Bancroft, George

Bancroft, George (1800–1891) historian, politician, diplomat.Educated at Exeter Academy and Harvard College (B.A., 1817; M.A. in divinity, 1818), Bancroft then pursued philological studies in Germany and received a Ph.D. from Göttingen in 1820. Following a continental tour, Bancroft returned to America in 1822 to serve at Harvard as a Latin tutor and an occasional preacher. His simultaneous literary ventures made him a leading magazine writer, translator, and poet. Bancroft also joined Joseph Cogswell in founding the Round Hill School (1823), where he served as headmaster, fund‐raiser, and educational reformer. In 1827, Bancroft married Sarah Dwight. She died in 1837; and in 1838 Bancroft married Elizabeth Davis Bliss. Involvement in Dwight family economic enterprises transformed an impecunious intellectual into a gentleman of means.

Bancroft's belief that a democracy required the guidance of men of letters encouraged political involvement; his assumption that history revealed God's plan for humanity encouraged inquiries into the nation's past. In 1834, the first volume of his History of the United States appeared, establishing Bancroft's reputation as the nation's leading contemporary historian. The democratic ethos shaped Bancroft's scholarship as much as his political allegiances. Neither conflicted with his immersion in western land speculation, Dwight banking activities, Washington lobbying, or Massachusetts politics. Bancroft helped cement Democratic party alliances with workingmen's organizations, disaffected national Republicans, and Anti‐Masons. His reward was the collectorship of the Boston Customhouse, a growing national reputation, and ties to successive Democratic administrations in Washington. Bancroft's role at the national Democratic convention in 1849 led to his appointment as secretary of the navy in President James Knox Polk's cabinet. Bancroft played a pivotal role in the Mexican War, firmly espoused Manifest Destiny, and was instrumental in establishing the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. After a term as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain (1846–1849), Bancroft settled in New York City, where he continued his historical work. Appointed minister plenipotentiary to Prussia by President Andrew Johnson in 1867, he lived in Berlin for the next seven years. Returning to the United States, he settled in Washington, D.C., where the tenth and final volume of History of the United States appeared in 1874. A six‐volume revised edition appeared in 1876, followed by The History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States in 1882. Despite advancing age, Bancroft remained a presence on the Washington political and social scene as an elder dignitary and statesman who had witnessed the nation's transformation in the course of nearly a century and had brilliantly recorded its complex social and political evolution.
See also Anti‐Masonic Party; Historiography, American; Military, The; Military Service Academies.

Bibliography

Russel B. Nye , George Bancroft, Brahmin Rebel, 1944.
Lilian Handlin , George Bancroft: The Intellectual as Democrat, 1984.

Lilian Handlin