Soon after his return to the United States, Mr. Bancroft was appointed to the chair of Greek in Harvard College and those who had the benefit of his instruction spoke of his zeal, faithfulness and varied learning as a teacher. He afterward established, in conjunction with Joseph G. Cogswell, a school of high classical character at [♦]Northampton, Massachusetts. While engaged here, he prepared a number of Latin text books for schools, which were far in advance of anything then used in the country. In the meantime, he had given some attention to politics and had been engaged for several years, incidentally, upon his “History of the United States.”
[♦] ‘Northhampton’ replaced with ‘Northampton’
In 1828 Mr. Bancroft joined the Democratic Party, having formerly been a Whig, and began to take an active interest in politics, where his great historic learning and broad statesmanship placed him quickly on the high road to political preferment. He was elected to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1830, but declined, as he was then so much engaged upon his “History of the United States” that he was unwilling to turn aside, at least until the first volume was issued, which appeared in 1834. The first and second and third volumes of this work, comprising the Colonial history of the country, were received with great satisfaction by the public on both sides of the Atlantic, being in brilliancy of style, picturesque sketches of character and incidents, compass of learning and generally fair reasoning far in advance of anything that had been written on the subject.
“Bancroft, the Historian,” was now the recognition he was accorded, and his fame began to spread. He was made Collector of the Port of Boston in 1838 by President Van Buren, which position he held until 1841. In 1844 he ran as Democratic candidate for Governor of Massachusetts, but was defeated. During 1845 and 1846 he served his country as Secretary of the Navy under President Polk, and while in this office he planned and established the Naval Academy at Annapolis and issued the orders by which California was annexed to the United States. In 1846 President Polk further honored the historian by appointing him Minister-Plenipotentiary to Great Britain, where he represented the United States until 1849. The first three volumes of Mr. Bancroft’s histories had preceded him to England. “The London Monthly Review” spoke in the highest terms of his quality as a historian, praising the sustained accuracy and dignity of his style, referring to him as a philosopher, a legislator, and a historian. He was also honored with the degree of D. C. L., by Oxford University in 1849, and was enrolled as a member of many learned societies.
Thus laden with honors, he returned this same year to his country, made New York his place of residence, and resumed, with renewed energy, the prosecution of his historical labors. The fourth volume of his “History of the United States” appeared in 1852, and the next year the fifth volume was published, which was succeeded by the sixth and seventh, the latter appearing in 1858, bringing the history of our country down into the stirring scenes of the Revolution.
President Andrew Johnson made Mr. Bancroft United States Minister to Russia in 1867, and he was our national representative at the North German Confederation in 1868. General Grant appointed him as our Minister to the German Empire from 1871 to 1874, during which time he enjoyed the closest friendship of Prince Bismarck. Bismarck declares that Bancroft was the foremost representative of American grit that he had ever met. “Think,” said he to Minister Phelps many years afterwards, “of a Secretary of the Navy, a literary man by profession, taking it upon himself to issue orders for the occupation of a vast foreign territory as Bancroft did in the case of California. Again he caused the earliest seizure of Texas by the United States troops, while temporarily holding the portfolio of Minister of War. Only a really great man would undertake such responsibilities.”
Bancroft’s “History of the United States” was completed in 1874; but the last and final revised edition of it was published in 1885, fifty-one years after the first volume had been issued. This great work comprises ten volumes and comes down only to the close of the Revolution. It is a monumental work within itself—a fit monument to the greatest of American historians. The patriotism and eloquence of its author are manifest in nearly every page, and the work has been criticised as a Fourth-of-July oration in ten volumes. It is generally regarded as a standard history of America up to the time of the Constitution.
Other works of Mr. Bancroft are “The Necessity, the Reality, and the Promises of the Human Race” (1854); “Literary and Historical Miscellanies” (1855), and “A Plea for the Constitution of the United States of America, Wounded in the House of its Guardians” (1886), written when the author was eighty-six years of age.
Mr. Bancroft was an orator as well as a historian and politician, one of the best-known of his addresses being the famous oration on Lincoln, delivered before Congress in 1866. During the latter part of his life he had a winter home in Washington, where the national archives and the Library of Congress were always at his hand, and a summer home at Newport, where he had a wonderful garden of roses, which was a great attraction. Rose-growing and horseback riding were his recreations, and the erect and striking form of the historian, with his long gray beard, mounted on a fine horse, was for years a familiar figure at Newport and on the streets of Washington.
It is beautiful to contemplate so long and useful a life as that of George Bancroft. When the old historian was nearly ninety years of age, he journeyed all the way from his northern home to Nashville, Tennessee, to make certain investigations, for historical data, among the private papers of President Polk. The writer of this sketch had the pleasure of witnessing the meeting between him and the venerable wife of James K. Polk at the old mansion which stands near the Capitol. It was a beautiful and impressive sight to see this grand old woman, who had been the first lady of the land forty-five years before, conducting this venerable historian, who had been her husband’s Secretary of War, about the premises. President Polk’s library with all the papers piled upon the table had remained just as he had left it, and into its sacred precincts Mr. Bancroft was admitted, with perfect liberty to select and take away whatever would be of service in his historical labors. What he did with these papers is unknown to the writer. Perhaps his death occurred too soon after to render them of practical service; but that the old historian died in the harness may well be supposed from the following extract taken from a letter written when he was more than eighty years of age: “I was trained to look upon life here as a season for labor. Being more than fourscore years old, I know the time for my release will soon come. Conscious of being near the shore of eternity, I wait without impatience and without dread the beckoning of the hand which will summon me to rest.”