He studied in Germany after
leaving Harvard, turned schoolmaster, Democratic politician and
office-holder, served as Secretary of the Navy, Minister to
England and then to the German Empire, and won distinction in
each of his avocations, though the real passion of his life was
his "History of the United States," which he succeeded in
bringing down to the adoption of the Constitution. The first
volume, which appeared in 1834, reads today like a stump speech
by a sturdy Democratic orator of the Jacksonian period. But there
was solid stuff in it, nevertheless, and as Bancroft proceeded,
decade after decade, he discarded some of his rhetoric and
philosophy of democracy and utilized increasingly the vast stores
of documents which his energy and his high political positions
had made it possible for him to obtain. Late in life he condensed
his ten great volumes to six. Posterity will doubtless condense
these in turn, as posterity has a way of doing, but Bancroft the
historian realized his own youthful ambition with a completeness
rare in the history of human effort and performed a monumental
service to his country.
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