BOOKS.
BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.* THE present volume of Mr. Bancroft's work is understood to be the last. It extends over the four years 1778-82, and concludes with the signature of the preliminary articles of peace between Great Britain and the United States, November 30, 1782. It is to some extent matter of surprise that it should not have been carried to the end of the following year, so as to include the evacuation of New York by the British troops (November 25, 1783), the parting of Washington from his army (December 4), and the surrender of his commission (December 23), all events such as seem properly to belong to the history of the American Revolution, which the present volume professes to complete. But Mr. Bancroft knows best, his own mind, and has no doubt had reasons satisfactory to himself for fixing as he has done the limits to his work, though the result, as will be shown presently, is somewhat singular.
Surveying it as a whole, Mr. Bancroft's History of the United States cannot be said to take rank among the great histories of the world. It is heavy reading ; the style is laboured, and where (as is often unluckily the case) it aims at being picturesque, it only becomes laboriously turgid. There is no vivid realising of human character ; the writer never seems to see his personages face to face, as a Carlyle, a Michelet, or a Mommsen, but only to be describing some picture or sculpture in which they are represented, whilst partisanship seldom fails to warp his judgment in favour of an American or against an Englishman. But among historians of the second rank, Mr. Bancroft is entitled to a respectable, though by no means a foremost place. He is clearly behind his countryman Prescott, for instance, in historical imagination, in the power to present the past to the reader's mind. But he has considerable patience, industry, and, on the whole, conscientiousness in the col- lection of his materials, as well as skill in co-ordinating them, so that a reader who knows how to use his own judgment may find nearly all he needs to know on the subject in Mr. Bancroft's volumes. Moreover, it cannot but be observed that, whether through the ripening influence of age, or the larger experience of diplomacy, the later volumes of the work have gone on improving in breadth of view and general fairness of tone, so that the present one stands upon a far higher level than those published some years ago. In his careful study of the politics of the Continent, indeed, Mr. Bancroft stands probably alone with Mr. Motley among American writers; and in the present volume in particular, the greatest part of what is new consists of details of European diplomacy, in lingering over which Mr. Bancroft may seem to many to have allowed too much space to the spinning and respinning of many a web that never caught a fly. It may be added that it is not easy to see why, but for the circumstance that the writer was envoy at Berlin rather than at Madrid or St. Petersburg, nearly a whole chapter of the volume should have been devoted to a sketch of German history, and none to Spanish or Russian. Nay, but for that circumstance, is it uncharitable to suppose that, enlarging as he does upon the proceedings of Frederick II. in reference to America, he would not have failed to point out that incredible ignorance of English affairs, if not audacious misrepresentation of them, which is shown in his account "De ce qui s'est passé de plus important depuis 1774 jusqu'en 1778." Here, in a passage of which part was long since quoted by Mr. Adolphus in his History of the Reign of George III., the King speaks throughout of Lord Bute as the Minister who provoked and con- ducted the war, of George III. as reduced, through the corruption of members of Parliament out of his civil list, to defray his sub- sistence and keep up his dignity upon the 500,000 crowns which he drew from the Hanover Electorate, &c. Mr. Bancroft indeed truly states that "no Prince could be farther than Frederick from romantic attempts to rescue from oppression foreign colonies that were beyond his reach ;" that he sought in Frederick's letters for some expression of a personal interest in Washington, but found none. And through Mr. Bancroft's language, guarded as it is, and eulogistic wherever it can be, it is easy to see the working of that craft which, more even than any advantage to his own king- * History of the United States, ..from The Discovery of the Amesican Continent. By George Bancroft Vol. X. London: Sampson Low. Boston: Little, Brown, and CO. 1874
dom, seems to have sought the ruin of all other Powers. Thus, for instance, to Maltzan, his Envoy in ,London, Frederick writes respecting France, April 8, 1776, that in the ruinous condition of her finances, "a war will certainly bring bankruptcy in its train ;" to Goltz, his envoy in France, 8th September, 1777, "the independence of the Colonies will be worth to France all that the. war will cost." To lull England with the hope that war by France is impossible is evidently the object of the one despatch ; to egg, on France to that war is the object of the other.
