BANCROFT, GEORGE

(1800-1891), historian, politician, diplomat. Bancroft won both popular success and critical acclaim with the 1834 publication of the first volume of his History of the United States of America. The tenth volume (1874) brought the narrative up through the success of the American Revolution. None of his other works has the stature of the History; his last, Martin Van Buren (1889), is little more than a campaign biography published forty-five years too late, and his first, Poems (1823), demonstrates only that Bancroft was wise to choose history as his muse.

As a politician, Bancroft was a Jacksonian Democrat; as a historian, he believed in progress, Providence, and an innate American will to liberty and self-government. His convictions found expression in rhetorical set pieces scattered throughout the History and also affected its structure, as Bancroft concentrated on those features of the colonial era that prefigured later events. Beliefs so in tune with the romantic nationalism of the Jacksonian era helped make him a best-seller in his own century but have led some modern readers, less receptive to historical presentism and purple prose, to underestimate his virtues as a historian.

In 1820, Bancroft, a graduate of Harvard, was one of the first Americans to obtain a doctorate in Germany, where he studied at Göttingen under the historian August Heeren who thought that history was a science and must always be based on primary sources. Bancroft's books reflect his mastery of primary sources, with later editions including European sources to which he gained access as a diplomat.

Although his father was a prominent Unitarian minister in Massachusetts, Bancroft himself was not a success in the pulpit in his few trials after his return from Germany. After a brief career as a schoolmaster, he devoted himself primarily to history and politics. His popularity as a historian helped make him an asset to his party, and his involvement with public affairs helped enrich his understanding of politics past. Bancroft held the important patronage post of collector of the Port of Boston (1838-1840) and played an important role in the nomination of James K. Polk in 1844. As secretary of the navy (1845-1846) under Polk, he helped establish the U.S. Naval Academy. He was especially happy as U.S. minister to Great Britain (1846-1849) and Prussia (1867-1874). During the Civil War, he was a War Democrat and supported Lincoln in 1864. He delivered the memorial oration on Lincoln to a joint session of Congress in 1866.

Bancroft received many honors: he was granted floor privileges in the U.S. Senate in 1879 and was elected president of the fledgling American Historical Association in 1886. Nevertheless, he was something of an anachronism as both statesman and scholar in his later years. His real place is with an earlier period, when historical scholarship was still a branch of literature. His special gift was for the narrative synthesis needed to make a long and complicated story into an intelligible whole.

Russel B. Nye, George Bancroft, Brahmin Rebel (1944; reprint, 1972).

Robert H. Canary

See also History and Historians; Literature.