Nathaniel Prentiss Banks

Nathaniel P. Banks

Banks in the Civil War

Banks at a young age

Nathaniel Prentiss Banks , also Nathaniel Prentice Banks (born January 30, 1816 in Waltham , Massachusetts , † September 1, 1894 ibid), was an American politician . From 1849 to 1853 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives , and from 1853 to 1857 in the American House of Representatives . He then served as the 24th Governor of Massachusetts between 1858 and 1861 . In 1861 he was appointed major general in the Union Army by Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War and served there until 1865. Subsequently, he was again active in the American House of Representatives and in the Massachusetts Senate with several interruptions until 1891 .

Banks initially belonged to the Democratic Party and was also supported by the Free Soil Party against Conservative Democrats, then turned to the American Party due to his opposition to slavery before becoming one of the initiators of the Republican Party from 1855 and from 1856 to 1857 became the first House Speaker from among the ranks of the Republicans with the help of a coalition of the American and Opposition Party , officially operating as the representative of the American Party . In the meantime, however, due to the radicalism of his party, he joined the Liberal Republicans from 1872 , called for an end to the reconstruction and foreign administration of the southern states and supported the presidential candidate Horace Greeley before he returned in 1878.

Youth and political advancement

Banks grew up without a secondary education and worked as a bobbin boy ("spindle boy") in a cotton mill from a young age . After temporarily working as a mechanical engineer and newspaper publisher , he began studying law and was admitted to the bar in 1839. Due to his energetic personality and his talent for speaking, he quickly gained a certain degree of notoriety, which enabled him to pursue a political career.

From 1849 to 1853, Banks sat as a member of the Democratic Party in the Massachusetts House of Representatives , where he temporarily served as speaker before he was elected to the US House of Representatives with the support of his own party and the local Free Soiler and went to Washington for federal politics . There he made a name for himself as an opponent of slavery and first joined the American Party, better known as the Know-Nothing movement, and finally joined the Republicans in 1855 . With the help of a coalition opposed to slavery, consisting of these two parties, the Free Soilers and Whigs , who opposed slavery , he was able to take over the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives for one year after three months and 133 ballots in 1856 , before the bitter resistance of his former Democratic party friends he stepped down in 1857 after being elected governor of Massachusetts. In 1856 he turned down a presidential candidacy and supported John C. Frémont . After his tenure as governor, he tried unsuccessfully for the Republican candidacy for the presidential election in 1860 and briefly took over the position of operations director of the Illinois Central Railroad .

Civil war

After the outbreak of the Civil War, Banks, like numerous other politicians , received an offer from President Abraham Lincoln to join the Union Army as an officer . Banks' popularity with the electoral base and his organizational skills were assessed even so high that he, with effect from 16 May 1861 one of only three first General majors of the volunteer Army ( Major General of Volunteers was appointed). Banks experienced his first frontline deployment in early 1862 as a commander in the Shenandoah Valley . Here, however, he was defeated under humiliating circumstances by his Confederate opponent "Stonewall" Jackson and had to withdraw via the Potomac . Even as commander of a corps of the short-lived Army of Virginia under General John Pope , Banks remained hapless and lost the battle of Cedar Mountain on August 9, 1862 .

At the end of 1862, Banks was appointed Commander- in -Chief in Louisiana as the successor to General Benjamin Franklin Butler and went by ship to New Orleans , which had been in the hands of Union troops since the spring. From here he led the operations against the Confederate fortress Port Hudson on the right bank of the Mississippi in the summer of 1863 , whose surrender he was finally able to force. With that (and with the fall of Vicksburg a few days earlier) the entire Mississippi Valley was under Union control, and the Confederation was split in two. Banks then commanded an expedition to the Texan coast to prevent the French intervention forces in Mexico from a possible invasion.

In early 1864, the Gulf Army commanded by Banks was commissioned to advance along the Red River to western Louisiana and capture the city of Shreveport . This corresponded neither to the wishes of Banks, who would have preferred to conquer Galveston , Texas, nor to the ideas of the new Commander-in-Chief Grant , who considered the capture of the port city of Mobile to be more urgent. The war ministry hoped, however, for financial gains from the cotton to be captured. Banks' troops were defeated near Mansfield by the Confederates under Richard Taylor and had to retreat to New Orleans despite a respectable success in the Battle of Pleasant Hill . As a result, Banks was relieved of his command and no longer used in the field service until he was retired in the summer of 1865.

post war period

From 1865 to 1873, Banks was again a member of the US House of Representatives and temporarily served as chairman of the foreign affairs committee. He advocated the expansion of the USA to the west and the purchase of Alaska . In 1872 Banks took part in an intra-party revolt by the Liberal Republicans against President Ulysses S. Grant and stood up for the nomination of Horace Greeley as a presidential candidate, but lost his constituency and had to leave Congress temporarily. However, he returned in 1875 with the support of a coalition of Liberal Republicans, Democrats and Labor Reformers and was a member of the House of Representatives again until 1879, when he rejoined the Republican Party but was unable to prevail in the nomination process. After this defeat, he was appointed US Marshal for Massachusetts by President Rutherford B. Hayes and remained in that office until 1888. After another, final term in the US House of Representatives, Banks withdrew from active politics in 1891 and died in his native city in 1894.

literature

• James G. Hollandsworth: Pretense of Glory. The Life of General Nathaniel P. Banks . ISBN 0-8071-2293-9 (English)

Web links

Commons : Nathaniel Prentiss Banks  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Nathaniel Prentiss Banks in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Nathaniel Banks in the NGA

• Nathaniel P. Banks in the database of Find a Grave (English)