GEORGE BANCROFT
1800-1891
Seventy years ago the Round Hill School at Northampton, Mass., was
perhaps the most famous school in New England. The founder, George
Bancroft, had modelled it upon a celebrated school in Switzerland, in
the hope that it would prove a starting-point for a broader system of
elementary training than had yet existed in America, and everything
was done to develop the physical and moral, as well as the mental,
traits of the pupils. The school was beautifully situated, commanding
a superb view, and had, besides the school-rooms, a gymnasium and
play-rooms that were kept warm in cold weather and furnished with
tools for carpentering. Here the boys could make bows and arrows,
squirrel-traps, kites, sleds, and whatever their fancy dictated. There
were large play-grounds on the slopes of the hill, and here was the
village of "Cronyville," every house, hut, or shanty in which had been
built and was owned by the boys themselves. There were many varieties
of architecture in "Cronyville," but each dwelling had at least a
large chimney and a small store-room. After school hours each shanty
was its owner's castle, where entertainments were held, and the guests
feasted with roasted corn, nuts, or apples, which the entire company
had helped to prepare on the hearth of the wide chimney. Sometimes
the feast was enlivened by recitations, poems, and addresses by the
pupils, among whom was at one time the future historian, John Lothrop
Motley, and very often the festivities would end in one of those
earnest talks that boys fall into sometimes when tired out with play.
Bancroft's assistant and partner in the school was Dr. Cogswell, who
superintended the course of study, which was carried out by the best
teachers procurable in America, England, and France. The boys were in
the main good students, some of them brilliant ones, and they enjoyed
so much freedom that their spirits gained them sometimes an unenviable
reputation. The solemn keeper of a certain inn on the stage line
between Northampton and Boston suffered so much from their pranks that
he refused to allow them to stop over night, and only consented to
give them dinner upon promise of good behavior.
The school became so popular that the best families in all parts of
the country sent their boys there, but, financially, it was not a
success, and after seven years' trial Bancroft was forced to abandon
it, though his partner struggled on a few years longer. If the
experiment had been entirely successful the cause of education might
have been advanced fifty years ahead of the old method, for both
founders were men devoted to the cause of education and longed to see
newer and broader methods supersede the old ones.
As a boy Bancroft had studied at the Exeter Academy; finishing his
course there he entered Harvard at thirteen, was graduated in his
seventeenth year, and a year later was sent abroad by Harvard to fit
himself for a tutorship in the University. During his four years'
absence he studied modern languages and literatures, Greek philosophy
and antiquities, and some natural history. But he made history the
special object of study, and bent all his energies to acquiring as
wide a knowledge as possible of the sources and materials that make
up the records of modern history. During his vacations he visited the
different countries of Europe, travelling in regular student fashion.
He would rise at dawn, breakfast by candlelight, and then fill the
morning with visits to picture galleries, cathedrals, and all the
wonders of foreign towns; after a light luncheon he would start again
on his sight-seeing, or visit some person of note, meeting during his
travels almost every distinguished man in Europe. At night, if not too
tired, he would study still politics, languages, and history, and when
he returned to America he had made such good use of his time that he
was equipped for almost any position in its intellectual life.
His obligations to Harvard led him to accept a tutorship there, which,
however, proved so distasteful to him that he only held it one year.
It was after this experience that he founded his school at Round Hill.
During the years that he was trying to make the Round Hill school a
model for boys' schools, the idea of his work as the historian of the
United States came to him. Undismayed by the scope of the work, which
he meant should include the history of the United States from the
time of the landing of Columbus to the adoption of the Constitution in
1789, Bancroft, month after month, settled the plan more definitely
in his mind; and when the time came for him to begin the work he only
looked forward eagerly to the task of writing the records of three
hundred years of the world's progress during the most absorbing period
known to history. It is doubtful if at this time there was any other
man living better qualified for this task than Bancroft. He had been
a student of history and politics since boyhood. He had traced the
stream of history from its sources in the East through the rise of
the great modern nations. He had mastered the politics of the ancient
world, whose language, literature, and art were also familiar to him,
and civilized Europe had been his field of study during the years
which leave the most profound impressions upon the mind.
To him the rise and establishment of the United States as a great
nation presented itself as one of the most brilliant passages of the
world's history, and no labor seemed tiresome which should fittingly
chronicle that event.
Besides his literary requirements Bancroft possessed eminent qualities
for practical life. He was successively Governor of Massachusetts,
Secretary of the Navy, and for a time Acting-Secretary of war; he
served his country as Minister to Great Britain. He was made Minister
to Prussia and afterward Minister to Germany when that country took
its place as a united nation. Some of the most important treaties
between the United States and foreign powers were made during
Bancroft's diplomatic career, and in every act of his political life
showed a talent for practical affairs. While he was Secretary of the
Navy he founded the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Previous
to this there was no good system by which the boys who desired to
enter the navy could receive instruction in any other branch than
that of practical seamanship. In the old navy the middies were taught,
while afloat, by the chaplains, who gave them lessons in odd hours in
writing, arithmetic, and navigation; if the pupils were idle they were
reported to the captain, whose discipline was far from gentle. A boy
eager to learn could pick up a great deal by asking questions and
noticing what was going on about him, and sometimes the officers would
volunteer their help in a difficult subject. Later each ship had
one regular school-master, who made the voyage with the ship, twenty
middies being appointed to each man-of-war. This system was superseded
by schools, which were established at the different navy-yards, and
which the boys attended in the intervals of sea duty; but, as in the
case of the other methods, the instruction was desultory, and the
pupils had not the advantage of education enjoyed by the cadets of the
West Point Military Academy, though it was evident the necessity for
it was the same.
