Kentucky's Civil War leaders
Western Theater was great for Pope,
but he didn't fare as well in the East

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the 27th in a series about Kentucky’s officers and battle leaders during the Civil War.)

Union Major Gen. John Pope had a brief, but successful career in the Civil War’s Western Theater.

But things didn’t fare so well for the Louisville native when the Lincoln Administration brought him to the troubled Eastern Theater to lead the newly formed Army of Virginia.

A career Army officer, Pope was graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1842.  He served in the Mexican-American War and had numerous assignments as a topographical engineer and surveyor in Florida, New Mexico and Minnesota. He spent much of the last decade before the Civil War surveying possible southern routes for the proposed First Transcontinental Railroad.

An early appointee as a brigadier general of volunteers, Pope served initially under Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont, with whom he had a stormy relationship. He achieved initial success against Brig. Gen. Sterling Price in Missouri, then led a successful campaign that captured Island No. 10 on the Mississippi River.

But when he was brought to the Eastern Theater, he initially alienated many of his officers and men by publicly denigrating their record in comparison to his Western command. He launched an offensive against the Confederate army of Gen. Robert E. Lee, in which he fell prey to a strategic turning movement into his rear areas by Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson.

At Second Bull Run (Manassas), he concentrated his attention on attacking Jackson while the other Confederate corps, under Maj. Gen. James Longstreet, executed a devastating assault into his flank, routing his army. He deflected some of the blame for the defeat by wrongfully accusing Brig. Gen. Fitz John Porter of disobeying his orders. Porter was exonerated in 1879, causing much public embarrassment for Pope.

Following Manassas, Pope was banished to the Department of the Northwest far from the Eastern Theater in Minnesota, where he commanded U.S. Forces in the Dakota War of 1862. He was appointed to command the Department of the Missouri in 1865 and was a prominent and activist commander during Reconstruction in Atlanta. For the rest of his military career, he fought in the Indian Wars, particularly against the Apache and Sioux.

Pope was the son of Nathaniel Pope, a prominent Federal judge in early Illinois Territory and a friend of lawyer Abraham Lincoln. He was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the Topographical Engineers and served in Florida, then helped survey the northeastern border between the United States and Canada.

The Louisvillian was serving on lighthouse duty when Abraham Lincoln was elected and he was one of four officers selected to escort the president-elect to Washington, D.C. He offered to serve Lincoln as an aide, but on June 14, 1861, he was appointed brigadier general of volunteers (date of rank effective May 17, 1861) and was ordered to Illinois to recruit volunteers.

Pope was promoted to major general in the regular army in 1882 and retired in 1886. He died at the Ohio Soldiers’ Home near Sandusky, Ohio, and is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery at St. Louis.