Henry Steele Commager; Historian, Champion of the Constitution

Henry Steele Commager, 95, prolific American historian and champion of the U.S. Constitution. Born in Pittsburgh and educated at the University of Chicago, Commager taught at New York and Columbia universities and then followed poets Robert Frost and Archibald MacLeish to the John Woodruff Simpson chair at Amherst College. He also taught American history at Cambridge and Oxford in England and lectured at universities in Latin America, Japan, Israel and throughout Europe. Commager wrote widely from the popular press to scholarly journals to history books. His best-known book was “The Growth of the American Republic” first published in 1931 and revised repeatedly over the decades. Other books included “The Literature of the Pioneer West,” “Majority Rule and Minority Rights,” “A Short History of the United States” and “Civil Liberties Under Attack.” Describing himself as an independent Democrat, Commager lectured members of Congress and presidents as well as his students about the importance of the Constitution, which he called “the greatest monument to political science in literature.” On Monday in Amherst, Mass.