Bancroft brought to the office of Secretary of the Navy his old love
for broad principles of education, and eight months after he took
office the United States Naval Academy was in full operation, with
a corps of instructors of the first merit, and with a complement of
pupils that spoke well for the national interest in the cause. At
first the course was for five years, the first and last of which only
were spent at the Academy and the rest at sea, but this was later
modified to its present form. Bancroft's generous policy placed the
new institution upon a firm basis, and it became at once a vital force
in the life of the United States Navy.
Bancroft began his history while still at Round Hill, and published
the first volume in 1834. Previous to beginning his history he had
published a small volume of verse, a Latin Reader, and a book on
Greek politics for the use of the Round Hill School, and various
translations and miscellaneous writings in the different periodicals
of the day. But none of these had seemed serious work to him, and he
brought to his history a mind fresh to literary labor, and a fund of
general information that was invaluable.
While he was minister to Great Britain he visited the state archives
of England, France, and Germany for additional historical material.
From this time he devoted himself as exclusively to his work as the
diplomatic positions he held would allow.
His official administration in his own country was also far-reaching.
Besides the establishment of the Naval Academy, it was he who, while
acting as Secretary of War _pro tem._, gave the famous order for
General Taylor to move forward to the western boundary of Texas, which
had been annexed to the United States after seceding from Mexico and
setting up as a republic. General Taylor's appearance on the borders
was the signal to Mexico that the United States intended to defend the
new territory, and eventually led to the war with Mexico, by which the
United States received the territory of New Mexico and California.
When the lookout on the Pinta called out "Land ho!" he really uttered
the first word of American history, and Bancroft's narrative begins
almost at this point. The first volume embraces the early French
and Spanish voyages; the settlement of the Colonies; descriptions of
colonial life in New England and Virginia; the fall and restoration of
the house of Stuart in England, which led to such important results
in American history, and Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, which was the
first note of warning to England that the American Colonies would not
tolerate English injustice without a protest. To the reader who loves
to find in history facts more marvellous than any imaginations of
fairy lore, the first volume of Bancroft's history must ever be
a region of delight. The picturesque figure of Columbus fronting
undismayed the terrors of that unknown sea, which the geographers of
the period peopled with demons and monsters; the adventures of
the French and Spanish courtiers in search of fabled rivers and
life-giving fountains; the trials of the gold-seekers, De Soto,
Navarez, Cabeca de Vaca, and others, who sought for the riches of the
romantic East; and the heroic suffering of those innumerable bands who
first looked upon the wonders of the New World, and opened the way to
its great career, are such stories as are found in the sober history
of no other country. To the Old World, whose beginnings of history
were lost in the mists of the past, this vision of the New World, with
its beauty of mountains, river, and forest, with its inexhaustible
wealth and its races yet living in the primitive conditions of remote
antiquity, was indeed a wonder hardly to be believed. It is something
to be present at the birth of a new world, and Bancroft has followed
the voyagers and settlers in their own spirit, made their adventures
his own, and given to the reader a brilliant as well as faithful
picture of the historic beginning of the American continent.
In his second volume Bancroft takes up the history of the Dutch in
America; of the occupations of the Valley of the Mississippi by the
French; of the expulsion of the French from Canada by the English,
and the minor events which went toward the accomplishment of these
objects. Here are introduced the romantic story of Acadia and the
picturesque side of Indian life. "The Indian mother places her child,
as spring does its blossoms, upon the boughs of the trees while she
works," says Bancroft in describing the sleeping-places of the
Indian babies, and we see the same sympathetic touch throughout his
descriptions of these dark children of the forest, to whom the white
man came as a usurper of their rights and destroyer of their woodland
homes.
The remaining volumes of the history consist almost entirely of the
causes which led up to the American Revolution, the Revolution itself,
and its effect upon Europe. One-half of the whole work is devoted to
this theme, which is treated with a philosophical breadth that makes
it comparable to the work of the greatest historians. Here we are led
to see that, besides its influence upon the history of the New World,
the American Revolution was one of the greatest events in the world's
history; that it followed naturally from the revolt of the Netherlands
against Spain and the Revolution of the English people against the
tyranny of Charles I., and that, like them, its highest mission was to
vindicate the cause of liberty.
In two other volumes, entitled _History of the Formation of the
Constitution of the United States_, Bancroft gave a minute and careful
description of the consolidation of the States into an individual
nation after the Revolution, and the draughting and adopting of the
Constitution by which they have since been governed. This, with
some miscellaneous papers, among which may be mentioned the dramatic
description of the Battle of Lake Erie, comprise the remainder of
Bancroft's contribution to American literature.
Bancroft said that there were three qualities necessary to the
historian: A knowledge of the evil in human nature; that events are
subordinate to law, and that there is in man something greater
than himself. To these qualifications, which he himself eminently
possessed, may be added that of untiring industry, which distinguished
his work. A passage was written over and over again, sometimes as
many as eight times, until it suited him. And he was known to write
an entire volume over. He carried his labor into his old age, being
eighty-four years of age when he made the last revision of the history
which had occupied fifty years of his life.
His diplomatic career also extended over many years, he being
seventy-four when at his own request the Government recalled him from
the Court of Berlin where he was serving as Minister.
Bancroft died in 1891, in his ninety-second year. The most famous
of his own countrymen united in tributes to his memory, and the
sovereigns of Europe sent wreaths to place upon his coffin. As
historian, diplomatist, and private citizen, he had honored his
country as is the privilege of few.