Perhaps there is no more pathetic figure in the annals of the War than
Pope. In the West, that fiery furnace where the North's greatest generals
were already being molded, he stood out most prominently in the Spring of
1862. At Washington, the administration was cudgeling its brains for means
to meet the popular clamor for an aggressive campaign against Lee after
the Peninsula fiasco. Pope was sent for and arrived in Washington in June.
When the plan to place him at the head of an army whose three corps
commanders all outranked him, was proposed, he begged to be sent back
West. But he was finally persuaded to undertake a task, the magnitude of
which was not yet appreciated at the North. During a month of preparation
he was too easily swayed by the advice and influenced by the plans of
civilians, and finally issued a flamboyant address to his army ending with
the statement, "My headquarters will be in the saddle." When this was
shown to Lee, he grimly commented, "Perhaps his headquarters will be where
his hindquarters ought to be." There followed the brief campaign, the
stunning collision with the solid front of Stonewall Jackson at Cedar
Mountain, and the clever strategy that took Pope at a disadvantage on the
old battlefield of Bull Run. Thence his army retreated more badly beaten
from a military standpoint than the rout which fled the same field a year
before. A brief summer had marked the rise and fall of Pope. Two years
later Sherman bade good-bye to his friend Grant also summoned from the
West. "Remember Pope," was the gist of his warning; "don't stay in
Washington; keep in the field."