Born at Worcester, Mass., Oct. 3, 1800: died at Washington, Jan. 17, 1891. An American historian, statesman, and diplomatist. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1817; studied at Göttingen; was tutor of Greek in Harvard; opened with Cogswell the Round Hill School at Northampton in 1823; was collector of the port of Boston 1838–41; was Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 1844; was secretary of the navy 1845–46 (established the Naval Academy at Annapolis), and was United States minister to Great Britain 1846–49, and minister to Berlin 1867–74. He wrote a “History of the United States” (10 vols.; vol. 1 published 1834; vol. 10, 1874; centenary edition, 6 vols. 1876); a “History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States” (2 vols. 1882; revised edition of the entire history, 6 vols., 1883–84), etc.

Personal

  Not only has he obtained great celebrity as an essayist and historian, but the policy which he advocated while at the head of the Navy Department gave him the character of an accomplished statesman. While his views were sufficiently enlarged and liberal they received the approbation of one of the most ultra economists and reformers in the House of Representatives.

  Mr. Bancroft’s time is now divided between the city and the seaside. Early in the summer he repairs to Newport, and were the date of our book somewhat later, we might enrich our pages with an engraving of the house he is now building there. It will be a simple summer retreat, lying upon the seaward slope of the cliff. From his windows he will look down upon the ocean, and as he breathes its air, impart its freshness and vigor to his pages.

  Bancroft’s habits are essentially those of a student. He rises early, and his morning hours are devoted to literary labor. In the latter part of the day, if the weather is at all favorable, he takes a ride on horseback, and returns in time for dinner. The evening is devoted to the society of his friends, either in accepting invitations or in receptions in his own residence. Following the custom of his early friend Schleiermacher, he is at home on Sunday evening, and in the simplest and most unostentatious manner receives those who from personal friendship, or attracted by his reputation as a writer, fill his salons. While preparing a work on Private Libraries, I frequently saw Bancroft in his library, which occupies the entire third story of his residence. On such occasions he was always surrounded by papers and books, and deeply immersed in documentary examinations, historical composition, or the revisal of proofsheets. At this time he very rarely allows himself to be interrupted, and almost invariably declines to receive visitors until a later hour in the day.

  This very able and eloquent politician and historian received me with the utmost courtesy, and we frequently shared his hospitality in Eaton Square. Like all well-bred Americans, he was simple and unpretending in his manners; and, without affecting republican simplicity, his establishment was unostentatious, and made no attempt to vie with the magnificent display at the Russian and Prussian embassies. But nowhere in London at the time was the society more instructive, or the conversation on a higher strain in point of thought and expression…. His conversation was like his writings, judicious, sensible, and well-informed, with occasional flashes of genius, which struck you the more from the comparative sober tone of the ideas in which they were embedded.

  Tall, spare, straight, incisive in speech and style, George Bancroft’s appearance indicates deep thought and careful culture. He is a refined bookworm; a mingling of the Oxford professor, the ripe diplomatist, the seasoned man of the world. His tastes make him, in his eightieth year a genial philosopher, at peace with the world and himself. He is an early riser, and does his work generally before two o’clock in the afternoon, after which he rides and dines. In the evening he amuses himself among his friends, and is passionately fond of the opera.

  The prose-Homer of our Republic. Picture to yourself a venerable man, of medium height, slender figure, erect bearing; with lofty brow thinned, but not stripped, of its silvery locks; a full, snowy beard adding to his patriarchal appearance; bluish gray eyes, which neither use nor time has deprived of brightness; a large nose of Roman type, such as I have somewhere read or heard the first Napoleon regarded as the sign of latent force; “small white hands,” which Ali Pasha assured Byron were the marks by which he recognized the poet to be “a man of birth;”—let your imagination combine these details, and you have a sketch for the historian’s portrait. The frame is a medium-sized room of good, high pitch. In the centre is a rectangular table covered with books, pamphlets and other indications of a literary life. Shelving reaches to the ceiling, and every fraction of space is occupied by volumes of all sizes, from folio to duodecimo; a door on the left opens into a room which is also full to overflowing with the valuable collections of a lifetime; and further on is yet another apartment equally crowded with the historian’s dumb servants, companions, and friends; while rooms and nooks elsewhere have yielded to Literature’s rights of squatter sovereignty.

