George Bancroft

George Bancroft ( born October 3, 1800, Worcester, Massachusetts; † 17 January 1891 in Washington DC ) was an American historian and politician. One of his best known works is considered the twelve-volume History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent.

Youth and the first occupation

George Bancroft was born as the son of Aaron Bancroft, a leading Unit Aryan. He attended the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, before he began his studies at the Harvard College in Cambridge at age 13. He continued his studies from 1818 in Göttingen, Heidelberg and Berlin together with Arnold Heeren, Albert Eichhorn and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach further before he received his doctorate in 1820 at the University of Göttingen. Then he traveled to Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy. In the course of this journey he met among others, Goethe, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Byron, Niebuhr, Savigny and Manzoni know.

After his return to the United States in 1822, he initially began as a preacher; dissatisfied he became a teacher of Greek at Cambridge University. Shortly thereafter, he founded together with Cogswell in 1823 the Round Hill School in Northampton, where he preferred German teacher hired, including the radical democrats and writer Karl Follen. First publications in the North American Review, and American Quarterly appeared at that time.

1827 Brancroft married and his first wife, Sarah Dwight; they had two sons. After her death in 1837 he married Elizabeth Davis Bliss widow who brought two girls into the marriage. The two got together it another daughter.

Political career

After having been employed as a collector ( Directo ) of the port of Boston and an unsuccessful candidate for the post of governor of Massachusetts Democrat Bancroft of U.S. President James K. Polk in 1845 was appointed Minister of the Navy in the Cabinet. He founded the Naval Academy at Annapolis and an observatory in Washington.

From 1846 to 1849 he was United States Ambassador in London. He returned to the States in 1850 and lived in New York City, he spent the summer months in Newport. During this time he worked on the completion of his History of the United States, which became a standard work of American historiography. A continuation of this work is the History of the formation of the constitution of the United States by 1882. Bancroft was thus the " most important interpreters of American history in the 19th century ", and ultimately it is thanks to him that the controversy over the right interpretation the American Revolution was stopped and instead the detachment was now perceived by the mother country as an "expression of the unstoppable triumphal procession of democracy in the world."

From 1867 to 1874 Bancroft lived as United States Ambassador in Berlin, where he founded in negotiations with Prussia and other north German states, the so-called Bancroft Treaties, regulating the right to naturalization of expatriate citizens and became the basis of international law. He retired after the return to private life back.

Roses

George Bancroft had in his summer home in Newport, Rhode Iceland, a remarkable collection of roses. In his garden George Field discovered an unnamed variety of the Field & Brothers introduced as 'American Beauty' 1886. The rose turned out later than the 1875, introduced by Lédéchaux cultivar ' Madame Ferdinand Jamin '.

Commemoration

In addition to various roads, schools and buildings three ships were named after Bancroft (USS Bancroft ). The residence of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, also bears his name.

1890 a plaque on his Göttingen Göttingen residential house in the street Weender 77 was installed.

Work

  • History of the colonization of the United States
  • History of the Revolution of North America (Boston 1855, 3 vols, German, Leipzig, 1852-64, 5 vols ).
  • History of the United States ( 1834-74, 10 vols, new outputs, 1883, 6 vols; German, Leipzig 1847-75 )
  • A. Lincoln, a memorial address ( Washington. 1866)
  • Literary and historical miscellanies (1855 )
  • History of the formation of the constitution of the United States (1882, 2 vols )
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