If Mr. Bancroft's mode of dealing with a King of Prussia is at least courtier-like, his mode of dealing with the final negotiations. for peace is at least singular. The signature of preliminary articles can never be considered as actually terminating a war, since they may be disavowed ; peace between Great Britain and the United States was not really concluded till the ratification of the definitive treaty, 3rd September, 1783. As a matter of fact, it is. well known that negotiations continued, and that additional articles were proposed on each side (though eventually all withdrawn)„ after the signing of the preliminaries. Can it be that by this. means the historian has escaped the necessity of fully bringing out that discreditable stroke of sharp practice by which the American negotiators signed their peace with England without notice to the French Ministry,—one for which Franklin was. sharply reproved by Vergennes, and had to eat humble-pie, hoping that the proceeding would be excused, as it was "not from. want of respect for the King"? The fact is just indicated by statements that "the negotiation was opened and kept up with. theknowledge and at the wish of Vergennes, but everything, relating to the conditions of peace was withheld from him till the last ;" or that towards the French Minister the American Com- missioners, in signing the draft treaty as soon as approved in. London, "continued their reserve ;" as well as in a passage of the. preface, to the effect that the embarrassments of Vergennes, and the urgency of the King for peace, "explain and justify the pro- ceedings of the American Commissioners in signing preliminaries. of peace in advance." That Vergennes himself did not deem_ them so justified appears from the letter above quoted, and. certain it is that the last paragraph of Mr. Bancroft's work opens. with a sentence which is in direct conflict with Franklin's own statement on the subject. "The articles of peace," writes Mr. Bancroft, "though entitled 'provisional,' were made definitive by a declaration in the preamble." "No peace is to take place between us and England," wrote Franklin to Vergennes, December17, 1782,, "till you have concluded yours." The real fact is that in the state of insolvency to which America was reduced—and which appears sufficiently from earlier pages of Mr. Bancroft's volume—her Commissioners were obliged to blow hot or cold, according to, the necessities of the moment. The story of their proceedings. is not a pretty one, and on the whole, one is hardly surprised. that Mr. Bancroft should have dealt gingerly with it, and should_ have been glad to cut it short. By doing so, indeed, he has also escaped the necessity of completing the ugly story of the com- plete break-down of American finance, or telling that of the mutiny which threatened the State House of Philadelphia itself.. The fact is that no struggle, heroically begun, ever ended in a. less heroic manner than the war of American Independence, and every historian who takes up the subject must end by being, anxious to get rid of it.
Perhaps the most curious portion of Mr. Bancroft's volume is that in which he relates the tergiversations of Spain. It is diffi- cult to concede the name of statesmen to the personages who- then ruled the destinies of the latter country, but it is certain that they had a much truer instinct of the bearings of the struggle than the politicians of France. Yet, really hating and dreading the independence of the American Colonies, they suffered themselves to be dragged into an alliance with them, and into, war on their behalf. Strangest of all to say, perhaps the most. solid gain, at the peace, of any European Power was that of Spain, in the recovery of Minorca and Florida from England.
There are a few interesting pages in Mr. Bancroft's volume. indicating the sympathy felt with the American struggle by some of the great minds of Germany,—Kant, Lessing, Herder, Klop- stock, Goethe, Schiller, Niebuhr. It is to be regretted that he. should not have extended a similar research to other counties, so as to exibit somewhat fully the reflex action upon the mind of contemporary Europe of the American Revolution.
Whatever Criticisms, however, Mr. Bancroft's work may deserve, the world owes him a debt of gratitude for having written it, and having written it when he did. For although the history of the American Revolution will be written, no doubt, again and again, it is not likely ever to be treated with such fullness as in Mr.Ban-. croft's volumes, nor would it henceforth be so treated if it re- mained unwritten. For since he began it, a far more terrible revolution has swept through his country than the one which he has related, and has reduced for ever the proportions of his subject. The war of Secession has dwarfed the war of Independence. By the side of that gigantic struggle, the desultory coast warfare of the earlier one, broken only by the American invasion of Canada and Burgoyne's descent from it, sinks into insignifiance. There were more men wounded at Gettysburg, on the Federal side only, than the total list amounts to of killed, wounded, and missing on both sides, in all Washington's actions during the war, the siege of Yorktown included, and throwing in Lexing- ton and Bunker's Hill. There were more than twice as many Con- federates surrendered at Vicksburg alone than British soldiers in the two armies of Burgoyne and Cornwallis put together. Sir Henry Clinton, after the surrender"of Yorktown, declared that -with 10,000 additional men he would yet be responsible for the conquest of America. M.Clellan asked for 100,000 more to take Richmond. Although the war of American Independence will always form an epoch in history, on the one hand as representing the birth-throes of a great nation, on the other as having been, as it were, the artillery duel which preceded the Armageddon battle of the French Revolution, it is probable that in course of time its details will justly fade away from the world's memory, and that little will remain of it but three figures, —in the foreground, the tragic one of the half-crazy king, resolved only that America should not be independent, and the heroic one of the stout-hearted Virginian country gentleman, the impersonation of massive English common-sense, resolved more sternly still that she should be ; and a little in the rear, that of the shrewd New-Englander, who, in his brown coat, fascinated the most brilliant Court in Europe, and showed himself more than a match for the diplomatists of three kingdoms.
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