  The figure which rises from behind the work-table, littered with reference-books and manuscripts, is full of dignity and impressiveness. The clear-cut features; the carefully trimmed hair and beard, revealing a massive and shapely head; the finely molded form and active movement, in no way suggest advanced years: even the expression of the eye and the lines of the forehead fail to reveal frailness or extreme old age. As has recently been said of his friend and contemporary Von Ranke, who was only five years his senior, he seems to have outgrown and conquered old age itself, and to have found a substitute for physical force in the continuous energy of faith and love, in an apparently inexhaustible and indomitable intellect. His stature, which is about that of the average man or somewhat less, has lost nothing under the burden of years, and he carries firm and erect the slight but close-knit chest and capacious head with which he had for so long pushed and wrought in the crises and struggles of the great world in which he lives. Nor is there a trace of lassitude in his manners.

  Unlike most Newport “cottages,” his house was within sight of the ocean; between it and the sea lay the garden, and the rose in Kenmure’s cap in the Scottish ballad was not a characteristic more invariable than the same flower in Mr. Bancroft’s hand or buttonhole. His form was familiar, too, on Bellevue Avenue, taking as regularly as any old-fashioned Englishman his daily horseback exercise. At the same time he was one of the few men who were capable, even in Newport, of doing daily the day’s work; he rose fabulously early in the morning, and kept a secretary or two always employed. Since John Quincy Adams there has not been among us such an example of laborious, self-exacting, seemingly inexhaustible old age; and, unlike Adams, Mr. Bancroft kept his social side always fresh and active, and did not have, like the venerable ex-President, to force himself out in the evening in order “to learn the art of conversation.” This combination, with his monumental literary work, will keep his memory secure. It will possibly outlive that of many men of greater inspiration, loftier aims, and sublimer qualities.

  Beginning early in life to make acquaintances we have found him associating in his student days with the principal scholars of Germany, France and Italy, and with such men of literary distinction as Goethe and Byron. From the time that he entered Polk’s cabinet to the end of his life, he appears as the companion of the great men of the world…. We learn that, while in England, he used to have long conversations with Albert, the Prince Consort, in the German language, on literary and public questions. Later, in Germany, he enjoyed rare social distinction. He was intimate with Bismark, who welcomed him (a rare event in his intercourse with men) to familiar conversation in his own home. The emperor Wilhelm I. was strongly drawn towards him. So, too, was Friedrich; and the present emperor had a wreath placed upon the casket which contained his remains at the funeral services in Washington. For many years both in Washington and Newport, he has been the central figure in society. No man, American or foreigner, seemed to feel that he had seen either place if he had not been introduced to Mr. Bancroft, or at least seen him. Surely if the knowledge that he has performed a well-appreciated and great work and the undoubted assurance of being the cynosure of great men and of women of social eminence on both continents can make a man happy, Mr. Bancroft should have been happy. Whether he was so or not, he was one of the most successful of men, judging things from a worldly point of view. He had decided peculiarities in society; was regarded as artificial, and not only as playful but as frivolous. Still, in England, Germany and America his eccentricities were overlooked, for they were overshadowed by the conviction that he was distinguished by intellectuality and great attainments.

  It might be questioned if Mr. Bancroft’s residence in Washington were a house with a library, or a library with a few rooms about it to live in. A large, high, square room, shelved from floor to ceiling, on the west side, may be called the main library. Every inch of the wall-space is occupied by books, and on many of the shelves are double rows. At the east side of the house is another room, not so large, but even more closely packed with books from top to bottom. Between these two is a smaller room, with a bookcase containing mostly English standard and dramatic authors, with between 2000 and 3000 historical pamphlets. In the third story, the east room is well filled with books. The hall of the second story is furnished with a case full of fine books, nor can any one get away from bookcases in the hall on the top floor. The reception room contains two well-filled oak bookcases.

  George Bancroft presented the severest contrast that individual idiosyncrasy offers among literary men of the highest culture. Stern and inflexible in his records and speech when analyzing the events of the past and the character of the men who figured in them; serious and emphatic as if his historic pages were to be accepted without criticism as the ipse dixit of unquestioned authority from which no appeal was possible, the historian when he left his library to go into the world seemed to assume a new nature with his change of costume, and to enter the social circle with the playfulness of a school-boy released from the drudgery of study. It would be difficult to draw the line where natural pleasantry ended and the artificial began. “From grave to gay, from serious to severe,” he passed so rapidly, that those who met Mr. Bancroft for the first time at some social assembly and had an opportunity of observing him could not well make out what sort of a character stood before them, or whether a sage of history, a profound philosopher, or a social punchinello was the most fitting term to apply to him…. Bancroft, the schoolmaster, the Unitarian preacher, the lecturer, the magazine writer, the politician—changing his party-colored coat with the facility of a harlequin—a member of the cabinet, secretary of the navy, minister at the court of St. James and at Berlin, and the historian of the United States, presented the same versatility of character while he excited universal respect for his intellectual qualities. In London he occasioned many amusing remarks in society, but his scholastic acquirements and diplomatic ability were justly acknowledged. His familiar acquaintance with German literature and the German language brought about a familiar friendship with the Prince Consort, with whom he held long conversations on politics, art, and letters in the prince’s native tongue. The late Emperor of Germany, then Prince Royal of Prussia, in reply to the question how he liked our minister at Berlin, said to me, “Bancroft? I like him immensely. Such energy and investigation I have seldom seen. He is here, there, and everywhere. Really a remarkable man.”

