Painted by E. Packbauer.
Copyright, 1901, by Perrien-Keydel Co., Detroit, Mich., U. S. A.

THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.
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GENERAL JOHN POPE

THE UNFORTUNATE COMMANDER OF THE ARMY OF VIRGINIA

A SWIFT TURN OF FORTUNE’S WHEEL

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.”