Children's Stories in American Literature, 1660-1860

by Henrietta Christian Wright

To him the rise and establishment of the United States as a great nation presented itself as one of the most brilliant passages of the world's history, and no labor seemed tiresome which should fittingly chronicle that event.

Besides his literary requirements Bancroft possessed eminent qualities for practical life. He was successively Governor of Massachusetts, Secretary of the Navy, and for a time Acting-Secretary of war; he served his country as Minister to Great Britain. He was made Minister to Prussia and afterward Minister to Germany when that country took its place as a united nation. Some of the most important treaties between the United States and foreign powers were made during Bancroft's diplomatic career, and in every act of his political life showed a talent for practical affairs. While he was Secretary of the Navy he founded the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Previous to this there was no good system by which the boys who desired to enter the navy could receive instruction in any other branch than that of practical seamanship. In the old navy the middies were taught, while afloat, by the chaplains, who gave them lessons in odd hours in writing, arithmetic, and navigation; if the pupils were idle they were reported to the captain, whose discipline was far from gentle. A boy eager to learn could pick up a great deal by asking questions and noticing what was going on about him, and sometimes the officers would volunteer their help in a difficult subject. Later each ship had one regular school-master, who made the voyage with the ship, twenty middies being appointed to each man-of-war. This system was superseded by schools, which were established at the different navy-yards, and which the boys attended in the intervals of sea duty; but, as in the case of the other methods, the instruction was desultory, and the pupils had not the advantage of education enjoyed by the cadets of the West Point Military Academy, though it was evident the necessity for it was the same.

Bancroft brought to the office of Secretary of the Navy his old love for broad principles of education, and eight months after he took office the United States Naval Academy was in full operation, with a corps of instructors of the first merit, and with a complement of pupils that spoke well for the national interest in the cause. At first the course was for five years, the first and last of which only were spent at the Academy and the rest at sea, but this was later modified to its present form. Bancroft's generous policy placed the new institution upon a firm basis, and it became at once a vital force in the life of the United States Navy.

Bancroft began his history while still at Round Hill, and published the first volume in 1834. Previous to beginning his history he had published a small volume of verse, a Latin Reader, and a book on Greek politics for the use of the Round Hill School, and various translations and miscellaneous writings in the different periodicals of the day. But none of these had seemed serious work to him, and he brought to his history a mind fresh to literary labor, and a fund of general information that was invaluable.

While he was minister to Great Britain he visited the state archives of England, France, and Germany for additional historical material. From this time he devoted himself as exclusively to his work as the diplomatic positions he held would allow.

His official administration in his own country was also far-reaching. Besides the establishment of the Naval Academy, it was he who, while acting as Secretary of War pro tem., gave the famous order for General Taylor to move forward to the western boundary of Texas, which had been annexed to the United States after seceding from Mexico and setting up as a republic. General Taylor's appearance on the borders was the signal to Mexico that the United States intended to defend the new territory, and eventually led to the war with Mexico, by which the United States received the territory of New Mexico and California.

When the lookout on the Pinta called out "Land ho!" he really uttered the first word of American history, and Bancroft's narrative begins almost at this point. The first volume embraces the early French and Spanish voyages; the settlement of the Colonies; descriptions of colonial life in New England and Virginia; the fall and restoration of the house of Stuart in England, which led to such important results in American history, and Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, which was the first note of warning to England that the American Colonies would not tolerate English injustice without a protest. To the reader who loves to find in history facts more marvellous than any imaginations of fairy lore, the first volume of Bancroft's history must ever be a region of delight. The picturesque figure of Columbus fronting undismayed the terrors of that unknown sea, which the geographers of the period peopled with demons and monsters; the adventures of the French and Spanish courtiers in search of fabled rivers and life-giving fountains; the trials of the gold-seekers, De Soto, Navarez, Cabeça de Vaca, and others, who sought for the riches of the romantic East; and the heroic suffering of those innumerable bands who first looked upon the wonders of the New World, and opened the way to its great career, are such stories as are found in the sober history of no other country. To the Old World, whose beginnings of history were lost in the mists of the past, this vision of the New World, with its beauty of mountains, river, and forest, with its inexhaustible wealth and its races yet living in the primitive conditions of remote antiquity, was indeed a wonder hardly to be believed. It is something to be present at the birth of a new world, and Bancroft has followed the voyagers and settlers in their own spirit, made their adventures his own, and given to the reader a brilliant as well as faithful picture of the historic beginning of the American continent.

In his second volume Bancroft takes up the history of the Dutch in America; of the occupations of the Valley of the Mississippi by the French; of the expulsion of the French from Canada by the English, and the minor events which went toward the accomplishment of these objects. Here are introduced the romantic story of Acadia and the picturesque side of Indian life. "The Indian mother places her child, as spring does its blossoms, upon the boughs of the trees while she works," says Bancroft in describing the sleeping-places of the Indian babies, and we see the same sympathetic touch throughout his descriptions of these dark children of the forest, to whom the white man came as a usurper of their rights and destroyer of their woodland homes.

The remaining volumes of the history consist almost entirely of the causes which led up to the American Revolution, the Revolution itself, and its effect upon Europe. One-half of the whole work is devoted to this theme, which is treated with a philosophical breadth that makes it comparable to the work of the greatest historians. Here we are led to see that, besides its influence upon the history of the New World, the American Revolution was one of the greatest events in the world's history; that it followed naturally from the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain and the Revolution of the English people against the tyranny of Charles I., and that, like them, its highest mission was to vindicate the cause of liberty.