Nathaniel P. Banks (30 January 1816-1 September 1894) was the Governor of Massachusetts (R) from 1858 to 1861, succeeding Henry Gardner and preceding John Albion Andrew, and a general of the Union during the American Civil War. He was most famous for his generalship in the Valley Campaign, Siege of Port Hudson, and Red River Campaign, and for serving as Speaker of the House from 1856 to 1857.
Biography[]
Banks was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, in the United States. A man who loved reading, he became a member of the US Democratic Party after having spoken at the local temperance movement. He failed to join the state legislature both in 1844 and 1847, but in 1848 he was accepted into the state legislature and in 1852 he was elected to the US Congress. Five years later, he was made the Governor of Massachusetts after backing John C. Fremont's bid for joining the US Republican Party; his abolitionist views convinced him to change party loyalties.
American Civil War[]
Banks as a general
On May 16, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln made him a Major-General of the volunteers recruited during the American Civil War, and in 1862 he saw his first service during the Peninsula Campaign and the Valley Campaign, and in November he replaced Benjamin Butler as the commander of the Department of the Gulf in New Orleans. He was later joined by his wife, the "Goddess of Liberty", in New Orleans. In March 1863 Banks laid siege to the Confederate stronghold of Port Hudson, which helped to supply Vicksburg in Mississippi, accepting its surrender after the fall of Vicksburg. Aided by Mexican patriots, he captured southern Texas in November 1863 in an attempt to verify that no French aid could come to the Confederate States. But in March-May 1864 his army was defeated in the poorly-managed Red River Campaign in northern Texas, and on 22 April he was replaced by the ill-fated general Edward Canby. In May 1865 he resigned from the army and returned to Massachusetts in September.
From 1865 to 1873 Banks was reelected to Congress, and again in 1888, but by that year his mental health was fading. He died in 1890.