George Bancroft, Secession Apologist?

Scarcely do I learn who George Bancroft is, when he starts popping up everywhere.

Russell McClintock relates that on March 16, 1861, "William Howard Russell, the celebrated war correspondent of the London Times," arrived in New York. George Bancroft was "[t]he first notable he spoke with."

Bancroft talked at length about the [secession] crisis but seemed unable to come to any conclusions; while believing that "the republic, though in danger, was the most stable and beneficial form of government in the world," he was insistent that "as a Government it had no power to coerce the people of the South or save itself from danger."

George Bancroft, Presidential Confidant

At Wig-Wags, Rene Tyree recently published several posts on George Bancroft. In all honesty, I'm not sure that I had ever heard of Bancroft before. If I had run across his name, I hadn't retained it.

As a result, I immediately thought of Rene's posts when, a few days ago, I read this dramatic scene in Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought:

No president has ever played his cards closer to his chest [than James Polk]. Even in his diary Polk did not let his guard down. He confided the objectives of his presidency to only one person besides his wife: George Bancroft, the New England intellectual who shared his vision of America's imperial destiny and whom he was about to name secretary of the navy. The new president slapped his thigh and avowed, "There are to be four great measures of my administration," Bancroft recalled:

The settlement of the Oregon question with Great Britain.
The acquisition of California and a large district on the coast.
The reduction of the Tariff to a revenue basis.
The complete and permanent establishment of the Constitutional Treasury, as he loved to call it, but as others called it, "Independent Treasury."

Judged by these objectives, Polk is probably the most successful president the United States ever had.