Pretense of Glory: The Life of General Nathaniel P. Banks [Hardcover]

James G. Hollandsworth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1998

In this first modern biography of Nathaniel P. Banks, James G. Hollandsworth, Jr., reveals the complicated and contradictory nature of the man who called himself the "fighting politician." Despite a lack of formal education, family connections, and personal fortune, Banks (1816–1884) advanced from the Massachusetts legislature to the governorship to the U.S. Congress and Speaker of the House. He learned early in his political career that the pretext of conviction can be more important than the conviction itself, and he practiced a politics of expedience, espousing popular beliefs but never defining beliefs of his own. A leader in the new Republican party, he developed a reputation as a compelling orator and a politician with a bright future.

At the onset of the Civil War, Lincoln appointed Banks a major general, and, as Hollandsworth shows, the same pretext of conviction that served Banks so well in politics proved disastrous on the battlefield. He suffered resounding defeats in the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, the Battle of Cedar Mountain, and the Red River Campaign. Illuminating the personal characteristics that stalled the promise of Banks’s early political career and contributed to his dismal record as a commanding officer, Hollandsworth demonstrates how Banks’s obsessive pretense of glory prevented him from achieving its reality.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Nathaniel P. Banks is generally known as the quintessential political general of the Civil War, his only rival for that dubious distinction being Benjamin Butler (see Chester G. Hearn's When the Devil Came Down to Dixie ). Of working-class origins and largely self-educated, Banks rose politically to become Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and that state's governor before the war. He was then immediately appointed a major general of volunteers, without having any military education whatever, and unfortunately made no effort to remedy the deficiency. The result was responsibility for three bloody Union defeats--in the Shenandoah Valley, along the Mississippi, and on the Red River--which were not redeemed by his pro-Negro efforts in governing New Orleans or his abortive postwar political career. Not, however, completely unattractive, Banks was ultimately an opportunist whose ambitions exceeded his abilities, disastrously for those called to serve under him. Hollandsworth's inspection of him should prove useful to most Civil War collections. Roland Green

About the Author

James G. Hollandsworth, Jr., is also the author of The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience during the Civil War and An Absolute Massacre: The New Orleans Race Riot of July 30, 1866. He lives in Jackson, Mississippi. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (November 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807122939
• ISBN-13: 978-0807122938
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,423,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Much Politics for this Life of a Political General, June 13, 2010

By 

Kevin M. Derby (Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pretense Of Glory: The Life Of General Nathaniel P. Banks (Paperback)

Chances are if you are a Civil War buff, you have a low opinion of Nathaniel P. Banks. And you should on some levels--he was a lousy general who was in over his head holding important commands. But he was also a fairly solid political leader rising to terms as governor of Massachusetts and almost twenty years in the U.S. House including a stint as Speaker of the House. Rising up from poverty, Banks was an important political leader on a number of issues: slavery, the Alaska purchase, imperialism, woman's suffrage, Reconstruction. This biography by James Hollandsworth is solid on Banks' role as a general. But it glosses over Banks' long political career. Hollandsworth makes the strange contention that Banks was a political failure since he was never president. If that's the case, you may as well call almost every politician a failure--including the likes of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster who came far closer to the White House than Banks ever did. He also said Banks had no core convictions. While Banks was a moderate on the slavery issue (and this is one of the reasons Lincoln kept Banks in the administration, despite his incompetence as a field commander), he had some convictions and while Banks did change parties so did some other political figures of the era--Salmon P. Chase, who was closer to the abolitionist point of view than Banks, comes to mind. Hollandsworth takes Banks to task for inconsistencies. Are these rare in politicians of any era? Especially one like Banks who spent the better part of 40 years on the national political stage. Hollandsworth is stunningly naive when it comes to politics. The fact is Banks was an important figure in some of the most transformative years in American political history when parties came and went in the blink of an eye and the major issues changed almost every year. Hollandsworth is fine as a military historian and gives readers a good look at Banks as a field commander. But just as Banks was out of his arena as a general, Hollandsworth, who spends less than a quarter of the book on Banks' political career, is out of his depth in the turbulent currents of 19th century American politics. Anyone who wants to understand Banks needs to understand politics--and it's a tribute to Hollandsworth's skills as a writer and a military historian that the book is as solid as it is. This is a very good book on Banks' role as a commander but it fails in the claim in its subtitle to be "the life" of Banks.