Originally aired on August 21, 1998 - In part 208 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles the career of Union General John Pope, best known for his loss at the Second Battle of Bull Run. We also learn that he was one of the most detested officers of his day.
#208 – John Pope
If a poll had been taken at the time of the Union general most unpopular with his men at or near the top would surely have been John Pope. He also holds the distinction of being the officer for whom Robert E. Lee had open contempt. Lee once commented that Pope needs to be suppressed, which conjures up an image of someone stepping on an insect. Certainly the Louisville, Kentucky native was a blustery, bombastic, general whose career was like a skyrocket. It went up fast and came down fast.
Pope was a collateral descendant of George Washington. He graduated from West Point in 1842, saw service in the Mexican War and demonstrated ability thereafter as an army engineer. He became connected by marriage with the family of Mary Todd Lincoln.
Pope was building lighthouses along the Great Lakes when Civil War began. Through family connections he early obtained brigadier general’s commission. Initially Pope seemed deserving. In the war’s first autumn and winter he conducted a series of well executed movements that gave the North control of a large block of the upper Mississippi River.
Overstating ten-fold the casualties he inflicted Pope caught the attention of Abraham Lincoln. The Union President named Pope to take command of all scattered forces in the east. Pope consolidated those fifty thousand soldiers into an army and in July, 1862, started through the Virginia Piedmont to win the Civil War by himself.
His first acts were bombastic proclamations to soldiers and civilians alike. Pope told his men that unlike them he was accustomed to seeing the backs of his enemies. He informed Virginia citizens who had not been molested to that point that he would confiscate from them food and other needed supplies. Disloyal civilians would be jailed. Any guerillas captured would be hanged.
Most of those threats were windy blusters from Pope. He actually was not as destructive as some other Union commanders. He just seemed to be so. And he was always a petty man. Once when an officer deserted his command, Pope displayed his scorn by posting a reward of five cents for the man’s apprehension.
Everything quickly fell apart on Pope in Virginia. The lead elements of his army met defeat on August 9th at Cedar Mountain near Culpepper. Then “Stonewall” Jackson and Lee soundly thrashed him in the 2nd Manassas campaign. That series of battles mismanaged from first to last by Pope caused sixteen thousand Northern casualties.
A Union general sneered that, “Pope has now written himself down as what the military world has long known, an ass”. Subsequently Pope was sent to command the military department in Minnesota. There he hanged a few Indians and incurred the hostility of all the others.
In the Reconstruction Period, Pope high-handed methods made him one of the most detested army officers of his day. That reputation still stood when Pope died in 1882 at the age of seventy. One searches in vain to find a kind word for John Pope. Quick-tempered, impatient, obnoxious, and irascible, he was a man with much courage, but little capacity. He displayed a remarkable talent in the field for ignoring what he did not want to hear.
When Pope was banished from Virginia in the autumn of 1862, a fellow officer declared, “this braggart has been kicked, cuffed, hustled-about, knocked-down, run-over and trodden upon as rarely happens in the history of war”. Another Federal made this sweeping indictment, “it can honestly be said that Pope had not a friend in his command from the smallest drummer to the highest general officer”. A man like that almost illicit pity