The life of George Bancroft was nearly conterminous with the nineteenth
century. He was born at Worcester, Mass., October 3d, 1800, and died at
Washington, D.C., January 17th, 1891. But it was not merely the stretch
of his years that identified him with this century. In some respects he
represented his time as no other of its men. He came into touch with
many widely differing elements which made up its life and character. He
spent most of his life in cities, but never lost the sense for country
sights and sounds which central Massachusetts gave him in Worcester, his
birthplace, and in Northampton, where he taught school. The home into
which he was born offered him from his infancy a rich possession. His
father was a Unitarian clergyman who wrote a 'Life of Washington' that
was received with favor; thus things concerning God and country were his
patrimony. Not without significance was a word of his mother which he
recalled in his latest years, "My son, I do not wish you to become a
rich man, but I would have you be an affluent man: _ad fluo_, always a
little more coming in than going out."
To the advantages of his boyhood home and of Harvard College, to which
he went as a lad of thirteen, the eager young student added the
opportunity, then uncommon, of a systematic course of study in German,
and won the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Göttingen in 1820. He had
in a marked degree the characteristics of his countrymen, versatility
and adaptability. Giving up an early purpose of fitting himself for the
pulpit, he taught in Harvard, and helped to found a school of an
advanced type at Northampton. Meantime he published a volume of verse,
and found out that the passionate love of poetry which lasted through
his life was not creative. At Northampton he published in 1828 a
translation in two volumes of Heeren's 'History of the Political System
of Europe,' and also edited two editions of a Latin Reader; but the
duties of a schoolmaster's life were early thrown aside, and he could
not be persuaded to resume them later when the headship of an important
educational institution was offered to him. Together with the one great
pursuit of his life, to which he remained true for sixty years, he
delighted in the activities of a politician, the duties of a statesman,
and the occupations of a man of affairs and of the world.
[Illustration: GEORGE BANCROFT.]
Bancroft received a large but insufficient vote as the Democratic
candidate for the Governorship of Massachusetts, and for a time he held
the office of Collector of the port of Boston. As Secretary of the Navy
in the Cabinet of Polk, he rendered to his country two distinct services
of great value: he founded the Naval School at Annapolis, and by his
prompt orders to the American commander in the Pacific waters he secured
the acquisition of California for the United States. The special
abilities he displayed in the Cabinet were such, so Polk thought, as to
lead to his appointment as Minister to England in 1846. He was a
diplomat of no mean order. President Johnson appointed him Minister to
Germany in 1867, and Grant retained him at that post until 1874, as long
as Bancroft desired it. During his stay there he concluded just
naturalization treaties with Germany, and in a masterly way won from the
Emperor, William I., as arbitrator, judgment in favor of the United
States's claim over that of Great Britain in the Northwestern
boundary dispute.
Always holding fast his one cherished object,--that of worthily writing
the history of the United States,--Bancroft did not deny himself the
pleasure of roaming in other fields. He wrote frequently on current
topics, on literary, historical, and political subjects. His eulogies of
Jackson and of Lincoln, pronounced before Congress, entitle him to the
rank of an orator. He was very fond of studies in metaphysics, and
Trendelenburg, the eminent German philosopher, said of him, "Bancroft
knows Kant through and through."
His home--whether in Boston, or in New York where he spent the middle
portion of his life, or in Washington his abode for the last sixteen
years, or during his residence abroad--was the scene of the occupations
and delights which the highest culture craves. He was gladly welcomed to
the inner circle of the finest minds of Germany, and the tribute of the
German men of learning was unfeigned and universal when he quitted the
country in 1874. Many of the best men of England and of France were
among his warm friends. At his table were gathered from time to time
some of the world's greatest thinkers,--men of science, soldiers,
statesmen and men of affairs. Fond as he was of social joys, it was his
daily pleasure to mount his horse and alone, or with a single companion,
to ride where nature in her shy or in her exuberant mood inspired. One
day, after he was eighty years old, he rode on his young, blooded
Kentucky horse along the Virginia bank of the Potomac for more than
thirty-six miles. He could be seen every day among the perfect roses of
his garden at "Roseclyffe," his Newport summer-home, often full of
thought, at other times in wellnigh boisterous glee, always giving
unstinted care and expense to the queen of flowers. The books in which
he kept the record of the rose garden were almost as elaborate as those
in which were entered the facts and fancies out of which his History
grew. His home life was charming. By a careful use of opportunities and
of his means he became an "affluent" man. He was twice married: both
times a new source of refined domestic happiness long blessed his home,
and new means for enlarged comfort and hospitality were added to his
own. Two sons, children of his first wife, survived him.
