Originally aired on March 21, 1997 - In part 134 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson says that Presidents Lincoln and Davis courted politicians by giving them high appointments in their armies. Though it made political sense, it usually created military calamity. Dr. Robertson provides Major General Nathaniel P. Banks as an example.
#134 – Political Generals
When a society as highly politicized as that in America goes to war, it is well-nigh impossible to separate politics from the military. Both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis felt this. Believing that the Civil War would be short, the two presidents courted influential politicians by giving them high appointments in the armies. Such moves made political sense. Yet they usually produced military calamity. Indeed, the term “political general” became a widely used synonym for incompetence.
Nathaniel P. Banks was an example of that class. A native of Massachusetts, Banks spent a lifetime in politics. It was the only profession he ever knew. He also changed party labels seven times, which, a supporter explained, gave Banks “political flexibility”.
His first public service was in the Massachusetts legislature, but he had to run seven consecutive times to gain election. In 1853 Banks won a seat in the U. S. Congress. He became Speaker of the House in 1856 after no less than 133 ballots. Banks returned home in 1860 to become governor of Massachusetts.
In the spring of 1861, Lincoln appointed him a major general of volunteers. Banks thus became the fourth ranking general in the Union armies. The 45-year-old political leader was excellent in recruiting soldiers, elevating morale, and soliciting money for the cause. Nevertheless, his army performance bordered on a disaster.
First, Banks wanted to look like a general but could not. He was slim and short. A walrus mustache, which was too big for him, refused to be groomed. Rather than curling down at the ends, the whole thing drooped straight down and concealed his mouth. Banks surrounded himself with a battalion of Philadelphia Zouaves as a bodyguard. They only added to the pretentious.
The general’s first assignment was to arrest the mayor of Baltimore on suspicion of disloyalty. Banks took 800 men on the assignment. When the mayor saw the force that had come to get him, he snorted: “My God, why didn’t you bring artillery?”
In the spring of 1862, it was Banks’ misfortune to be in command of Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley. Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson repeatedly victimized Banks in one of the most spectacular campaigns of the war. The Federal commander gained the unflattering sobriquet of “Commissary Banks” because of the large quantity of supplies he involuntarily provided Jackson’s soldiers. A few months later, at Cedar Mountain, Banks took another drubbing from Jackson.
Lincoln thereupon sent his general to the Western theatre. Banks’ 1863 assaults at Port Hudson, Louisiana were unimaginative, unsuccessful, and costly, but he quickly took credit when the surrounded Confederate garrison was forced to surrender. The following spring, Banks waged a bumbling campaign up the Red River in Louisiana. Some Union authorities considered it ill-fated; others thought it asinine.
By then, the Union army’s chief of staff was saying openly: “It seems but little better than murder to give impartial commands to such men as Banks….yet it seems impossible to prevent it.” Lincoln by then had come to a different conclusion. Thereafter, Banks was a major general without orders or a command.
After the war, grateful citizens of Massachusetts sent Banks to Congress for six terms (five as a Republican and one as a Democrat). He subsequently was a member of the state senate and a U. S. Marshall. At Banks’ death in 1894, he was publicly hailed as one of New England’s finest statesmen.
That may have been the case. As a field commander in the army, Banks could be aggressive, and he was more capable than his fellow political generals. Still, he never decisively won a campaign in the Civil War. At the least, the luck he had as a politician was missing in his sideline as a general.