| Nathaniel Prentice
Banks |
|
|
In office
February 2, 1856 – March
4, 1857 |
| Preceded by |
Linn Boyd |
| Succeeded by |
James L. Orr |
|
| Born |
January 30 1816(1816--)
Waltham, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died |
September 1 1894 (aged 78)
Waltham, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Political party |
Democrat, American,
Republican, Liberal Republican, Independent |
| Spouse |
Mary Theodosia Parker Banks |
| Profession |
Politician, Lawyer, Machinist |
Nathaniel Prentice (or Prentiss)[1] Banks
(January 30, 1816 – September
1, 1894) was an American politician and soldier, served as Governor of Massachusetts, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and as a
Union general during the American Civil War.
Early life
Banks was born at Waltham, Massachusetts, the first child of Nathaniel P.
Banks, Sr., and Rebecca Greenwood Banks. He received only a common school education and at an early age began work as a bobbin
boy in a local cotton factory; throughout his life he was known by the humorous nickname, Bobbin Boy Banks. Subsequently, he
apprenticed as a mechanic, briefly edited several weekly newspapers, studied law and was admitted to the bar at age 23, his energy and his ability as a public speaker soon winning him distinction. His booming,
distinctive voice and oracular style of delivery made him a commanding presence before an audience. On April 11 1847, at Providence, Rhode
Island, he married Mary Theodosia Palmer, an ex-factory employee, after a lengthy courtship.
Political career
Banks served as a Democrat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1849 to 1853, and was speaker in 1851
and 1852; he was president of the state Constitutional
Convention of 1853, and in the same year was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a coalition candidate of Democrats and
Free-Soilers. In 1854, he was reelected as a Know
Nothing.
At the opening of the Thirty-Fourth Congress, men from several parties opposed to slavery's spread gradually united in
supporting Banks for speaker, and after the longest and one of the most bitter speakership contests ever, lasting, from
December 3 1855 to February
2 1856, he was chosen on the 133rd ballot. This has been called the first national victory
of the Republican party. He gave antislavery men important posts in
Congress for the first time, and cooperated with investigations of both the Kansas conflict and the caning of Senator
Charles Sumner. Yet, he also left a legacy of fairness in his appointments and decisions.
He played a key role in 1856 in bringing forward John C. Frémont as a moderate
Republican presidential nominee. As a part of this process, Banks declined, as pre-arranged, the presidential nomination of those
Know-Nothings, opposed to the spread of slavery, in favor of Republican Frémont. For the next few years, Banks was supported by a
coalition of Know-Nothings and Republicans in Massachusetts. His interest in the Know-Nothing legislative agenda was minimal,
supporting only some tougher residency requirements for voting.
Re-elected in 1856 as a Republican, he resigned his seat in December 1857, and was governor of Massachusetts from 1858 to 1860, during a period of government contraction forced
by the depression of those years. He made a serious attempt to gain the Republican presidential nomination in 1860, but discord
within his party in Massachusetts, a residence in a "safe" Republican state, and his Know-Nothing past doomed his chances. He
then was briefly resident director in Chicago, Illinois, of the
Illinois Central Railroad, hired primarily to promote sale of the railroad's
extensive lands.
Civil War
As the Civil War became imminent, President Abraham Lincoln considered Banks for a cabinet post, and eventually chose him as one of the first
major generals of volunteers, appointing him on May 16
1861. Perceptions that the Massachusetts militia was well organized and armed at the beginning of
the Civil War likely played a role in the appointment decision, as Banks had also been considered for quartermaster general. He was initially resented by many of the generals who had graduated from
the United States Military Academy, but Banks brought political benefits
to the administration, including the ability to attract recruits and money for the Federal cause.
First command
Banks first commanded at Annapolis, Maryland, suppressing support for the
Confederacy in a slave-holding state that was at risk of seceding, then
was sent to command on the upper Potomac when Brig. Gen. Robert Patterson failed to move aggressively in that area.
The Shenandoah Valley Campaign
When Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan entered upon his Peninsula Campaign in spring 1862, the important duty of keeping the Confederate forces of
Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley
from reinforcing the defenses of Richmond fell to the two divisions commanded by
Banks. When Banks's men reached the southern Valley at the end of a difficult supply line, the president recalled them to
Strasburg, Virginia, at the northern end. Jackson then marched rapidly down the
adjacent Luray Valley, driving Banks's retreating men from Winchester, Virginia, on
May 25, and north to the Potomac River. Jackson's campaign
of maneuver and lightning strikes against superior forces in the Valley—under Banks and other Union generals—humiliated the North
and made him one of the most famous generals in American history.
General Nathaniel P. Banks
On August 9, Banks again encountered Jackson at Cedar Mountain, in Culpeper County, and
attacked him to gain early advantage, but a Confederate counterattack led by A.P. Hill
repulsed Banks's corps and won the day. The arrival at the end of the day of Union reinforcements under Maj. Gen.
John Pope, as well as the rest of Jackson's men, resulted in a two-day
stand-off there. The Northern newspapers provided flattering versions of Banks's performance while Southern newspapers (and
virtually all military historians) called the battle a Southern victory.
The Army of the Gulf
Banks next received command of the defense forces at Washington. In November 1862 he
was asked to organize a force of 30,000 new recruits, drawn from New York and New England. As a former governor of Massachusetts, he was politically connected to the
governors of these states, and the recruitment effort was successful. In December he sailed from New
York with a this large force of raw recruits to replace Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler at New Orleans,
Louisiana, as commander of the Department of the Gulf. Under orders to ascend the Mississippi River to join forces with Ulysses S. Grant, who
was then trying to capture Vicksburg, Banks first pushed a Confederate force up
the Teche Bayou and marched to Alexandria,
Louisiana, hauling off slaves, cotton, and cattle from a rich agricultural area.
