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George Bancroft by Robert H. Canary

Georg Bancroft was the first great American Historian and historical writer of the time as well as a well-known politic and diplomacy professional. He was one of the most powerful men in President Polk’s cabinet. Bancroft was son of Aaron Bancroft, who was one of the founders of the American Unitarian Association and its honorary president. Bancrofts family had been from respectable farmers who came to America in 1632. Bancroft represented the US at the courts of England and Germany; after that, he was secretary of the Navy in President James K. Polk’s cabinet, but his service for this post was relatively short, but distinguished. He curtailed the use of flogging as a punishment; he improved the operations of the naval observatory; and he established the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Bancroft wanted to be known as a man of letters long before the publication of the history. He was well-known as writer for the prestigious journals; similarly, the controversy made Bancroft’s name even more attractive to editors and bookseller, but most of his energies were going into his History. He was popular in the rural area where the party was relatively weak. The success of the history naturally increased Bancroft’s political attractiveness so that the Whigs had already sensed Bancroft’s talents and offered him the post of secretary of state in Massachusetts, but he refused (1-31). Edmund S. Morgan, one the most distinguished contemporary historians of early America, has said that Bancroft remain “in many ways the greatest” of the historians of the Revolutionary War, adding that Bancroft knew “the source better than anyone has since” (116). He has done his best to find and examine the report of all nations, factions, of individuals involved in important incidents. Bancroft makes it clear in his address that his sense of America’s special mission in history is based on a belief that it is in some ways an instrument of providence. For a while after his marriage, Bancroft was relatively silent about political issues. He was nominated for state senator by the Workingmen’s party in 1830, but he refused the nomination. Soon, Bancroft became a man of the world and his familiarity with continental manners later helped him in his diplomatic career (51-62). Bancroft’s democratic bias in the first volume of his history was sufficiently obvious that many readers felt that it cast a ballot for Andrew Jackson. Furthermore, Bancroft’s address indentified the spirit of America with the principles of Thomas Jefferson. He said that the people were to be supreme; the government must be a through-going democracy; and the voice of the people “is the voice of God”, while Bancroft’s father had been a conservative federalist. In 1836, Bancroft formally became a member of the Democratic Party. Bancroft brought a number of advantages to the Democrats. He believed in the democratic ideal so did he believe that history proved its value and viability. Refusal of the post which was offered by Whigs attributed either to his devotion to democracy or to his realization that the Democrats were bound to win in the long run. He publicly turned down another offer from the Whigs, and he refused another nomination from the Workingmen’s party too. Having shown widespread appeal, he showed his party loyalty by campaigning vigorously for Marcus Morton, the Democratic candidate for governor in 1835 and 1836. One possible sign of Bancroft’s devotion to the party of Jackson was the presence of occasional remarks which seem to anticipate Frederick Jackson Turner’s belief that the frontier experience helped shape America. The Democratic Party was the one truly national political party, and it did its best to obscure, ignore, and patch up the fundamental differences within the party over slavery. So that he is placed squarely among the anti-slavery forces (25-37). He took more positive steps into the political arena by publishing an article in the North American about the Bank of the United States. His liberal views so shocked the majority of his congregation that the church did not follow custom by appointing him successor. (1-7). What was important in the period, for Bancroft, was what looked forward to the framing of the Constitution, the failures of the Confederation and the various efforts to move toward a stronger central government. Moreover, Bancroft was perfectly aware that his work’s democratic leanings had contemporary political implications. It earned him a number of enemies in Massachusetts. In addition, some Mammon-worshiping Whigs were displeased by Bancroft’s equation of democracy, even in the small case, with Christianity. One respectable Bostoner wrote of Bancroft as a traitor to his class. Bancroft believed that when a man grows wiser, he will inevitably discern the benefits of democratic institutions; and one day all political institutions will rest on the basis of equality and freedom. Bancroft here linked his democratic idealism to American patriotism (21-70). Bancroft believed that history has “the character of science and the movements of mankind are governed by law,” and the task of the historian is “discerning the presence of law” in the event of history. Few of his hearer disagreed with him. But many of those who joined with him in coveting the name of science could not accept his implicit definition. For them, science meant rigor, precision, objectivity; and Bancroft seemed to have none of these. Bancroft’s history moves from law to liberty. His thought was that history is in the hands of providence, and the historian’s task is to reveal and justify God’s ways to man; “it is because God is visible in history that his office was noblest except that of the poet”. Bancroft’s history is good