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American historian and statesman (1800–1891)

George Bancroft (October 3, 1800 – January 17, 1891) was an American historian, statesman and Democratic politician who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state of Massachusetts and at the national and international levels. During his tenure as U. S. Secretary of the Navy, he established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. He was a senior American diplomat in Europe, leading diplomatic missions to Britain and Germany. Among his best known writings is the magisterial series, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent.

Bancroft was born on October 3, 1800, in Worcester, Massachusetts. His family had been in Massachusetts Bay since 1632. George's father, Aaron Bancroft, was distinguished as a Revolutionary War soldier, a leading Unitarian clergyman, and author of a popular biography of George Washington.

Bancroft began his education at Phillips Exeter Academy. He entered Harvard College at thirteen years of age and graduated with the Class of 1817. After Harvard, Bancroft's father sent him abroad to study in Germany, where he studied at the universities of Göttingen, and Berlin. At Göttingen, he studied Plato with Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren, history with Heeren and Gottlieb Jakob Planck, and languages and scripture interpretation with Albert Eichhorn, natural science with Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, German literature with Georg Friedrich Benecke, French and Italian literature with Artaud and Bunsen, and classics with Georg Ludolf Dissen. In 1820, he received his doctorate from the University of Göttingen. Bancroft capped off his education with a European tour, in the course of which he sought out almost every distinguished man in the European world of letters, science and art, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lord Byron, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Christian Charles Josias Bunsen, Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Varnhagen von Ense, Victor Cousin, Benjamin Constant and Alessandro Manzoni.

Bancroft returned to the United States in 1822. While the young man delivered several sermons at his father's behest shortly after his return, his love of literature proved a stronger attachment. His first position was as a tutor of Greek at Harvard. Bancroft chafed at the narrow curriculum of Harvard in his day and the pedantic spirit of its classics curriculum. Moreover, his personal affect of ardent Romanticism subjected him to ridicule among the formal society of New England and his political sympathies for Jacksonian democracy put him at odds with nearly all of the Boston elite.

In 1823, he published his first work, a little volume of poetry, translations and original pieces, which brought no fame. Bancroft finally left Cambridge and with Joseph Cogswell established the Round Hill School at Northampton, Massachusetts. While at Round Hill, Bancroft contributed frequently to the North American Review and American Quarterly. He also made a translation of Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren's work on The Politics of Ancient Greece. In 1836, he published an oration advocating universal suffrage and the foundation of the state on the power of the whole people.

In 1830, he was elected to the Massachusetts State Senate from Northampton without his knowledge by the support of the Working Men's Party, but refused to take his seat. and the next year he declined another nomination, though certain to have been elected, for the state senate.

Bancroft, having trained in the leading German universities, was an accomplished scholar, whose masterwork History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent covered the new nation in depth down to 1789. His History of the United States started appearing in 1834, and he constantly revised it in numerous editions. It remains among the most comprehensive histories of colonial America.

Bancroft was a Romantic, emphasizing nationalist and republican values. Bancroft played on four recurring themes to explain the development of American values: providence, progress, patria, and pan democracy. "Providence" meant that destiny depended more on God than on human will. The idea of "progress" indicated that through continuous reform a better society was possible. Patria was deserved because America's spreading influence would bring liberty and freedom to more and more of the world. "Pan democracy" meant the nation state was central to the drama, not specific heroes or villains. Richard C. Vitzthum argues that Bancroft's histories exemplify his Unitarian moral vision of faith in progress. The history of America, in Bancroft's view, exemplified the gradual unfolding of God's purpose for mankind – the development of religious and political liberty. George M. Frederickson argues that Bancroft's "universalist theory of national origins made the American Revolution not only the fruit of a specific historical tradition, but also a creed of liberty for all mankind."

Bancroft's orotund romantic style and enthusiastic patriotism fell out of favor with later generations of scientific historians, who did not assign his books to students. After 1890, American scholars of the Imperial School took a more favorable view of the British Empire than Bancroft. Edmund Morgan compares Bancroft's history to that of the Liberal statesman Sir George Trevelyan in that both reject the Progressive view of the Revolution as a mere invocation of political philosophy as a means to keep and consolidate power. Morgan and other neo Whig historians have embraced Bancroft's view that the patriots were motivated by a deep commitment to individual liberty. Inspired by Bancroft, Bernard Bailyn and a cohort of mid twentieth century historians challenged the dichotomy between "national self awareness" and the study of history. Although they had found "limitations" in Bancroft's works, mid twentieth century "instrumentalist" historians wished to reexamine the "image of colonial origins" of the American Revolution. By 1956, this subset of scholars had tentatively determined that, "toward the end of the seventeenth century there emerged an entire apparatus of local politics" that "came, gradually, to accommodate itself" within the imperial system and in various "forms it is their collapse under the pressures of new circumstances after 1760 that alone made the Revolution
'irrepressible.' "

In 1837, Bancroft entered active politics by accepting an appointment as Collector of Customs of the Port of Boston by President Martin Van Buren. Two of his own appointees in the office were Orestes Brownson and author Nathaniel Hawthorne. In 1844, Bancroft was the Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts but he was defeated. He called for the annexation of Texas as extending "the area of freedom" and opposed slavery.

