Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Southern Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, 1862–1863 99
risk their lives to make fortunes for others.” The general’s brother Andrew, known
by the courtesy title of colonel although he held no military rank, bought and sold
cotton, sugar, and anything else of value, becoming several hundred thousand dollars
richer by his dealings. Whether Butler himself profited by his brother’s activities
is uncertain, but, as Denison remarked, the general was “such a smart man,
that it would . . . be difficult to discover what he wished to conceal.” Furthermore,
Butler’s high-handed management of consular affairs had alienated representatives
of the European powers in New Orleans during a year when the State Department
was working hard to assure that France and Great Britain did not enter the war on
the side of the Confederacy. In the circumstances, it was clear that Butler had to
be removed. 28
Butler’s replacement in command of the Department of the Gulf was another
Massachusetts politician whose commission as major general bore the same date
as his own: 16 May 1861. Nathaniel P. Banks had begun public life as a Democrat,
had served three terms in Congress during which he changed from Democrat–Free
Soiler to Know-Nothing to Republican, and had been elected to three one-year
terms as a Republican governor of Massachusetts. During his last term as governor,
he vetoed a bill that would have removed the word “white” from the list of qualifications
for membership in the state militia. Banks was a figure of national prominence—in
1856 he had become the first Republican speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives—and seemed a natural candidate for high military appointment
in the early weeks of the war. Even so, political skills did not guarantee military
ability. Troops led by Banks lost three battles to the Confederate Army of Northern
Virginia during the spring and summer of 1862. Injured in the last of those battles,
Banks spent September in command of the defenses of Washington, D.C. He used
the time to lobby for command of an expedition to the coast of Texas. Seeing a
chance to replace Butler in New Orleans, the president sent him there instead. 29
Banks reached Louisiana in mid-December 1862. His expedition included
thirty-nine infantry regiments, six batteries of artillery, and a battalion of cavalry.
That twenty-one of the infantry regiments had mustered in that fall for only nine
months’ service showed the lengths to which Union authorities were willing to
go to attract volunteers after little more than one year of war. The new arrivals
brought Union strength in the department to more than thirty-one thousand soldiers.
Banks found that his predecessor had established “an immense military
government, embracing every form of civil administration, the assessment of
taxes, . . . trade, . . . and the working of plantations, in addition to the ordinary
affairs of a military department.” 30
While the new commander wrestled with the problems of civil administration,
he set his staff officers to investigating the state of “ordinary affairs” in their
branches. The new chief of ordnance found that the confusing way in which arms
28 “Diary and Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase,” p. 313 (“such a smart”), 325 (“Many
officers”).
29 OR, ser. 1, 15: 590–91; Fred H. Harrington, Fighting Politician: Major General N. P. Banks
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1948), p. 47; Heitman, Historical Register, 1: 28.
30 OR, ser. 1, 15: 627, 639 (“an immense”); Frank J. Welcher, The Union Army, 1861–1865:
Organization and Operations, 2 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989–1993), 2: 44,
314.