SUMMARY
John Pope was a Union general during the American Civil War (1861–1865) with a reputation for outspokenness and arrogance. After serving in the Mexican War (1846–1848) as an engineer, the West Point graduate fought well in the West during 1861 and 1862, prompting U.S. president Abraham Lincoln to transfer him east. There, he exacerbated his already bad relations with Union generals George B. McClellan and Fitz-John Porter by issuing a proclamation trumpeting his own generalship. When he declared that he would make his “headquarters in the saddle,” some quipped that he had mistaken his hindquarters for his headquarters, and when he announced a series of hard-war policies aimed at punishing Confederate civilians, Confederate general Robert E. Lee labeled him a “miscreant.” At the head of the new Army of Virginia, Pope got the opportunity to confront Lee at the Second Battle of Manassas in August 1862 but was soundly defeated. Pope was transferred to the Dakotas, wh
Cipriano Ferrandini addresses other members of the Baltimore plot. Image originally printed in
From The Spy of the Rebellion, by Allan Pinkerton, 1883. (Source: Maryland State Archives)
Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency on November 6, 1860, was the catalyst for vehement anger in the South, where the wave of secession had already begun to stir. The anger at the president-elect became so great that several conspirators vowed he would never reach the capitol to be inaugurated.
By many accounts, Lincoln was aware but unmoved by the threats that rose around him in early 1861 as he prepared to relocate from his home in Springfield, Illinois to the White House. He planned a grand 2,000-mile whistle-stop tour that would take his train through seventy cities and towns on the way to his inauguration. He was sure to be greeted by thousands of well-wishers, but a more sinister element was also gathering.
1/19/2021
Biden Isn t the First President to Have to Change Tracks en Route to Inauguration Historians/History by Jeff Rogg
Jeff Rogg is a postdoctoral fellow in the National Security Affairs Department at the U.S. Naval War College. Jeff received his PhD in history from The Ohio State University in December 2020. His dissertation, The Spy and the State
, is a complete history of American intelligence from the Revolutionary War to the present. The views in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the views of the U.S. government, Department of the Navy, or U.S. Naval War College. Twitter: @ThespyThestate
Photo by David Blanchette The historic Elijah Iles House at Seventh and Cook streets may soon become part of the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. The Lincoln Home National Historic Site may soon be larger and tell more of Springfield s history if several local organizations are successful in their efforts to expand the site s boundaries to encompass the old and the new. The Elijah Iles House Foundation Board on Dec. 29 passed a resolution encouraging the National Park Service to expand the historic site boundary to include the Iles House at Seventh and Cook streets and the soon-to-be-reconstructed Lincoln Cottage on Eighth Street, across the alley from the Iles House.