Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1

by George S. Boutwell

During his administration as Governor of the State, from 1858 to 1861, he made military preparations for that contest of arms, which even then was thought by some not to be improbable and by a few thought to be inevitable. It was during that period that he delivered the address at the dedication of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge. The address met most fully the expectations of the authorities at Cambridge, and it gave General Banks standing as an orator when Massachusetts had orators—Everett, Choate, Phillips, Hillard,—and when Harrison Gray Otis and Webster had not been forgotten.

At the opening of the war Mr. Lincoln tendered to General Banks a commission of the first rank, and a command of corresponding importance. He had not received a military education, and he was without experience in military life. His selection was due to a general and well founded opinion that he possessed military qualities, courage and decision, and that he was inspired by a deep devotion to the Union. General Banks was a firm believer in the justice of our cause, and he was animated by an unbounded confidence in our success,— a confidence which was not impaired in the darkest days of the Civil War. After the passing of a third of a century, a review of the entire field on the Civil side does not reveal a character more worthy than General Banks of high military command. In all the vicissitudes of his military career, and success did not always wait upon his undertakings, he never lost the confidence of Mr. Lincoln, nor Mr. Stanton, who was the most exacting of men, whenever an officer failed in his duties.

General Banks' military career may be considered in three parts. As to the campaigns of 1861 and 1862, on the Potomac, and in the valley of the Shenandoah, it is to be said that his fortunes were in the main the fortunes of McDowell, McClellan, and Pope, yet even in the presence of general disaster, he gained distinction by his courage, resolution, and equanimity of temper. The capture of Port Hudson, undertaken and accomplished under his command, opened the Mississippi River below Vicksburg to military operations and to business intercourse. The event was second only in importance to the surrender of Vicksburg.

The Red River campaign was an ill advised undertaking, for which General Banks was in no degree responsible. Indeed, he advised against the movement. This I say upon his specific statement made to me. The undertaking was a great error. There never was a day after April, 1861, when it was not apparent that the south-western portion of the union, beyond the Mississippi River, would yield whenever that river was opened to the Gulf, and the army of Lee had capitulated. Hence the unwisdom of the undertaking. It is sufficient to say that nothing occurred in that campaign which was discreditable to General Banks. The obstacles were too great to have been overcome, and nothing in the nature of success could have been attained by Sherman or Grant. I turn again to the aspect of General Banks' career on the civil side.

In knowledge of parliamentary law and in ability to administer that law it may be claimed justly that General Banks had no rival in his generation. As a speaker he approached the rank of an orator, if he did not attain to it. His presence was stately and attractive, his voice was agreeable, far reaching and commanding, and his control of an audience was absolute, for the time being. That his auditors may at times have differed from his conclusions but only when the speech was ended, and the spell was broken, is evidence of his power as a speaker.

That he came into public life as the associate and rival of Sumner, Wilson, and Burlingame, and that in his whole career as a public man he kept his equal place to the end, and that in Congress he suffered nothing when compared with the able men who occupied seats in the lower House between the year 1850 and the year 1870, give him rank as one of the foremost statesmen of his time. If it be said that his name is not identified with any important measure of the government the same may be said of Mr. Sumner, of Mr. Wilson, of Mr. Conkling, and others, whose speeches and opinions have had large influence upon the policy of the country. A great measure is the result of many causes and in its promulgation it may bear the name of a person whose contribution has been insignificant relatively.

General Banks had aptitude for public affairs—an aptitude which approached genius. His mind dwelt upon great projects, and never upon petty schemes, nor upon intrigues as a means of success. His warfare was a bold one, and in the open field. In politics he was deficient in organizing qualities, but he had unbounded confidence in his own ability and in the ability of his associates and friends to command and to retain popular support. As to himself, that confidence rested upon an adequate basis. In the last fifty years there has been no other man in Massachusetts who was as generously supported, and by people of all classes. For the masses, who saw him and who knew him, only as he appeared on the platform, there was an inspiration in his presence and in his speeches, and for his associates and friends there was a generous companionship which none could resist—which none wished to resist. In his private life there was no malice in his intercourse with men; in the strife of war there was no vindictiveness in spirit nor in the means of prosecuting war.

A patriotic man, who trusted the people, and a man whom the people trusted; a brave soldier, who retained the confidence of his troops, and of his superiors in all the vicissitudes of war; a friend whose friendship was not changed nor tempered by the changing events of life. Such was General Banks to many and to myself, his companion, and often co-worker, and always friend through a lengthened half century.

Mr. Dawes was not a leader in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and no one could then have predicted his success in public life. Something of what the world calls fortune has attended him. He possessed the quality or faculty of industry, but his studies did not extend beyond the current demands of the situation. As a lawyer he was not distinguished. He had none of the qualities of an orator, indeed it was not always a pleasure to listen to his speeches. His manners were not attractive, and of genial wit he was wholly innocent. He had a power of sarcasm, and in his speeches he presented himself in the phase of umpire often, although at times he appeared in the aspect of a contestant. Indeed, this was in his nature. He was a thorough partisan who seemed unwilling to own the fact. His friends could not claim for him any of the qualities for which successful men are commonly distinguished, and yet he has been one of the most successful men that the State has produced. Such success must rest on a substantial basis of merit.

For a single term, between 1846 and 1850 Benjamin R. Curtis was a member of the House. He had already acquired fame as a jurist. His speeches in the house were the speeches that he made to courts and juries. He was destitute of genius, and his speeches exhibited no variety of talent. They were adapted to the argument of questions of law before a court; hence he was not successful as a jury lawyer, and his speeches in the house were usually convincing, although they were never attractive. Judge Curtis' intellectual faculties matured early. Mr. Wilde, for many years the clerk of the court of Suffolk, expressed to me the opinion that Judge Curtis' first argument was as good as his last argument. There can be no doubt, however, that his legal arguments were unrivalled in recent times. He was equipped with all the legal learning that could be required in any case. He had the capacity to see the points on which a case must turn, and he had the courage to pass over the immaterial facts, and points in which other men often lay stress to the injury of their arguments, and to the annoyance of the courts. In his arguments in the impeachment case of President Johnson, he furnished the only ground on which the Senate could stand in rendering a verdict of not guilty.