Chapter I: His Life

The Bancrofts have been settled in America since 1632. Among the historian’s ancestors were men of marked traits of character. Bancroft’s grandfather, a farmer of Essex County, Massachusetts, had such a reputation for piety and judgment that he was called on to act as an umpire in the bitter dispute between Jonathan Edwards and his church at Northampton.

The father of the historian, Aaron Bancroft, a pioneer of American Unitarianism, was for fifty years pastor of the Second Church of Worcester. His distinguishing trait was ‘a deep-seated abhorrence of anything like mental slavery.’ He was an ardent student of American history and the author of an _Essay on the Life of George Washington_ (1807), a popular book in its own day and well worth the reading in ours. George Bancroft thought ‘that his own inclination toward history was due very much to the influence of his father.’

There is a story (probably apocryphal) that in his youth Aaron Bancroft fought at Lexington and Bunker Hill. During Shays’s Rebellion, when the insurgent officers proposed to quarter themselves in private houses at Worcester, the minister guarded his own door and told a group of officers who approached that they were rebels, and that ‘they would obtain no entrance to his house but by violence.’ The officers immediately rode away.

George Bancroft was born at Worcester on October 3, 1800. He prepared for college at Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, and was graduated at Harvard in 1817. Edward Everett, the newly appointed professor of Greek, who was then studying at Göttingen, urged President Kirkland to send some graduate of marked powers to Germany with a view to his preparing himself to teach at Harvard. The choice fell on Bancroft. He spent two years at Göttingen and obtained his doctorate. Among his professors were Heeren, Dissen, Eichhorn, and Blumenbach; Heeren’s influence was the most profound and the most lasting. His range of studies was wide, including, as it did, history, German literature, Greek philosophy, natural history, Scripture interpretation, Arabic, Syriac, and Persian.

From Göttingen, Bancroft went to Berlin, where he heard the lectures of Savigny, Schleiermacher, and Hegel, and made the acquaintance of Voss, W. von Humboldt, and F. A. Wolf. He had the fortune to meet Goethe once at Jena, and again at Weimar. After leaving Berlin he studied for a time at Heidelberg under Von Schlosser. In Paris he met Cousin, Constant, and A. von Humboldt. He travelled in Switzerland and Italy, and spent the winter of 1821–22 at Rome, where he made the acquaintance of Niebuhr and Bunsen. At Leghorn the following spring he was one of a party of Americans who gathered to meet Byron when the poet visited the ‘Constitution,’ the flagship of the American squadron. Bancroft afterwards called on Byron at Montenero, and was presented to the Countess Guiccioli.

In the fall of 1822 Bancroft became a tutor of Greek at Harvard. The following year he resigned his position, not to enter the ministry in accordance with his father’s wishes, but to become a schoolmaster. He joined his friend, Joseph G. Cogswell (the directing spirit in the enterprise), in founding a school for boys at Round Hill, Northampton. Emerson, then a youth of twenty, heard Bancroft preach at the ‘New South’ in Boston soon after his return from Germany, and was ‘delighted with his eloquence.’ ‘He needs a great deal of cutting and pruning, but we think him an infant Hercules.’ Emerson deplored Bancroft’s new departure, ‘because good schoolmasters are as plenty as whortleberries, but good ministers assuredly are not, and Bancroft might be one of the best.’

On the eve of leaving Cambridge, Bancroft published, under the title of _Poems_, a volume of correct if not inspired verse. At Northampton his literary activity found more sober expression in text-books, in papers for the ‘North American Review’ and Walsh’s ‘American Quarterly,’ and in a careful translation of Heeren’s _Politics of Ancient Greece_ (1824). At the celebration of Independence Day at Northampton in 1826, Bancroft was the orator. He chanted the present glory of America, predicted a golden future, and declared his faith in a ‘determined uncompromising democracy.’ These notes were to be heard again and often in his great history.

Round Hill, though prosperous in many ways, was not a success financially, nor were the partners wholly congenial. After seven years Bancroft withdrew from the school and began writing the book on which his fame rests. In 1834 appeared the first volume of _A History of the United States from the discovery of the American continent to the present time_. The second volume was published in 1837, the third in 1840.

The historian removed to Springfield and became prominent in state politics. He was an ardent Democrat and a strong opponent of slavery. Elected without his knowledge to the legislature, he refused to take his seat; he also declined a nomination to the senate. It is said that he took this attitude with respect to office-holding out of deference to the feelings of his wife, Sarah (Dwight) Bancroft, who came of a prominent Whig family. Mrs. Bancroft died in 1837.[11] Appointed Collector of the Port of Boston by President Van Buren, Bancroft held the office from 1838 to 1841, and administered its affairs with a thoroughness theretofore unknown, and in a way incidentally to reflect great credit on the profession of letters.

In 1844 Bancroft was the Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts and polled a large vote, but was defeated by George N. Briggs. A year later he became Secretary of the Navy under President Polk. In the exercise of his duties he gave the order to take possession of California, and as acting Secretary of War the order to General Taylor to occupy Texas.

During his secretaryship Bancroft founded the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. This he brought about not by asking Congress to authorize its establishment, but by so interpreting the powers granted him under the law that he was able to set in operation a school for the training of midshipmen and offer it to Congress for approval. Once the school was established and its usefulness proved, there was no difficulty in securing funds for adequate equipment. The Academy was formally opened on October 10, 1845.

From 1846 to 1849 Bancroft was minister to England. There were important diplomatic problems to be solved, but his triumphs were chiefly literary and social. He accumulated a rich store of documents, and on his return to America made his home in New York and devoted himself anew to the _History_.[12] The fourth volume appeared in 1852; the fifth in 1853; the sixth in 1854; the seventh in 1858; the eighth in 1860; the ninth in 1866; the tenth and concluding volume in 1874. His _Literary and Historical Miscellanies_ appeared in 1855.

When the New York Historical Society celebrated the close of the first half-century of its existence (1854), Bancroft was the orator. His address on that occasion, ‘The Necessity, the Reality, and the Promise of the Progress of the Human Race,’ has been pronounced the best exposition of his historical creed.[13]

Bancroft was a strong Union man and during the Civil War acted with the Republican party. He declined a nomination to Congress from the eighth district of New York (October, 1862), on the ground that a multiplication of candidates would leave the result very much to chance; there should be a union, he urged, of all those ‘who feel deeply for their country in this her hour of peril.’ At the close of the war he was chosen to pronounce the eulogy on Lincoln before Congress (February, 1866).

President Johnson, in 1867, appointed Bancroft minister to Prussia. Later he was accredited to the North German Confederation, and in 1872, following current political changes, to the German Empire. He brought about that notable treaty whereby Germans who had become citizens of the United States were freed from allegiance to the land of their birth. Never before by a ‘formal act’ had the principle of ‘renunciation of citizenship at ‘the will of the individual been recognized.’ England followed Germany’s example and gave over her claim of indefeasible allegiance. Another diplomatic triumph was the settlement of the North-western boundary dispute. While in Germany Bancroft celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation at Göttingen. The University gave him an honorary degree, and congratulations were showered on him from scholars, statesmen, princes, and men of letters.

After nearly eight years of service Bancroft was recalled from the German mission at his own request. He lived in Washington during the winter months and spent the summers at Newport as had long been his habit. The work of his later years included two revisions of the _History_ (1876 and 1884), a _History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States_ (1882), _A Plea for the Constitution of the United States of America, wounded in the House of its Guardians_ (1886), and a sketch of the public life of Martin Van Buren (1889).

Bancroft died in Washington on January 17, 1891.