GREAT AMERICAN HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS
JOHN L. MOTLEY • WM. H. PRESCOTT
GEO. H. BANCROFT
JOHN B. McMASTER • JAMES PARTON
GEORGE BANCROFT.
“THE MOST FAMOUS AMERICAN HISTORIAN.”
HE chief historians who have added lustre to American literature during the nineteenth century are Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, Parkman, McMaster and John Fiske; and, when we add to these James Parton, the American biographer, we present an array of talent and scholarship on which any nation might look with patriotic pride. They have been excelled by the historians of no other nation of our time, if, indeed—taken from a national standpoint—they have not produced the best historical literature of the present century.
Though Prescott is the oldest, George Bancroft, in the estimation of the great majority, stands first, perhaps, among all the American historians. This eminent writer was born at Worcester, Massachusetts, in October, 1800, the same month and year in which [♦]Macaulay, the great English historian, first saw the light, and,—after living one of the most laborious public and literary lives in the history of the world,—died at the ripe old age of ninety-one years (1891). His father, the Reverend Aaron Bancroft, was a minister of the Congregational Church in Worcester for more than a half century and had the highest reputation as a theologian of learning and piety.
[♦] ‘Macauley’ replaced with ‘Macaulay’
At the early age of thirteen, George Bancroft entered Harvard College from which he graduated at the age of seventeen with the highest honors of his class. His first inclinations were to study theology; but in 1818, he went to Germany where he spent two years in the study of history and philology, and it was there that he obtained his degree of Doctor of Philosophy. During the next two years, he visited in succession, Berlin, Heidelberg, Rome, Paris, and London, returning home in 1822, the most accomplished scholar for his age which our country, at that time, had produced.