The Military Memoirs of General John Pope. - Review - book review

The Military Memoirs of General John Pope. Edited by Peter Cozzens and Robert I. Girardi. University of North Carolina Press, 1998. 287 Pages. S34.95.

General John Pope may be best known for his unsuccessful command of the Union Army of Virginia that faced Stonewall Jackson and was soundly defeated at the battle of Second Manassas (or Second Bull Run) in August 1862. There was a great deal more of merit and significance to the general's life, but that is the single event for which he has become best known. In 1990, authors Wallace Schultz and Walter Trenerry wrote a biography of Pope (Abandoned by Lincoln), in which they described him as the "only commanding general of a major Union army in the Civil war not to have [a biography]." Their work after many years of research was based on a man who had kept no diary, whose surviving letters were scarce, and who had only one extant article that they could locate.

This book, The Military Memoirs of General John Pope, is a rare new addition to the military leadership biographies of the Civil War. Pope's personal reminiscences were recently discovered by a well-known contemporary historian of the Western theater of the war, Peter Cozzens, in which General Pope has published his own recollections of service in the Civil War as well as his preand postwar days in the U.S. Army. The serialized writings had been published in the late 1800s in the National Tribune.

A large part of this book deals with Pope's personal experiences at the battles of Corinth, Island No. Ten, and Cedar Mountain. Of course, one major section of his recollections in the book deals with the battle of Second Bull Run. Despite the rough treatment and criticism that Pope received after his defeat in Virginia and the harsh treatment given him following the war, his discussion of military campaigns and fellow soldiers is very even-handed. One will not find here the kind of vociferous discussion of others that might have been expected.

It is probably unlikely that additional collections of first-person recall such as this one will be found in published sources such as the National Tribune. That is regrettable for many of the Civil War leaders for whom research sources are minimal, but such a finding as Pope's National Tribune collection of articles is remarkable in the late 20th century. This book is a very interesting and worthwhile addition to our current published history of the Civil War.

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