
John Pope (16 March 1822 – 23 September 1892) was a Major-General of the US Army during the American Civil War and Plains Indian Wars.
Biography[]
John Pope was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1822, and he graduated from West Point in 1842. Pope served in the US Army during the Mexican-American War, serving under Zachary Taylor at the Battle of Monterrey and the Battle of Buena Vista before being promoted to captain. Pope served as an engineer during the 1850s, and he was promoted to Brigadier-General at the start of the American Civil War. Pope commanded the Army of the Mississippi at the start of the war, capturing New Madrid in Missouri before taking Island No. 10. In March 1862, he was promoted to Major-General and sent to the Eastern Theater after the capture of Corinth, and he commanded an army of 70,000 Union troops at Second Bull Run in 1862. In that battle, Robert E. Lee launched a turning movement that defeated the Union army, and Pope, unpopular among his officers for his criticism of many of them, was sent to command US forces in Minnesota. He commanded forces against the Dakota in late 1862 and took over the Missouri Department in 1865 at the end of the Civil War. During Reconstruction, he commanded garrison forces in Georgia, leading the Third Military District in Atlanta before commanding the Missouri Department from 1870 to 1883 during the wars against the Sioux and Native Americans. He retired from the regular army in 1886 as a Major-General, and he died in Sandusky, Ohio in 1892 at the age of 70.