JOHN POPE (1822–1892)
Although best known for his military debacle in Virginia at the hands of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at the Second Battle of Manassas, or Second Bull Run, on Aug. 27–30, 1862, Union Gen. John Pope’s Civil War career was preordained by his easy successes and their resulting arrogance gained during his earlier Missouri campaigns in 1861 and 1862. Most significantly, Pope owed his command of Union forces at Second Manassas to his April 1862 capture of fortified Island No. 10 in the Mississippi River a few miles from New Madrid, Mo. In January 1865, a chastened Pope came back to Missouri to command the new Military Division of the Missouri, consisting of the Missouri and Kansas areas. Following his death in 1892 in Sandusky, Ohio, his body was returned to St. Louis, Mo., for burial in Bellefontaine Cemetery.
John Pope was born on March 16, 1822, in Louisville, Ky., the birthplace of his lawyer father, Nathaniel (1784–1850), a former secretary and Congressional delegate of the Illinois Territory and later U.S. judge for the state of Illinois. Abraham Lincoln practiced law before the elder Pope and was later accused of promoting the judge’s son as repayment for earlier judicial favors. The younger Pope secured an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, from which he graduated in 1842. He was a respectable 17th in his class of 62 that included James Longstreet, who later became a Confederate general.
Unlike fellow Union Civil War generals and West Point graduates Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, and George McClellan, who resigned their commissions to pursue private business interests prior to the war, Pope steadfastly followed a military career his entire life. During the Mexican War, the second lieutenant was twice breveted for his services at the Battles of Monterey and Buena Vista. By the outset of the Civil War, he had achieved the permanent rank of captain and was serving on lighthouse duty. In the early spring of 1861, he was appointed mustering officer at Chicago and, effective May 17, 1861, was given the rank of brigadier general of volunteers.
In the summer of 1861, Pope was ordered to report to Missouri under the command of Gen. John C. Frémont, a man who would be under Pope’s command one year later in Virginia. One of Pope’s first actions in reaching his post in northern Missouri in July 1861 was to issue an order proclaiming that any partisans who took up arms against the Union would be dealt with summarily “without awaiting civil process.” Although his blunt warning helped to reduce guerrilla activity in northern Missouri, similar orders issued a year later in Virginia met only defiance and derision.
In late February 1862, Pope assumed command of the Army of the Mississippi and proceeded to besiege Confederate-held New Madrid, Mo., which fell on March 14. Next, in cooperation with naval forces under Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote, Pope cut off and forced Confederate forces guarding Island No. 10 in the Mississippi River to surrender on April 8, 1862. Pope deserved high praise for his achievement in capturing the approximately 7,000 Confederate troops, 25 field guns, small arms, and various emplaced cannons on Island No. 10, at minimal cost in Union casualties. He did so while battling the swamps of the Missouri Bootheel. Despite greater attention given to the Battle of Shiloh that took place at the same time, the capture of Island No. 10 won Pope recognition from Washington.
Following participation in General Henry Halleck’s campaign to capture Corinth, Miss., Pope was transferred to the East in June 1862 to take command of the Army of Virginia. That army had only recently been formed by the hasty combining of various demoralized Union commands that shared the dubious distinction of having been beaten over the preceding weeks in Stonewall Jackson’s famed “Valley Campaign.”
Despite his handsome soldierly appearance and recent record of success in the West, Pope failed to inspire his new troops. Many resented not only his pomposity but also his having temporarily eclipsed Gen. George McClellan, who despite his failures remained popular with his troops. After being only narrowly checked by Stonewall Jackson and superior numbers at Cedar Mountain, Va., Pope permitted himself to be outmaneuvered by Lee and Jackson and defeated at Second Manassas in August 1862. He was then replaced in command by McClellan, whom Pope accused of having withheld vital troops from him at critical times during the battle.
Notwithstanding Pope’s own considerable failings at Second Manassas, even Lincoln believed that part of the Union defeat was attributable to the failure of McClellan and his generals in the Army of the Potomac to support Pope, including one of whom declared that he did not care “one pinch of owl dung” for Pope. Despite his sympathy for Pope, Lincoln permitted him to be transferred to Minnesota to put down a Sioux uprising and then to other secondary commands in the West.
Pope remained in the army after the Civil War and served in various commands, eventually rising to the rank of major general in 1882. He reitred from the army in 1886 and died on Sept. 23, 1892.
Marshall D. Hier
Dictionary of American Biography. Vol. 15. S.v. “Pope, John.”
Glatther, Joseph T. Partners in Command.NewYork: Free Press, 1994.
Long, E. B. The CivilW ar Day by Day. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971.
Sandburg, Carl. Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. Vol. 1. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939.
Warner, Ezra J. Generals in Blue. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959.
Excerpted from Dictionary of Missouri Biography edited by Lawrence O. Christensen, William E. Foley, Gary R. Kremer, and Kenneth H. Winn, published by the University of Missouri Press. To order this book, please call (800) 621-2736 or online at http://press.umsystem.edu/fall1999/christes.htm
John Pope