In 1845, in recognition for his support at the previous Democratic convention, Bancroft was appointed to James Polk's cabinet as Secretary of the Navy, serving until 1846, when, for a month, he was acting Secretary of War. During his short period in the cabinet, Bancroft established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, creating a legacy of education and leadership. He ordered naval action that resulted in the occupation of California and, as secretary of War, sent Zachary Taylor into the contested land between Texas and Mexico. That catalyzed the Mexican War, resulting in the United States greatly increasing its territory in the Southwest. Bancroft designed and developed the Naval Academy; he received all the appropriations for which he asked. Congress had never been willing to establish a naval academy, but Bancroft studied the law to assess the powers of the Secretary of the Navy. He found that he could order "a place where midshipmen should wait for orders." He could also direct instructors to give lessons to them at sea, and by law, instructors could follow the midshipmen to the place of their common residence on shore. The appropriation of the year for the naval service met the expense, and the Secretary of War ceded an abandoned military post to the navy. Therefore, when Congress came together, it learned that the midshipmen not at sea were housed at Annapolis. Thus, they were protected from the dangers of idleness and city life and busy at a regular course of study. Congress accepted the school, which was in full operation, and granted money for the repairs of the buildings. Bancroft introduced some new respected professors into the corps of instructors, and he suggested a system of promotion, related to experience and achievements as well as age. The merit system was not fully developed or applied at the time. Bancroft was influential also in obtaining additional appropriations for the United States Naval Observatory.

Similarly, Bancroft studied so deeply the Oregon boundary dispute that in 1846, he was sent as minister plenipotentiary to London to work with the British government on the issue. There, he roomed with the historian Macaulay and the poet Hallam. With the election of Whig Zachary Taylor as president, Bancroft's political appointment ended. On his return to the United States in 1849, he withdrew from public life and moved to New York, where he focused on writing history.

As a private citizen, Bancroft initially expressed skepticism towards Abraham Lincoln's election, describing him as, "without brains," and "ignorant, self willed, and surrounded by men some of whom are almost as ignorant as himself." However, Bancroft softened to the wartime president after initiating correspondence with Lincoln in 1861, and used the communication to argue for the case of abolishing slavery. In April 1864, at Bancroft's request, President Abraham Lincoln wrote out what would become the fourth of five known manuscripts of the Gettysburg Address. Bancroft planned to include the copy in Autograph Leaves of Our Country's Authors, which he planned to sell at a Soldiers' and Sailors' Sanitary Fair, in Baltimore, to raise money to care for the Union Army. In 1866, he was chosen by Congress to deliver the special eulogy on Lincoln.

In 1867, President Andrew Johnson offered Bancroft the post of US minister to Prussia, enabling him to return to Germany. Bancroft remained in Berlin for seven years, throughout the Franco Prussian War and German unification. President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him minister to the German Empire in 1871. During his tenure in Berlin, Bancroft spent much time negotiating agreements with Prussia and the other north German states relating to naturalization and citizenship issues; they became known as the Bancroft Treaties in his honor. The treaties were the first international recognition of the right of expatriation. The principle has since incorporated in the law of nations.

His last official achievements were his participation in the 1872 arbitration on the status of the San Juan Islands, stemming from the Pig War of 1859. The United States maintained that the disputed channel was intended to be the Haro Strait, while Great Britain believed that it was the Rosario Strait. In the San Juan arbitration Bancroft displayed great versatility and skill and won the case, which was decided by a commission (three eminent German Judges) appointed by the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm. The final ruling was issued on October 21, 1872, and British troops withdrew from San Juan Island on November 22, 1872, after 26 years of maintaining an amicable, yet tense relationship.

His first wife was Sarah Dwight, of a rich family in Springfield, Massachusetts; they married in 1827 and had two sons. She died in 1837. He formed a second marriage with Mrs Elizabeth Davis Bliss, a widow with two children. Together they had a daughter. In his later years Bancroft lived in Washington, D. C., summering at Rose Cliff, Newport, Rhode Island, the site where Rosecliff was later built.

Bancroft was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1838, and also served as its Secretary of Domestic Correspondence from 1877 to 1880. In 1841, Bancroft was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society. In New York, Bancroft was a founding member of the American Geographical Society and served as the society's first president for nearly three years (February 21, 1852 – December 7, 1854). Bancroft was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1863.

Bancroft died in 1891, in Washington, D. C. He was the last surviving member of the Polk cabinet.

Bancroft, George. History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the American Continent. (Boston: Little, Brown, and company, numerous editions in 8 or 10 volumes 1854–1878). Bancroft, George; Dyer, Oliver, 1824–1907. (1891) History of the Battle of Lake Erie, and Miscellaneous Papers (New York: R. Bonner's sons) 292 pp. (American Library Association) online edition
Bancroft, George. Martin Van Buren to the End of His Public Career. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1889. online edition
Bancroft, George. History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States of America. (New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1882, Vol 1) online edition