John Benjamin Sanborn (December 5, 1826 – May 6, 1904) was a lawyer, politician, and soldier from the state of New Hampshire who served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

He was also a key member of the reconstruction era Congressional-appointed Indian Peace Commission, which negotiated and signed several important treaties with native American tribes.

[1] He briefly attended Dartmouth College in 1851–52, but left after only one quarter to join the law office of Asa Fowler in Concord.

His duties included overseeing the organization and equipping of three regiments of volunteer infantry for the fledgling Union army.

On August 4, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Sanborn to the grade of brigadier general of volunteers to rank from that date.

[7] Following the collapse of the Confederacy in the spring of 1865, Sanborn was ordered in June to report to Maj. Gen. John Pope in the Western frontier to help subdue hostile Indians.

In September he, William Bent, and famed explorer Kit Carson were appointed as commissioners to negotiate a peace treaty with several tribes.

His son, John B. Sanborn, Jr., also served in the Minnesota legislature and as a federal judge on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.