Nathaniel P. Banks

Who was Nathaniel P. Banks?

Nathaniel Prentice Banks was an American politician and soldier, Speaker of the House, Governor of Massachusetts, and a Union general during the American Civil War.

A millworker by background, Banks was prominent in local debating societies, and his oratorical skills were noted by the Democratic Party. But his abolitionist views fitted him better for the nascent Republican Party, through which he became Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1856 and Governor of Massachusetts in 1857.

At the outbreak of the civil war, Lincoln appointed Banks as one of the first ‘political’ major generals, over the heads of West Point regulars, who initially resented him, but came to acknowledge his influence on the administration of the war. After suffering an inglorious defeat in the Shenandoah at the hands of the newly famous ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, Banks replaced Benjamin Butler at New Orleans as commander of the Department of the Gulf, charged with liberating the Mississippi. But he failed to reinforce Grant at Vicksburg, and only took the surrender of Port Hudson after Vicksburg had fallen. He was then put in charge of the Red River campaign, a doomed attempt to occupy eastern Texas.