  Then to know Mr. Bancroft and to have had the entrée to his always hospitable house was like going behind the scenes with the stage-manager after having been taken to the play. He knew everything and everybody; had a most exhaustive habit of reading, and sometimes asked me to come and hear the last chapter of his “History” as he read the MS. to his wife and a few friends.

History of the United States, 1834–84

  We should be faithless to one of the first duties of a literary journal, did we not appropriate an ample portion of our pages to a notice of a volume like Mr. Bancroft’s. A History of the United States, by an American writer, possesses a claim upon our attention of the strongest character. It would do so under any circumstances, but when we add that the work of Mr. Bancroft is one of the ablest of the class, which has for years appeared in the English language; that it compares advantageously with the standard British historians; that as far as it goes, it does such justice to its noble subject, as to supersede the necessity of any future work of the same kind; and if completed as commenced, will unquestionably forever be regarded, both as an American and as an English classic, our readers would justly think us unpardonable, if we failed to offer our humble tribute to its merit.

  The Americans have also a historian of promise. Mr. Bancroft’s “History of the United States” is little more than begun, but the beginning is characterized by an impartial and benevolent spirit, and by the indications which it affords of the author’s fidelity to democratic principles: the two primary requisites in a historian of the republic. The carrying on the work to a completion will be a task of great toil and anxiety, but it will be a most important benefit to society at large, if it fulfills its promise.

  His Colonial History establishes his title to a place among the great historical writers of the age. The reader will find the pages of the present volume filled with matter not less interesting and important than the preceding. He will meet with the same brilliant and daring style, the same picturesque sketches of character and incident, the same acute reasoning and compass of erudition.

  Bancroft is a philosophical historian; but no amount of philosophy has yet taught him to despise a minute accuracy in point of fact.

  The adaptation of the subject to the author, and of the author to the subject, has been a singularly happy circumstance in Mr. Bancroft’s literary career. Not that he would have failed of distinction in any department of intellectual effort, to which he might have devoted his energies. He possesses too choice and brilliant gifts of nature, not to have attained an enviable eminence. Uniting a remarkable versatility of thought with great activity of temperament, he has exhibited the qualities which insure the success of the poet, the orator, the elegant essayist, and the founder of philosophical systems. But in no other sphere than that with which his name has become identified, could he have found such scope for the exercise of his peculiar endowments. He was the first writer to conceive of the history of his country, as an integral unity; and in this conception he has opened “fresh fields and pastures new,” converting the arid wastes of solitary and unrelated events into scenes of living and beautiful harmony.

  Bancroft is the “standard” American historian; the only one who has succeeded in attracting general attention, and in being accepted by all parties as an authority. He takes a philosophic view of events, and endeavors to show that the natural development of our government has been in accordance with the principles of the democratic party, as originated by Jefferson, and carried out by Jackson and his successors. He has been as fair as could be expected from a partisan who had his own theory of politics to establish. As a narrative, the work is clear and perspicuous; but the style, though carefully finished, is not indicative of genius. There are certain episodes, in which the desire for picturesque effect is quite evident; but the author is learned and laborious, rather than spirited and graphic. Perhaps it is too soon to expect a history of the United States that should unite accuracy in details with dramatic grouping, high moral views, and an imaginative style. The time may come for such a history; but Bancroft’s differs as much from that ideal work as a topographical chart of Venice would differ from a painting by Turner of the domes of that sea-born city. It is not intended to depreciate the great merits of our historian; for it remains true that his is much the best thus far attempted, and no intelligent American can afford to leave it unread.

  Has natural qualifications, reinforced by wide reading, for the historian’s works are exceptionally great. It has been charged by some English critics that his democratic prejudices are too manifest in his History; but this allegation has had little weight with those who are most competent to form a judgment in the case,—his own countrymen; and his judicial candor is generally reckoned among the most admirable components of his intellectual equipment. His style has received warm and universal praise; it is eminently scholarly, yet not pedantic, brilliant, yet not flashy, in narrative animated and picturesque, and in philosophical passages massive and majestic. This history is one of the proudest monuments of American scholarship.

