GEORGE BANCROFT, the distinguished American author and historian, was
born at Worcester, Massachusetts, in the year of 1800. His father, who
was himself an author and a doctor of divinity, gave to his son’s mind
the bent and disposition which in after-years conducted him to
celebrity, position, and power. Not yet seventeen, Mr. Bancroft
graduated at Harvard college, with honors, and soon entered upon a
course of literary pursuits, having as their ultimate end the
profession of a historian. In 1818, he went to Europe, and there
studied at Göttingen and Berlin, enjoying the high advantages of the
most thorough system of instruction and the society of distinguished
and cultivated men. After an absence of four years, during which he
traveled in England, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, he returned to
the United States. His first sphere of labor was naturally in
accordance with his previous life, and he was appointed tutor of Greek
in Harvard college. A love of intellectual independence and the desire
to engraft upon the academic system in New England the German method
of instruction, led him in company with a literary friend, to separate
labors in the field of instruction, which were pursued for some time
in the interior of New England, but afterward abandoned for duties of
a more public and permanent character. During the interval of severer
labors, Mr. Bancroft made many contributions to American literature,
especially from the stores of German thought and intellect, then
comparatively sealed, even to educated men in the United States. He
early adopted decided political opinions, attaching himself to the
democratic party, in whose behalf his first vote was cast. In 1826, in
a public oration, afterward published, he announced as his creed
‘universal suffrage and uncompromising democracy;’ and in the ranks of
the liberal party he rose to political preferment and distinction
rarely attained by one whose career at the outset was so purely that
of a scholar. In 1834, Mr. Bancroft published the first volume of his
‘History of the United States,’ a work to which he had long devoted
his thoughts and researches and in which he laid the foundation of a
reputation at once permanent and universal. The first and two
succeeding volumes of the work, comprising the colonial history of the
country, were hailed with the highest satisfaction, as exhibiting for
the first time, in a profound and philosophical manner, not only the
facts but the ideas and principles of American history. In January,
1838, Mr. Bancroft received from President Van Buren the appointment
of collecter of the port of Boston, a post of more responsibility than
profit, which he occupied until the year 1841, discharging its duties
with a fidelity which proved that a man of letters may also be a man
of business, in the strictest sense of the term. In 1844, he was the
candidate of the democracy of Massachusetts for the office of governor
of the state; and though the party was in the minority, his unusually
large vote, greater than that which any other democratic candidate has
since received, attested his popularity. In the spring of 1845, Mr.
Bancroft was called by President Polk to a seat in the cabinet, and
the administration of the navy department, over which he presided with
an energy and efficiency which, notwithstanding the short period of
his connection with it, perpetuated themselves in numerous reforms and
improvements, of lasting utility to the naval service. In 1846, he was
appointed minister-plenipotentiary to Great Britain, and there
represented the United States, until succeeded by Mr. Abbott Lawrence,
in 1849. In England, the _prestige_ of Mr. Bancroft’s literary
reputation and his high social qualities contributed to enhance the
popularity and respect which attached to him during his entire
diplomatic career, which was one of complete satisfaction to the
government which he represented and to that to which he was
accredited. On his return, he fixed his residence in the city of New
York, and resumed more actively the prosecution of his historical
labors. The fourth volume of his history appeared early in 1852. It
includes the opening scenes of the great drama of American
independence, and amply sustains the interest and dignity of the work
by which Mr. Bancroft has inseparably linked his name with the annals
of his country.