George Bancroft was an American historian, statesman and Democratic politician who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state of Massachusetts and at the national and international levels.
31 Facts About George Bancroft
2.
George Bancroft was a senior American diplomat in Europe, leading diplomatic missions to Britain and Germany.
3.
George Bancroft's family had been in Massachusetts Bay since 1632.
4.
George Bancroft entered Harvard College at thirteen years of age and graduated with the Class of 1817.
5.
George Bancroft capped off his education with a European tour, in the course of which he sought out almost every distinguished man in the European world of letters, science and art, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lord Byron, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Christian Charles Josias Bunsen, Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Varnhagen von Ense, Victor Cousin, Benjamin Constant and Alessandro Manzoni.
6.
George Bancroft chafed at the narrow curriculum of Harvard in his day and the pedantic spirit of its classics curriculum.
7.
George Bancroft finally left Cambridge and with Joseph Cogswell established the Round Hill School at Northampton, Massachusetts.
8.
George Bancroft made a translation of Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren's work on The Politics of Ancient Greece.
9.
George Bancroft, having trained in the leading German universities, was an accomplished scholar, whose masterwork History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent covered the new nation in depth down to 1789.
10.
George Bancroft played on four recurring themes to explain the development of American values: providence, progress, patria, and pan-democracy.
11.
In 1837, George Bancroft entered active politics by accepting an appointment as Collector of Customs of the Port of Boston by President Martin Van Buren.
12.
In 1844, George Bancroft was the Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts but he was defeated.
13.
George Bancroft called for the annexation of Texas as extending "the area of freedom" and opposed slavery.
14.
In 1845, in recognition for his support at the previous Democratic convention, George Bancroft was appointed to James Polk's cabinet as Secretary of the Navy, serving until 1846, when, for a month, he was acting Secretary of War.
15.
George Bancroft ordered naval action that resulted in the occupation of California and, as secretary of War, sent Zachary Taylor into the contested land between Texas and Mexico.
16.
George Bancroft designed and developed the Naval Academy; he received all the appropriations for which he asked.
17.
Congress had never been willing to establish a naval academy, but George Bancroft studied the law to assess the powers of the Secretary of the Navy.
18.
George Bancroft introduced some new respected professors into the corps of instructors, and he suggested a system of promotion, related to experience and achievements as well as age.
19.
George Bancroft was influential in obtaining additional appropriations for the United States Naval Observatory.
20.
Similarly, George Bancroft studied so deeply the Oregon boundary dispute that in 1846, he was sent as minister plenipotentiary to London to work with the British government on the issue.
21.
George Bancroft planned to include the copy in Autograph Leaves of Our Country's Authors, which he planned to sell at a Soldiers' and Sailors' Sanitary Fair, in Baltimore, to raise money to care for the Union Army.
22.
George Bancroft remained in Berlin for seven years, throughout the Franco-Prussian War and German unification.
23.
George Bancroft formed a second marriage with Mrs Elizabeth Davis Bliss, a widow with two children.
24.
George Bancroft was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1838, and served as its Secretary of Domestic Correspondence from 1877 to 1880.
25.
In 1841, George Bancroft was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society.
26.
In New York, George Bancroft was a founding member of the American Geographical Society and served as the society's first president for nearly three years.
27.
George Bancroft was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1863.
28.
George Bancroft died in 1891, in Washington, DC He was the last surviving member of the Polk cabinet.
29.
The dormitory at the United States Naval Academy, George Bancroft Hall, is named after him.
30.
George Bancroft is one of 23 famous names on the $1 educational currency note of 1896.
31.
The name of Bancroft, honoring George Bancroft, is found atop one of several marble pillars in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the United States Library of Congress in Washington, DC.