GEORGE BANCROFT

(1800-1891)

BY AUSTIN SCOTT

The life of George Bancroft was nearly conterminous with the nineteenth century.  He was born at Worcester, Mass., October 3d, 1800, and died at Washington, D.C., January 17th, 1891.  But it was not merely the stretch of his years that identified him with this century.  In some respects he represented his time as no other of its men.  He came into touch with many widely differing elements which made up its life and character.  He spent most of his life in cities, but never lost the sense for country sights and sounds which central Massachusetts gave him in Worcester, his birthplace, and in Northampton, where he taught school.  The home into which he was born offered him from his infancy a rich possession.  His father was a Unitarian clergyman who wrote a ‘Life of Washington’ that was received with favor; thus things concerning God and country were his patrimony.  Not without significance was a word of his mother which he recalled in his latest years, “My son, I do not wish you to become a rich man, but I would have you be an affluent man:  ad fluo, always a little more coming in than going out.”

To the advantages of his boyhood home and of Harvard College, to which he went as a lad of thirteen, the eager young student added the opportunity, then uncommon, of a systematic course of study in German, and won the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Goettingen in 1820.  He had in a marked degree the characteristics of his countrymen, versatility and adaptability.  Giving up an early purpose of fitting himself for the pulpit, he taught in Harvard, and helped to found a school of an advanced type at Northampton.  Meantime he published a volume of verse, and found out that the passionate love of poetry which lasted through his life was not creative.  At Northampton he published in 1828 a translation in two volumes of Heeren’s ’History of the Political System of Europe,’ and also edited two editions of a Latin Reader; but the duties of a schoolmaster’s life were early thrown aside, and he could not be persuaded to resume them later when the headship of an important educational institution was offered to him.  Together with the one great pursuit of his life, to which he remained true for sixty years, he delighted in the activities of a politician, the duties of a statesman, and the occupations of a man of affairs and of the world.

[Illustration:  GEORGE BANCROFT.]

Bancroft received a large but insufficient vote as the Democratic candidate for the Governorship of Massachusetts, and for a time he held the office of Collector of the port of Boston.  As Secretary of the Navy in the Cabinet of Polk, he rendered to his country two distinct services of great value:  he founded the Naval School at Annapolis, and by his prompt orders to the American commander in the Pacific waters he