Civil_War_Quarterly_-_Summer_2016_

N

athaniel Banks was a political crea-

ture, and with his country in the

throes of civil war, he now held the

politically obtained rank of major general

in the Union Army. Three terms as Repub-

lican governor of Massachusetts and a

tenure as Speaker of the U.S. House of Rep-

resentatives may have been impressive in

the halls of government, but Banks’s qual-

ifications for military command were

nonexistent.

With no military experience, Banks took

the field in the Shenandoah Valley in the

spring of 1862 and received his first lesson

in tactics from Maj. Gen. Thomas J.

“Stonewall” Jackson, who delivered a thor-

ough thrashing to Banks, taking so many

wagons and such great stores of supplies

that the Confederates mockingly dubbed

the neophyte Union commander “Com-

missary Banks.” The following year Banks

muddled through the siege and eventual

Union victory at Port Hudson, Louisiana,

on the Mississippi River. Now, in the spring

of 1864, the 47-year-old political appointee

was in command of the Department of the

Gulf, based at New Orleans. He hadn’t

Red

River

Ruin

Politician-general

Nathaniel Banks’s grand

design to capture

Shreveport floundered in

the sandy mud of the

treacherous Red River in

the spring of 1864. Union

Admiral David Porter, too,

was left high and dry.

BY MICHAEL E. HASKEW

CWQ-Sum16 Red River_Layout 1 4/20/16 4:19 PM Page 32