  The different volumes of his work are of various literary merit, but they are all stamped by the unmistakable impress of the historian’s individuality. There is no dogmatism more exclusive than that of fixed ideas and ideals, and this dogmatism Mr. Bancroft exhibits throughout his history both in its declamatory and speculative form. Indeed, there are chapters in each of his volumes which, considered apart, might lead one to suppose that the work was misnamed, and that it should be entitled, “The Psychological Autobiography of George Bancroft, as Illustrated by Incidents and Characters in the Annals of the United States.” Generally, however, his fault is not in suppressing or overlooking facts, but in disturbing the relations of facts,—substituting their relation to the peculiar intellectual and moral organization of the historian to their natural relations with each other. Still, he has written the most popular history of the United States (up to 1782) which has yet appeared and has made a very large addition to the materials on which it rests. Perhaps he would not have been so tireless in research had he not been so passionately earnest in speculation.

  The book is written for the most part in a vigorous style, somewhat defective, however, in elegance, and characterised by a certain monotony and want of ease which detracts from the pleasure of the reader.

  The work has two striking peculiarities. The first is a certain stateliness of style, that is a little out of harmony with the easy methods of every-day life. The author’s ideas are habitually clothed in court dress, and therefore often appear to be deficient in simplicity and energy. The other peculiarity is a more or less obvious tendency to discursiveness. There are several chapters that seem to have only a remote bearing on the subject in hand; and although they show great learning and ingenuity, they obstruct the general current of the narration. To many of those using the work, these discursions will doubtless appear necessary to the adequate presentation of the author’s idea or argument, but to others they are likely to indicate a lack of harmonious construction. To these peculiarities different readers will attach different measures of importance; but they ought not to be regarded as detracting from the fundamental merit of the work. The table of contents, which is very complete, will enable every student to select such portions as he needs.

  This is the first of six volumes, into which the original twelve are to be cast. It is described as “an entirely new edition, partly rewritten and thoroughly revised.” We, nevertheless, lay down the volume, after careful and extended examination, with a feeling of disappointment. That it is thoroughly revised, is not proven by the pencil marks in our copy indicating the errors. The work of recasting shows signs of haste. Omissions have been indiscriminately made, changes have been hastily effected, while it is evident that the distinguished author has failed, in more than one department, to read down carefully to the present date; nor can we tell, in some cases, where his questions end. This is the more to be regretted, as all foot-notes are swept away, rendering this “last revision” unserviceable to those who would inquire into the history of America.

  This work is universally recognized as one of the most important contributions to American history; prominent even among the works published in our language, and of no light standing in the literature of the world in our century. Few works have gone through so many editions, and fewer still have been translated into so many languages, and been published in so many different countries. The interest attaching to his theme, the ability and literary elegance with which he has written the history of the great republic, and the reputation and standing of the author, have all contributed to enhance its importance.

  Scarcely one who wished me good speed when I first essayed to trace the history of America remains to greet me with a welcome as I near the goal. Deeply grateful as I am for the friends who rise up to gladden my old age, their encouragement must renew the grief for those who have gone before me.

  His “History,” which is universally regarded as a standard authority, has been translated into several European languages. It is, and will probably long continue, an authoritative work, both from its careful research and breadth of judgment. In parts, however, particularly in the account of the causes of the War of American Independence, it is decidedly one-sided, and should be read in conjunction with other authorities.

  The work was successful from the beginning because it was done in a spirit so sincere and philosophical. It met with a reception which was most gratifying at home, and in Europe its popularity was remarkable. The first three volumes were translated into Danish, Italian, and German by translators who obtained the author’s permission. It was done into French without his knowledge, and sent into the South American colonies to further the awakening spirit of Liberty. There was a Scotch edition in two volumes and an English one on which the author received copyright royalty until the courts decided that as an American he was not entitled to it.

  George Bancroft has written a history of the United States which will no more become archaic than Macaulay or Grote. While one may now and then hear from the lips of the so-called “younger school of American historians” a criticism of George Bancroft, their carping is ungracious and gratuitous. Theirs has not been the art to equal him, nor will be. A literary life devoted to the mastery of one era of a nation’s history is a worthy sight, good for the eyes, and arguing sanity of method and profundity of investigation. Whoever has read Bancroft can testify to his readableness, to his comprehensive knowledge, to his philosophical grasp, to his ability to make dead deeds vividly visible, and to his gift of interesting the reader in events and their philosophy. He has written a great history of the United States before the Constitution, so that no author has felt called on or equipped to reduplicate his task in the same detail and manner.

