George Bancroft (3 October 1800-17 January 1891) was an important factor in the flowering of New England Romanticism in the early nineteenth century. Together with Francis Parkman, William Hickling Prescott, and others, he exemplified the New England intellectual response to the Romantic era. While Prescott fascinated readers with accounts of the Spanish empire in Latin America, and while Parkman described the conflict between France and England for North America, Bancroft applied the same narrative approach to the development of the United States. In some respects he exemplified the typical New England Brahmin. His ancestor, John Bancroft, had settled near Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1632, and his mother, Lucretia Chandler, had descended from a prominent family in Worcester County. Also, George Bancroft obtained the traditional Brahmin education. After preliminary schooling in his native Worcester, he attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and at the age of thirteen was admitted to Harvard College...