Siege of Port Hudson
When the Confederates reduced their garrison at Port Hudson, Louisiana, on the
Mississippi, he invested that place in May 1863. Two attempts to carry the works by storm during the Siege of Port Hudson, as at Vicksburg, were dismal failures. Port Hudson was the first time African
American soldiers were used in a major Civil War battle, as permitted by Banks. Low on food and ammunition, the garrison
surrendered on July 9, 1863, after receiving word that Vicksburg
had fallen. The entire Mississippi River was then under Union control.
In the autumn of 1863, Banks organized two seaborne expeditions to Texas, chiefly for the
purpose of preventing the French in Mexico from aiding the Confederates or occupying Texas, and
he eventually secured possession of the region near the mouth of the Rio Grande and the Texas
outer islands.
Red River Campaign
The Red River Campaign, March–May 1864, was considered a strategic distraction by
his superior, Ulysses S. Grant, who wanted Banks to drive east to capture Mobile,
Alabama, as part of a coordinated series of offensives in the spring of 1864. Banks himself disagreed with the plan,
hoping instead fo mount an expedition to capture Galveston, but the movement was ordered by Chief of Staff Henry Halleck. Halleck's plan was approved by the Lincoln administration and General Banks went ahead with
it under official protest. He fought against General Richard Taylor (son of
former President Zachary Taylor) and was forced to return after a campaign that
accomplished little. The naval force under David Dixon Porter arrived on the Red
River with intent to take on cotton as lucrative prizes of war, and Banks allowed rich speculators to come along for the
gathering of cotton. Added to the mix was a cooperating force unable to arrive overland from Arkansas, two attached corps
belonging to General William T. Sherman acting semi-independently, and
dangerously low water levels on the river that supplied the army. The Confederates on the Red River under Jonathan H. Carter did not surrender until June 1865, two months after Robert E. Lee sued for peace at Appomattox Court House in
Virginia.
Administrative duties
Removed from his field command, President Lincoln placed Banks on leave in Washington, where he lobbied for months for the
president's reconstruction plans for Louisiana. Banks had earlier engineered the election
victory of a moderate loyalist civilian government in Louisiana, inaugurated by elaborate celebrations he organized and funded.
The secret presidential investigating commission headed by conservative Democrats William
Farrar Smith and James T. Brady in early 1865 devoted considerable effort to trying to connect Banks with vice and
irregular trading permits in the New Orleans area. The somewhat one-sided final commission report, which did not specifically
accuse him of wrongdoing, was never released. But he had definitely granted special favors without apparent compensation to men
later connected to the Crédit Mobilier scandal and to a few others of
questionable reputation.
Postbellum career
In August 1865, Banks was mustered out of the service by President Andrew Johnson, and
from 1865 to 1873, he was again a representative in Congress, serving as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and sometimes
as chair of the Republican caucus. He played a key role in the final passage of the Alaska
Purchase legislation and was one of the strongest early advocates of Manifest
Destiny. He wanted the United States to acquire Canada and the Caribbean islands to reduce European influence in the
region. He also served on the committee investigating the Crédit Mobilier scandal.
Unhappiness with the course of the administration of President Ulysses Grant led, in 1872, to his joining the Liberal-Republican revolt in support of Horace
Greeley. While Banks was campaigning across the North for Greeley, an opponent successfully gathered enough support to
defeat him in his Massachusetts district as the Liberal-Republican and Democratic candidate. He thought his involvement with a
start-up Kentucky railroad and other railroads would substitute for the political loss. But the Panic of 1873 doomed the railroad, and Banks went on the lecture circuit and served in the Massachusetts
Senate.
In 1874, he was elected to Congress again as an independent and served the following term as a Republican again (1875–1877).
He was a member of the committee investigating the irregular 1876 elections in South
Carolina. Defeated for yet another term, the president appointed him United States marshal for Massachusetts, a post he held from 1879 until 1888, when for
the tenth time, he was elected to Congress as a Republican. This final term saw
significant mental deterioration, and he was not renominated. He died at Waltham,
and is buried there in Grove Hill Cemetery.
References
- Banks, Raymond H., The
King of Louisiana, 1862-1865, and Other Government Work: A Biography of Major General Nathaniel Prentice Banks,
2005.
- Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN
0-8047-3641-3.
- Bowen, James L., Massachusetts in the War 1861-1865, 1889.
- Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville, Random
House, 1958, ISBN 0-394-49517-9.
- Hollandsworth, James G., Pretense of Glory: The Life of General Nathaniel P. Banks, Louisiana State University Press,
1998, ISBN 0-8071-2293-9.
- Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders, Louisiana State University Press, 1964, ISBN
0-8071-0822-7.
- U.S. Congress
biography
Notes
- ^ Some sources have incorrectly spelled the middle name of Nathaniel as
"Prentiss." All military historians consulted (Eicher, Foote, Warner) spell it "Prentiss", which implies that the U.S. Army
personnel records used that form. Such a spelling does not appear in other important documents, on his tombstone, or in many
letters to him from relatives. There is only one document in the voluminous Banks manuscript collections in which Nathaniel
himself spelled his middle name. This was a partially completed fraternity application now at the American Antiquarian Society.
He then spelled the name "Prentice". The general declined to answer requests for biographical sketches, and compilers relying on
earlier, faulty sketches apparently repeated this erroneous "Prentiss" spelling.
External links
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