John Pope

John Pope (March 16, 1822 – September 23, 1892) is a career United States Army officer and Union general in the American Civil War.

He has a brief but successful career in the Western Theater, but he is best known for his defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas) in the East.

Pope is a graduate of the United States Military Academy in 1842.

He serves in the Mexican-American War and has numerous assignments as a topographical engineer and surveyor in Florida, New Mexico, and Minnesota.

He spends much of the last decade before the Civil War surveying possible southern routes for the proposed First Transcontinental Railroad.

He is an early appointee as a Union brigadier general of volunteers and serves initially under Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont, with whom he has a stormy relationship.

He achieves initial success against Brig.

Gen. Sterling Price in Missouri and then leads a successful campaign that captures Island No.

10 on the Mississippi River.

Pope's success in the West inspires the Lincoln administration to bring him to the troubled Eastern Theater to lead the newly formed Army of Virginia.

He initially alienates many of his officers and men by publicly denigrating their record in comparison to his Western command.

He launches an offensive against the Confederate army of General Robert E. Lee, in which he falls prey to a strategic turning movement into his rear areas by Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson.

At Second Bull Run, he concentrates his attention on attacking Jackson while the other Confederate corps, under Maj. Gen. James Longstreet, execute a devastating assault into his flank, routing his army.

He deflects some of the blame for the defeat by wrongfully accusing Brig.

Gen. Fitz John Porter of disobeying his orders.

Porter is exonerated in 1879, causing much public embarrassment for Pope.

Following Manassas, Pope is banished far from the Eastern Theater to Minnesota, where he commands U.S.

Forces in the Dakota War of 1862.

He is appointed to command the Department of the Missouri in 1865 and is a prominent and activist commander during Reconstruction in Atlanta.

For the rest of his military career, he fights in the Indian Wars, particularly against the Apache and Sioux.

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