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His political career got off to a faltering start. On his seventh attempt he was elected to the lower branch of the Massachusetts legislature in 1849 where he
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His political career got off to a faltering start. On his seventh attempt he was elected to the lower branch of the Massachusetts legislature in 1849 where he sat as a Democrat. In 1851 he was made speaker of the House as part of a coalition deal with the Free-Soilers. 1853 saw him chosen as president of the Massachusetts constitutional assembly, and also enter Congress for the first of his ten terms in that body. One feature of his time in Congress was that he repeatedly changed aliegance. For his first term he was a Democrat. Next, he was elected as an “American”, or “Know-Nothing”. In this guise he was elected as Speaker of the Thirty-Fourth Congress, on 2 February 1856 after an amazing 133 ballots! He was elected partly because of his free-soil anti-slavery opinions, but once in office he tried to act in a non-political way. He is generally accepted to have been a very fine speaker of the house.
In 1857 he left Congress and stood for governor of Massachusetts for the new Republican Party. He defeated the three-term incumbent, and held the post for three years (1858-60). While in that office he significantly improved the state militia. He left office in January 1861, with the intention of moving into private life as the new president of the Illinois Central Railroad, taking over from George B. McClellan.
The outbreak of the civil war intervened. Like many others he responded to the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter by offering his services to President Lincoln. His offer was accepted, and on 16 May he was appointed Major-General of Volunteers. His war record would be generally acceptable with one major blemish towards the end of the war.
His military career started at Annapolis. Pro-southern sentiment was widespread in Maryland, but the presence of Washington D.C. on the southern border of the state meant that could not be allowed to secede. Banks played a part in securing that state for the Union. In the aftermath of First Bull Run, he was moved to Harper’s Ferry (23 July 1861), to replace General Patterson (the man who had allowed Stonewall Jackson to move his troops from the Valley to Bull Run unopposed).
There Banks was to be caught up in the general chaos caused by McClellan’s Peninsula campaign of 1862. At the start of the campaign Banks had three divisions in the Shenandoah Valley. McClellan had included these men in his plans for the defence of Washington once the main Army of the Potomac had moved to the Peninsula. However, he had not explained his plans to President Lincoln, and so the President kept back part of the Army of the Potomac to bolster the defences of the Federal capitol.
This meant that Banks’s men were no longer needed for that duty. Plans were made to transfer two of his three divisions to the Peninsula to reinforce McClellan. News of this reached the Confederate commander in the Valley, Stonewall Jackson. His job was to keep Banks’s men pinned down in the valley. On 23 March 1862 Jackson thought he had found an isolated rearguard from one of Banks’s divisions, and launched an attack on it with his 4,200 (First battle of Kernstown). In fact he had found an entire division, and suffered a serious defeat.
Jackson’s attack caused great concern in Washington, where it was assumed that Jackson’s attack was deliberate, and therefore that he must have an army large enough to take on an entire division. The transfer of Banks’s men was temporarily postponed.
By the time it was resumed, Jackson had been reinforced. On 23 May his newly strengthened army fell on the Union garrison at Front Royal, temporarily threatening to cut of Banks, who was at Strasburg, west of Front Royal. The next day, Banks managed to conduct a skilful retreat to Winchester, but on 25 May his army was defeated there (First battle of Winchester), and he was forced to retreat back across the Potomac. Roughly one third of his force was lost (mostly captured) during this retreat.
Jackson escaped from the federal pursuit that followed, and joined Lee at Richmond in time to take part in most of the Seven Days’ Battles. Meanwhile, the Federal forces in western Virginia were reorganised, and brought together under the command of General John Pope. Pope concentrated his army between the Rapidan and Rappahannock Rivers, where it could threaten Lee’s lines of communication with the Shenandoah. Banks was posted at Cedar Mountain, eight miles south of Culpeper and close to the Rapidan River, with a force 8,000 strong.
Here he was soon face to face with Jackson once again. As the Peninsula campaign wound down on the James River, Jackson had been sent west to delay Pope. By early August he had 24,000 men just south of the Rapidan, and decided to launch an attack on Banks’s slightly isolated position. T