During his secretaryship Bancroft founded the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. This he brought about not by asking Congress to authorize its establishment, but by so interpreting the powers granted him under the law that he was able to set in operation a school for the training of midshipmen and offer it to Congress for approval. Once the school was established and its usefulness proved, there was no difficulty in securing funds for adequate equipment. The Academy was formally opened on October 10, 1845. From 1846 to 1849 Bancroft was minister to England. There were important diplomatic problems to be solved, but his triumphs were chiefly literary and social. He accumulated a rich store of documents, and on his return to America made his home in New York and devoted himself anew to the _History_.[12] The fourth volume appeared in 1852; the fifth in 1853; the sixth in 1854; the seventh in 1858; the eighth in 1860; the ninth in 1866; the tenth and concluding volume in 1874. His _Literary and Historical Miscellanies_ appeared in 1855. When the New York Historical Society celebrated the close of the first half-century of its existence (1854), Bancroft was the orator. His address on that occasion, ‘The Necessity, the Reality, and the Promise of the Progress of the Human Race,’ has been pronounced the best exposition of his historical creed.[13] Bancroft was a strong Union man and during the Civil War acted with the Republican party. He declined a nomination to Congress from the eighth district of New York (October, 1862), on the ground that a multiplication of candidates would leave the result very much to chance; there should be a union, he urged, of all those ‘who feel deeply for their country in this her hour of peril.’ At the close of the war he was chosen to pronounce the eulogy on Lincoln before Congress (February, 1866). President Johnson, in 1867, appointed Bancroft minister to Prussia. Later he was accredited to the North German Confederation, and in 1872, following current political changes, to the German Empire. He brought about that notable treaty whereby Germans who had become citizens of the United States were freed from allegiance to the land of their birth. Never before by a ‘formal act’ had the principle of ‘renunciation of citizenship at ‘the will of the individual been recognized.’ England followed Germany’s example and gave over her claim of indefeasible allegiance. Another diplomatic triumph was the settlement of the North-western boundary dispute. While in Germany Bancroft celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation at Göttingen. The University gave him an honorary degree, and congratulations were showered on him from scholars, statesmen, princes, and men of letters.