368 GEORGE BANCROFT. 



from State to State. Many of these records have since been pub- 

 lished, and are now to be found in all the great libraries. When 

 we reach the Revolutionary period, however, it is easy to compre- 

 hend why Colonel Higginson speaks of Bancroft's resources as inex- 

 haustible, and why Mr. Winsor characterizes them as extraordinary. 

 Bancroft himself has given a detailed recapitulation of his manu- 

 script sources of authority in the Prefaces to his sixth and ninth 

 volumes. There is not space at command to give this informa- 

 tion in full. The following extract from Mr. Winsor's abridged 

 statement of the information furnished by these Prefaces will serve 

 to show how remarkable were his opportunities : — 



" Nothing was refused hiin in the English State Paper Office, nor at the 

 Ti'easury. The manuscripts of the British Museum and the Royal Insti- 

 tution, such of the Chatham Papers as had not been printed, the Shelburne 

 Papers, including the letters of Shelburne and tlie King, an autobiography 

 of the third Duke of Grafton, a journal of the Earl of Dartmouth, the 

 letters which passed from the King to Lord North, not to mention others 

 of lesser importance, were placed at his disposal. In France the archives 

 were thrown open to his search without restraint, and the treasures of the 

 Marine and War Departments were largely drawn upon. On the nego- 

 tiations for peace, the French archives offered liini the richest material. 

 From Cierniany his acquisitions were peculiarly valuable, as Sparks had 

 scarcely reaped anything from that field. He found the archives of 

 Hesse-Cassel closed to him as to others, but through the instrumentality 

 of Friedrich Kapp and others he secured the possession of private journals 

 and reports of the Hessian officers, and caused searches to be made in the 

 wide field of the contemporary publications in Germany for letters and 

 criticisms on the part of the German auxiliaries in the war which he con- 

 siders 'in the main the most in)portant of all that have been preserved.' 

 From Berlin, he got the reports made to the Duke of Brunswick by his 

 officers which have finally found a lodgment in the Russian archives; and 

 he also secured the collection which I\Iax von Eelking, the writer on the 

 Hessian story, had amassed in his studies. He likewise obtained copies 

 of the correspondence of Frederick the Great with his foreign ministers, 

 so far as it touched upon the affairs of America. From Moscow and 

 Vienna, from Holland and from Spain, other documents came to swell 

 the record, which have enabled him to make his account of the foreign 

 relations of the Confederacy the best by far which had been prepared. 



" His wealth of American papers is probably from their scope unsur- 

 passed in private hands. He iiad of course at his command the resources 

 of the government archives, and those of the original States; he could 

 examine the papers of the Revolution gathered in public libraries, and in 

 the cabinets of historical societies; and besides these he had his own 

 gatherings ; the correspondence of the agents of the various Colonies in 