Some of Bancroft's characteristics were not unlike those of Jefferson. A
constant tendency to idealize called up in him at times a feeling
verging on impatience with the facts or the men that stood in the way of
a theory or the accomplishment of a personal desire. He had a keen
perception of an underlying or a final truth and professed warm love for
it, whether in the large range of history or in the nexus of current
politics: any one taking a different point of view at times was led to
think that his facts, as he stated them, lay crosswise, and might
therefore find the perspective out of drawing, but could not rightly
impugn his good faith.
Although a genuine lover of his race and a believer in Democracy, he was
not always ready to put implicit trust in the individual as being
capable of exercising a wise judgment and the power of true
self-direction. For man he avowed a perfect respect; among men his
bearing showed now and then a trace of condescension. In controversies
over disputed points of history--and he had many such--he meant to be
fair and to anticipate the final verdict of truth, but overwhelming
evidence was necessary to convince him that his judgment, formed after
painstaking research, could be wrong. His ample love of justice,
however, is proved by his passionate appreciation of the character of
Washington, by his unswerving devotion to the conception of our national
unity, both in its historical development and at the moment when it was
imperiled by civil war, and by his hatred of slavery and of false
financial policies. He took pleasure in giving generously, but always
judiciously and without ostentation. On one occasion he, with a few of
his friends, paid off the debt from the house of an eminent scholar; on
another, he helped to rebuild for a great thinker the home which had
been burned. At Harvard, more than fifty years after his graduation, he
founded a traveling scholarship and named it in honor of the president
of his college days.
As to the manner of his work, Bancroft laid large plans and gave to the
details of their execution unwearied zeal. The scope of the 'History of
the United States' as he planned it was admirable. In carrying it out he
was persistent in acquiring materials, sparing no pains in his research
at home and abroad, and no cost in securing original papers or exact
copies and transcripts from the archives of England and France, Spain
and Holland and Germany, from public libraries and from individuals; he
fished in all waters and drew fish of all sorts into his net. He took
great pains, and the secretaries whom he employed to aid him in his work
were instructed likewise to take great pains, not only to enter facts in
the reference books in their chronological order, but to make all
possible cross-references to related facts. The books of his library,
which was large and rich in treasures, he used as tools, and many of
them were filled with cross references. In the fly-leaves of the books
he read he made note with a word and the cited page of what the printed
pages contained of interest to him or of value in his work.
His mind was one of quick perceptions within a wide range, and always
alert to grasp an idea in its manifold relations. It is remarkable,
therefore, that he was very laborious in his method of work. He often
struggled long with a thought for intellectual mastery. In giving it
expression, his habit was to dictate rapidly and with enthusiasm and at
great length, but he usually selected the final form after repeated
efforts. His first draft of a chapter was revised again and again and
condensed. One of his early volumes in its first manuscript form was
eight times as long as when finally published. He had another striking
habit, that of writing by topics rather than in strict chronological
order, so that a chapter which was to find its place late in the volume
was often completed before one which was to precede it. Partly by nature
and perhaps partly by this practice, he had the power to carry on
simultaneously several trains of thought. When preparing one of his
public orations, it was remarked by one of his household that after an
evening spent over a trifling game of bezique, the next morning found
him well advanced beyond the point where the work had been seemingly
laid down. He had the faculty of buoying a thought, knowing just where
to take it up after an interruption and deftly splicing it in continuous
line, sometimes after a long interval. When about to begin the
preparation of the argument which was to sustain triumphantly the claim
of the United States in the boundary question, he wrote from Berlin for
copies of documents filed in the office of the Navy Department, which he
remembered were there five-and-twenty years before.
The 'History of the United States from the Discovery of America to the
Inauguration of Washington' is treated by Bancroft in three parts. The
first, Colonial History from 1492 to 1748, occupies more than one fourth
of his pages. The second part, the American Revolution, 1748 to 1782,
claims more than one half of the entire work, and is divided into four
epochs:--the first, 1748-1763, is entitled 'The Overthrow of the
European Colonial System'; the second, 1763-1774, 'How Great Britain
Estranged America'; the third, 1774-1776, 'America Declares Itself
Independent'; the fourth, 1776-1782, 'The Independence of America is
Acknowledged.' The last part, 'The History of the Formation of the
Constitution,' 1782-1789, though published as a separate work, is
essentially a continuation of the History proper, of which it forms in
bulk rather more than one tenth.