  The labor which Mr. Bancroft performed in writing his history was enormous. The period embraced in his annals lacks but three years of three centuries. The vast material which he was obliged to gather was scattered through the archives and the libraries of America and Europe. The authorities which he was obliged to consult were numerous, prejudiced, contradictory, and, in many cases, obscure, unveracious and malignant. To collect, compare and sift this mass of material so as to winnow truth from error and secure accuracy in the relation of facts, even to the details and their coloring, and develop the narrative so lucidly that the reader may intelligently follow the changes of public affairs, and with every page be carried forward in the story of two hundred and ninety-seven years of diversified yet connected events, was a task which might well tax for half a century the abilities of the most accomplished and industrious historian. The arrangement of the work, in its chronological divisions and the orderly presentation of pivotal facts, greatly helps the reader to grasp the numberless details and to keep in mind both the contemporaneity of important incidents and personages and the epochal sequences of historical events.

  Mr. Bancroft, as an historian, combined some of the greatest merits and some of the profoundest defects ever united in a single author. His merits are obvious enough. He has great enthusiasm for his subject. He is profoundly imbued with that democratic spirit without which the history of the United States cannot be justly written. He has the graphic quality so wanting in Hildreth and the saliency whose absence makes Prescott too smooth. He has a style essentially picturesque, whatever may be its faults. The reader is compelled to admit that his resources in the way of preparation are inexhaustible, and that his command of them is astounding. One must follow him minutely, for instance, through the history of the war for independence, to appreciate in full the consummate grasp of a mind which can deploy military events in a narrative as a general deploys brigades in a field. Add to this the capacity for occasional maxims to the highest degree profound and lucid, in the way of political philosophy, and you certainly combine in one man some of the greatest qualities of the historian.

  Although Bancroft did a great amount of work as a compiler of historical collections, as editor of many valuable works, and as orator of numberless important occasions, his fame rests almost wholly upon his one great history. The literary merits of the work are very moderate. While its style is clear and definite, it is often labored and diffuse; its author lacked the art of graphic narration so fully possessed by Prescott and Parkman; his pages are often “hard reading,” but his scholarship, his analytical and critical powers, and his insistence upon perfect accuracy, more than compensate for the defects of his style. Taken for all in all, Bancroft is to be compared with no modern British historian save Froude, and with no American historian save Motley.

  He loved a good tale to his chapters—something to impress, and give emphasis; just as a coachman, proud of his conduct of a spirited team, loves to add éclat to his success by a good crack of his whip. Nor should we forget that ’tis the warmth of his democratic spirit which makes him boil over into his most exuberant utterances; and if he catch a rhetorical fall, it is oftenest from an over-eager step in his march to the music of American freedom. Of the larger and generally recognized qualities of Bancroft’s history, of the wide and untiring research involved, of its painstaking, conscientious balancing of authorities, and of the earnest, unshrinking Americanism which warms it through and through, it is unnecessary to speak.

  He persevered in writing history all his life, and for all the diffuse floridity of his style, he is still a respectable authority.

  A man of much learning and cultivation, Bancroft’s extreme dependence upon rigid methods of work and recreation enabled posterity to chronicle a long list of achievements after his name; but not every man will write good history because he always takes a horseback ride at precisely three in the afternoon, though he may live to be ninety-one, as did Bancroft.

  His work will always be indispensable, most of all to those future historians who seek to displace it.

  Remains to this day in the popular mind the representative historian of the country in spite of the fact that for all his length of years and his twelve massive volumes, he carried his narrative no farther than the adoption of the Constitution. It was Bancroft’s “History of the United States” with which the unwary Robert Louis Stevenson purposed to regale and inform himself on his first journey to California. How many other foreigners and less excusable natives have floundered hopelessly amid Bancroft’s rhetoric and philosophical speculations will never be known, but the number must be large, if the copies sold were read. Yet, as often happens, a good defence may be made for the gulling author and the gulled public…. Crude as were Bancroft’s rhetoric and his philosophy, they were genuine and generous, and did not obscure his many merits as a narrator, an investigator, a collector of materials. Every student of the colonial and Revolutionary epochs owes him much, and a certain measure of his fame is secure. It would be a mistake, too, to suppose that he was incapable of filling the higher functions of the thoughtful historian. But that he could continue popular, except as a mere name, was impossible after the nation emerged from the callow stage. To consult him is often a necessity and sometimes a privilege; to read him is too frequently an infliction.