George Bancroft

His family had been in Massachusetts Bay since 1632.

George's father, Aaron Bancroft, was distinguished as a Revolutionary War soldier, a leading Unitarian clergyman, and author of a popular biography of George Washington.

Bancroft began his education at Phillips Exeter Academy.

Bancroft, having trained in the leading German universities, was an accomplished scholar, whose masterwork History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent covered the new nation in depth down to 1789.

George Bancroft (October 3, 1800 – January 17, 1891) was an American historian, statesman and Democratic politician who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state of Massachusetts and at the national and international levels.

During his tenure as U.S. Secretary of the Navy, he established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis.

He was a senior American diplomat in Europe, leading diplomatic missions to Britain and Germany.

Among his best-known writings is the magisterial series, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent.

Bancroft was born on October 3, 1800, in Worcester, Massachusetts.

He entered Harvard College at thirteen years of age and graduated with the Class of 1817.

After Harvard, Bancroft's father sent him abroad to study in Germany, where he studied at the universities of Göttingen, and Berlin.

At Göttingen, he studied Plato with Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren, history with Heeren and Gottlieb Jakob Planck, and languages and scripture interpretation with Albert Eichhorn, natural science with Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, German literature with Georg Friedrich Benecke, French and Italian literature with Artaud and Bunsen, and classics with Georg Ludolf Dissen.

In 1820, he received his doctorate from the University of Göttingen.

Bancroft capped off his education with a European tour, in the course of which he sought out almost every distinguished man in the European world of letters, science and art, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lord Byron, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Christian Charles Josias Bunsen, Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Varnhagen von Ense, Victor Cousin, Benjamin Constant and Alessandro Manzoni.

Bancroft returned to the United States in 1822.

While the young man delivered several sermons at his father's behest shortly after his return, his love of literature proved a stronger attachment.

His first position was as a tutor of Greek at Harvard.

Bancroft chafed at the narrow curriculum of Harvard in his day and the pedantic spirit of its classics curriculum.

Moreover, his personal affect of ardent Romanticism subjected him to ridicule among the formal society of New England and his political sympathies for Jacksonian democracy put him at odds with nearly all of the Boston elite.

In 1823, he published his first work, a little volume of poetry, translations and original pieces, which brought no fame.

Bancroft finally left Cambridge and with Joseph Cogswell established the Round Hill School at Northampton, Massachusetts.

While at Round Hill, Bancroft contributed frequently to the North American Review and American Quarterly.

He also made a translation of Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren's work on The Politics of Ancient Greece.

In 1830, he was elected to the Massachusetts State Senate from Northampton without his knowledge by the support of the Working Men's Party, but refused to take his seat.

and the next year he declined another nomination, though certain to have been elected, for the state senate.

His History of the United States started appearing in 1834, and he constantly revised it in numerous editions.

It remains among the most comprehensive histories of colonial America.

Bancroft was a Romantic, emphasizing nationalist and republican values.

Bancroft played on four recurring themes to explain the development of American values: providence, progress, patria, and pan-democracy.

"Providence" meant that destiny depended more on God than on human will.

The idea of "progress" indicated that through continuous reform a better society was possible.

Patria was deserved because America's spreading influence would bring liberty and freedom to more and more of the world.

"Pan-democracy" meant the nation-state was central to the drama, not specific heroes or villains.

Richard C. Vitzthum argues that Bancroft's histories exemplify his Unitarian moral vision of faith in progress.

The history of America, in Bancroft's view, exemplified the gradual unfolding of God's purpose for mankind – the development of religious and political liberty.

George M. Frederickson argues that Bancroft's "universalist theory of national origins... made the American Revolution not only the fruit of a specific historical tradition, but also a creed of liberty for all mankind."

Bancroft's orotund romantic style and enthusiastic patriotism fell out of favor with later generations of scientific historians, who did not assign his books to students.

In 1836, he published an oration advocating universal suffrage and the foundation of the state on the power of the whole people.

After 1890, American scholars of the Imperial School took a more favorable view of the British Empire than Bancroft.

Edmund Morgan compares Bancroft's history to that of the Liberal statesman Sir George Trevelyan in that both reject the Progressive view of the Revolution as a mere invocation of political philosophy as a means to keep and consolidate power.