If his services as a historian are to be judged by any one portion of
his work rather than by another, the history of the formation of the
Constitution affords the best test. In that the preceding work comes to
fruition; the time of its writing, after the Civil War and the
consequent settling of the one vexing question by the abolition of
sectionalism, and when he was in the fullness of the experience of his
own ripe years, was most opportune. Bancroft was equal to his
opportunity. He does not teach us that the Constitution is the result of
superhuman wisdom, nor on the other hand does he admit, as John Adams
asserted, that however excellent, the Constitution was wrung "from the
grinding necessity of a reluctant people." He does not fail to point out
the critical nature of the four years prior to the meeting of the
Federal Convention; but he discerns that whatever occasions, whether
transitory or for the time of "steady and commanding influence," may
help or hinder the formation of the now perfect union, its true cause
was "an indwelling necessity" in the people to "form above the States a
common constitution for the whole."
Recognizing the fact that the primary cause for the true union was
remote in origin and deep and persistent, Bancroft gives a retrospect of
the steps toward union from the founding of the colonies to the close of
the war for independence. Thenceforward, suggestions as to method or
form of amending the Articles of Confederation, whether made by
individuals, or State Legislatures, or by Congress, were in his view
helps indeed to promote the movement; but they were first of all so many
proofs that despite all the contrary wayward surface indications, the
strong current was flowing independently toward the just and perfect
union. Having acknowledged this fundamental fact of the critical years
between Yorktown and the Constitution, the historian is free to give
just and discriminating praise to all who shared at that time in
redeeming the political hope of mankind, to give due but not exclusive
honor to Washington and Thomas Paine, to Madison and Hamilton and their
co-worthies.
The many attempts, isolated or systematic, during the period from
1781-1786, to reform the Articles of Confederation, were happily futile;
but they were essential in the training of the people in the
consciousness of the nature of the work for which they are responsible.
The balances must come slowly to a poise. Not merely union strong and
for a time effective, was needed, but union of a certain and
unprecedented sort: one in which the true pledge of permanency for a
continental republic was to be found in the federative principle, by
which the highest activities of nation and of State were conditioned
each by the welfare of the other. The people rightly felt, too, that a
Congress of one house would be inadequate and dangerous. They waited in
the midst of risks for the proper hour, and then, not reluctantly but
resolutely, adopted the Constitution as a promising experiment in
government.
Bancroft's treatment of the evolution of the second great organic act of
this time--the Northwestern ordinance--is no less just and true to the
facts. For two generations men had snatched at the laurels due to the
creator of that matchless piece of legislation; to award them now to
Jefferson, now to Nathan Dane, now to Rufus King, now to Manasseh
Cutler. Bancroft calmly and clearly shows how the great law grew with
the kindly aid and watchful care of these men and of others.
The deliberations of the Federal Constitution are adequately recorded;
and he gives fair relative recognition to the work and words of
individuals, and the actions of State delegations in making the great
adjustments between nation and States, between large and small and slave
and free States. From his account we infer that the New Jersey plan was
intended by its authors only for temporary use in securing equality for
the States in one essential part of the government, while the men from
Connecticut receive credit for the compromise which reconciled
nationality with true State rights. Further to be noticed are the
results of the exhaustive study which Bancroft gave to the matter of
paper money, and to the meaning of the clause prohibiting the States
from impairing the obligation of contracts. He devotes nearly one
hundred pages to 'The People of the States in Judgment on the
Constitution,' and rightly; for it is the final act of the separate
States, and by it their individual wills are merged in the will of the
people, which is one, though still politically distributed and active
within State lines. His summary of the main principles of the
Constitution is excellent; and he concludes with a worthy sketch of the
organization of the first Congress under the Constitution, and of the
inauguration of Washington as President.
In this last portion of the 'History,' while all of his merits as a
historian are not conspicuous, neither are some of his chief defects.
Here the tendency to philosophize, to marshal stately sentences, and to
be discursive, is not so marked.
The first volume of Bancroft's 'History of the United States' was
published in 1834, when the democratic spirit was finding its first full
expression under Jackson, and when John Marshall was finishing his
mighty task of revealing to the people of the United States the strength
that lay in their organic law. As he put forth volume after volume at
irregular intervals for fifty years, he in a measure continued this work
of bringing to the exultant consciousness of the people the value of
their possession of a continent of liberty and the realization of their
responsibility. In the course of another generation, portions of this
'History of the United States' may begin to grow antiquated, though the
most brilliant of contemporary journalists quite recently placed it
among the ten books indispensable to every American; but time cannot
take away Bancroft's good part in producing influences, which, however
they may vary in form and force, will last throughout the nation's life.
[Illustration: Signature: Austin Scott]