 27, 2012 (aged 86) New York City, New York
Occupation	Academic
Language	English
Nationality	American
Citizenship	American
Alma mater	University of Nebraska, Yale Divinity School
Subject	Political ethics
Spouse	Lou Horton, Linda Moore Miller

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.^[1]

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 Divinity School.^[1]

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.^[2]

He later worked in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, writing messages to be used by President Lyndon Johnson.^[3]

Academic work

Miller taught at Smith College, Yale University, and Indiana University^[1] before joining the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1982.^[4] 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."^[5]

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."^[5]

His book Arguing About Slavery won the D.B. Hardeman Prize in 1996.^[6]

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

This literature-related list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Title	Year	Publisher	Subject matter
The Protestant and Politics	1960	Westminster Press
Piety Along the Potomac	1964	Houghton Mifflin
The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society: An Encounter With a Modern City	1966	Riverside Press	The East Rock neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut
Of Thee, Nevertheless, I Sing: An Essay on American Political Values	1975	Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Yankee From Georgia: The Emergence of Jimmy Carter	1978	Times Books	Jimmy Carter
The First Liberty: Religion and the American Republic	1986	Knopf
Williamsburg: Cradle of the First Liberty	1988	Colonial Williamsburg Foundation	History of Williamsburg, Virginia
Religion and the Public Good	1989	Mercer University Press
The Business of May Next: James Madison and the Founding	1992	University of Virginia Press	James Madison
Arguing about Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress	1996	Knopf	John Quincy Adams and abolitionism
Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography	2002	Knopf	Abraham Lincoln
President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman	2008	Knopf	Abraham Lincoln
Two Americans: Truman, Eisenhower, and a Dangerous World	2012	Knopf	Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower

References

1. William Lee Miller, Scholar on Abraham Lincoln, Is Dead at 86, The New York Times, June 5, 2012
2. "William Lee Miller. Biography: Abraham Lincoln Institute Fifth Annual Symposium (Library of Congress)". Loc.gov. Retrieved 2012-12-29.
3. "Faculty and Friends | The University of Virginia Magazine". Uvamagazine.org. Retrieved 2012-12-29.
4. "William Lee Miller, Historian of Ethics in Politics, Dies | UVA Today". News.virginia.edu. 2012-05-30. Retrieved 2012-12-29.
5. http://www.booknotes.org/FullPage.aspx?SID=26572-1
6. "The D. B. Hardeman Prize". Lbjlib.utexas.edu. 2009-08-31. Retrieved 2012-12-29.

External links

• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • Booknotes interview with Miller on The Business of May Next: James Madison and the Founding, June 14, 1992.
• Miller speaking at the 11th annual symposium of the Abraham Lincoln Institute on "President Lincoln's Virtues", March 29, 2008