The Second Battle of Sabine Pass was a failed Union Army attempt to invade the Confederate state of Texas during the American Civil War. The Union Navy supported the effort and lost three gunboats during the battle, two captured and one destroyed.

Nathaniel Prentice Banks was an American politician from Massachusetts and a Union general during the Civil War. A millworker by background, Banks became prominent in local debating societies. He entered politics as a young adult. Initially a member of the Democratic Party, Banks's abolitionist views drew him to the nascent Republican Party, through which he won election to the United States House of Representatives and as Governor of Massachusetts in the 1850s. At the start of the 34th Congress, he was elected Speaker of the House in an election that spanned a record 133 ballots taken over the course of two months.