Background
Nathaniel Prentice was born on January 30, 1816, in Waltham, Massachussets. He was the first child of Nathaniel P. Banks, Sr. , and Rebecca Greenwood Banks.
Nathaniel Prentice was born on January 30, 1816, in Waltham, Massachussets. He was the first child of Nathaniel P. Banks, Sr. , and Rebecca Greenwood Banks.
Poverty forced him to start working in a textile factory at the age of eleven, but he managed to study law and was admitted to the bar in 1839.
n 1849 Banks was elected to the Massachusetts legislature on his fifth attempt. He helped organize a Democratic-Free Soil Coalition that overthrew the Massachusetts Whigs in 1850, in return for which he was made speaker of the state House (1851 - 1852) and elected to Congress in 1852. Twice re-elected, Banks drifted away from the Democrats on slavery issues and joined the "Know-Nothing" movement. These shifts brought criticism but provided the varied support which made him speaker of the House of Representatives for two years (1856 - 1857). Banks was important in organizing the Republican Party, and while governor of Massachusetts (1858 - 1861) he was an influential leader of that party's moderate wing. When the Civil War broke out, Lincoln made Banks a major general. No military expert, Banks was badly beaten by Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley and at Cedar Mountain in 1862. In 1863 Banks did succeed in capturing Port Hudson, the last Confederate fortress on the Mississippi, but he again met disaster on his Red River expedition to Texas in 1864. Banks returned to Congress for seven more terms after the war but never regained his former prestige. Banks died in Waltham on September 1, 1894.