literature as well as good history, not because of his style, which sometimes offends modern tastes, but because of his success in imposing form on his materials. Bancroft’s lines of action are, therefore, chains of contingent events linking together such essential incidents. Bancroft’s history, detailed as it is, covers too wide scope, too long a stretch of time for any single set of agents to be crucial in its action. If Bancroft shaped his story so that it began in law and ended in liberty, his plot provides the connecting middle by arranging events in lines of action in which one event follows another in a manner which the reader will accept as probable and intelligible. Bancroft, however, chose to construct a narrative action, a plot with a beginning, middle, and end. The thematically organized book would present with a series of beginnings and endings; it might be an argument that the endings were superior to the beginnings. Bancroft’s history has a plot because it provides the middle which shows how we got from the beginning to the end. The young Transcendentalist editor Orestes Brownson called Bancroft’s ten-volume history “the best historical production in our language and the achievement of American independence. Bancroft in one of his letters to Everett said, “That I remain firmly of the opinion; the man of letters must be the man of the people” (49-90). Bancroft was the master of his materials, and age had neither diminished his energy nor altered his style. In the words of Russell B Nye, this work is “in many ways the finest thing that Bancroft had ever done, the most unified, thoughtful, and least partisan of his works.” Bancroft had early begun collecting materials on the immediate post-revolutionary period, and the History of the Formation of the Constitution was the product of his six years of steady labor. Younger historians already regarded Bancroft as an anachronism, but no one had yet produced so authoritative a study of the period. He has many published history books. For example, the History of the United States 1834-1885, Volume I, tells of the colonization of the Carolinas, the New Netherlands, and Pennsylvania. Volume II carries forward the stories of the colonies. 3rd volume carries the story of the colonies forward to the mid-eighteenth century. In the 3rd volume, Bancroft returned to the theme of British insistence on slavery in the colonies (33-39). The Constitution volumes are written from the same philosophic viewpoint which informs the history. Additionally, these volumes present the result of original and extensive research that is rather more thoroughly documented than is sometimes the case in the history. Moreover, Bancroft also wrote four other history books. Book I, “The Confederation,” takes the story to the end of the war and to the dissolution of the Continental Army. Book II, “on the Way to a Federal Convention, 1783-1787” is mainly concerned with effort to promote a stronger union. Book III, “The Federal Convention” is the longest of the work, as befits its place at the center of the action. And Book IV, “the People of the States in Judgment on the Constitution, 1787-1788” covers a longer, more complex story in half as many pages as were devoted to the convention (65-100). In Bancroft’s history, Washington is a principal agent in one line of action and the greatest hero of the war. He mentioned Washington a character among many. Bancroft reinforces the unity of his action by making Washington the hero of the Constitution volumes, as he is of the later books of the History. Bancroft added that Washington is established for us as a character of weight and dignity; he argues the rightness of Washington’s judgment. It is possible to see Washington as a great natural leader who became a fine general in the course of the revolution, but Bancroft’s Washington is wise in all things as if by nature’s gift. As Washington came to see the necessity for a single American nation, Bancroft used this realization both as evidence of his wisdom and as an example of the way in which he embodied the collective wisdom of the people. Bancroft added that Washington services as a unifying hero more because of his wisdom than because of his acts (56-72). Bancroft was an Abolitionist, and his confirmation was delayed in the Senate. But when Polk stood firm and when the charge could not be proved, Bancroft was eventually confirmed as an Abolitionist. For this, America’s long acceptance of slavery was obviously an uncomfortable point for Bancroft. His law of progress thus provided a criterion for judgment as well as an explanation of history. It enabled him to see himself as speaking for the race in praising progressive politicians and in condemning those who seem to him to speak for the selfish interests of particular classes. Bancroft later rejected rationalism in religion and stressed his father’s closeness to conservative religious views. In any event, we found no evidence that Bancroft has played down his views on slavery or softened his expression of them for political reasons. The harshest comments on slavery come in the earliest volumes, published when Bancroft was just fashioning a political career. For himself, anti-slavery sentiment was far less common in the North than later (4-40). Bancroft was really a great historian and political figure of the time. During the time, he showed his sincere commitment to the democrat party and stayed loyal to it. His ample struggle in the history and his political devotion made him a brilliant figure not only in the history, but also in his political and government career. He followed and supported those who had been known as founder of the US such as Washington and founder of democrat party “Jefferson”. He did not like slavery and was anti-slavery. The nation will remember him and his achievement for ever.