Banks, Nathaniel Prentiss (1816–1894)

US politician and American Civil War general. He was Speaker in the US House of Representatives 1854–57. At the outbreak of the war in 1861, he joined the Union forces and was appointed major general in command of the Department of Annapolis. Defeated by Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, he was sent to New Orleans in 1863, taking command of the Department of the Gulf. He led the ill-fated Red River expedition in 1864.

Banks was born in Waltham, Massachusetts. After working in a factory and editing a local newspaper, he studied law and became a barrister. In 1853 he was elected to Congress, and was governor of Massachusetts 1857–60. Re-entering Congress in 1865 after the end of the Civil War, he chaired the foreign-relations committee. He retired in 1891. He was popularly known as ‘Bobbin Boy’, an allusion to his early factory work.