The Commanders

by Robert M. Utley

  Pope had erred in not attacking Jackson, and then Longstreet, before they reached Thoroughfare Gap. Reports had reached his headquarters signaling movement by the two corps, but he did not know their destination. He chose to believe that Jackson was headed for the Shenandoah Valley and refrained from moving against him. Instead, anticipating reinforcements from McClellan’s army, he held his positions along the Rappahannock River. In fact, the corps of Fitz John Porter and Samuel Heintzelman had reached the field on August 22. Pope dispatched a burst of confusing, contradictory orders to his corps commanders, some written and others verbal, carried by courier. Such orders reflected in part Pope’s disorderly mind but also the indecision of General Halleck.

  In hopes of trapping Jackson before Longstreet arrived, Pope began to draw his units off the Rappahannock River to unite with the main army at Centreville. One route lay along the Warrenton Pike, which ran parallel to an unfinished railroad grade behind which Jackson had fortified his troops. In late afternoon of August 28 Jackson discovered the lead elements of a Union division, a brigade under General John Gibbon, marching across his front on the pike. Jackson launched an attack that led to a fierce battle with heavy casualties and ended in a stalemate at nightfall.

  Pope believed that a vigorous assault against Jackson would capture his corps before Longstreet could arrive. He mistakenly assumed that Jackson was in retreat and discounted the threat of Longstreet. On August 29 Pope ordered the attack to begin with General Franz Sigel’s corps to strike Jackson’s left, while General Fitz John Porter’s corps (from McClellan’s army) and McDowell’s corps struck against Jackson’s right. Now, however, it consisted of Longstreet’s corps, which marched into position during the day. Sigel’s men attacked several times but were unable to pierce Jackson’s lines. Porter and McDowell, halted by a brief skirmish with General J. E. B. Stuart’s cavalry, received an order brought by a courier from Pope. It was typical of Pope’s obfuscation, leaving the two generals to try to understand what he wanted; nowhere did it order an attack. Pope believed that Longstreet had not arrived and that, despite his muddled order, Porter and McDowell were attacking Jackson’s right.

  At a council of war on the morning of August 30, Pope still acted on his belief that the Confederates were in full retreat. His generals counseled caution but failed to convince him. He ordered an attack on the “retreating” Southerners. They were not retreating, however, but preparing their own attack with Longstreet’s command. And General Lee was now on the scene, commanding the entire Confederate force.

  When Porter was thrown back with heavy casualties, Jackson and Longstreet threw their divisions against Pope’s lines with devastating effect. By evening the truth had finally dawned on Pope: he had to contravene his proclamation and have his men show their backs to the enemy. Unlike the first Battle of Manassas, the withdrawal was orderly but nonetheless a calamitous defeat.

  The defeat can be attributed only in part to Pope’s egomania, ineptitude, and chaotic command performance. A large share of the blame falls on General Halleck, whose orders to Pope during the battle and its run-up were contradictory, confusing, vague, indecisive, or lacking altogether. General McClellan, who had his own problems with Halleck, seized on any excuse to delay or avoid uniting with Pope. McClellan even advised the president that one of the options to be considered was to “leave Pope to get out of his scrape.”4 Except for the corps of Porter and Heintzelman, this was essentially what happened.

  On September 5, 1862, President Lincoln relieved General Pope from command of the Army of Virginia, which was consolidated with the Army of the Potomac under McClellan’s command. The problem of what to do with Pope solved itself. On August 17 the Santee Sioux of Minnesota, mistreated for years by settlers and corrupt agents and traders, had launched a reign of terror among the settlements. Militia had taken the field, and the governor petitioned Washington to hold back the recently mustered Minnesota Volunteer regiments. On September 17 Secretary Stanton announced the creation of the Department of the Northwest and the assignment of John Pope to command it.5

  DEPARTMENT OF THE NORTHWEST

  General Pope reached his St. Paul headquarters on September 16, 1862. A week later militia colonel Henry H. Sibley, with four regiments of Minnesota Volunteers, defeated Chief Little Crow at the Battle of Wood Lake. On September 26 Sibley received the surrender of the peace faction of the Indians. The war faction fled west onto the Dakota plains. Pope still would have Indian work to do. Moreover, he was no stranger to Minnesota or its leading citizens, having served there as a topographical engineer before the Civil War.

  The Santee uprising, featuring widespread massacre of settlers together with horrid atrocities, had roused the Minnesota population to fury against Indians. Colonel Sibley had formed a military commission to deal with Indians accused of the most heinous barbarities. Ignoring judicial niceties, the commission quickly condemned 303 warriors to be hanged. President Lincoln, however, called for the complete records supporting the guilt of each Indian. Everyone, beginning with Governor Alexander Ramsey, demanded of Lincoln that the Indians be hanged immediately. So did Pope, declaring to Lincoln that they were all guilty and that the citizens stood ready to perpetrate the “indiscriminate massacre of all the Indians—old men, women and children.” He also pointed out that the soldiers guarding the prisoners shared the people’s outrage—an assertion reinforced by the assault of two hundred citizens on the compound in Mankato where the condemned were held. Pope joined with Governor Ramsey in urging their immediate execution to assuage the citizens. The president, however, refusing to be stampeded, narrowed the list to thirty-eight. Because of the angry populace, Pope imposed tight security on the site of the execution in Mankato. On December 26, 1862, the condemned thirty-eight men were hanged.6

  While contending with Indians, Pope brooded over his exile from the war zone and over the infuriating defeat at Second Manassas. He believed that he had been the victim of subordinates and superiors alike and especially wanted General Fitz John Porter court-martialed. Without neglecting his local military responsibilities, Pope fired a barrage of outraged letters to senators and the army high command, seeking vindication for Second Manassas and return to the war.

  When court-martial proceedings began in December against Fitz John Porter, Pope traveled to Washington, D.C., to testify, then returned to the Northwest. On January 21, 1863, the court found Porter guilty of disobeying an order and misbehavior before the enemy and sentenced him to be cashiered from the army. Pope felt vindicated, although vindication did not earn him a return to the war. Instead Pope returned to the war at hand. To provide better rail and telegraph communication, he moved department headquarters from St. Paul to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

  Pope had no sooner taken command of the department in September 1862 than he discerned that the defeat of the Santees in Minnesota had not ended Indian warfare farther west and began preparing for a campaign against the tribes that had taken refuge in Dakota. They were united with Sissetons and Yanktonais as well as Teton Sioux from the Upper Missouri River, who resented the flocks of gold-seekers using the Missouri River as a path to the Montana and Idaho goldfields. Pope at once began to strengthen Sibley, who had been commissioned brigadier general of Volunteers. In June 1863 Pope alerted Washington about his summer campaign plans. He had succeeded in retaining Minnesota and Wisconsin regiments destined for the South and intended to dispatch Sibley, with three thousand cavalry and infantry as well as artillery, west into Dakota Territory. At the same time, Brigadier General Alfred Sully, who commanded Pope’s District of Iowa, would lead two thousand cavalry with a light howitzer battery up the Missouri River, then veer northeast to unite with Sibley.7

  Pope planned the campaign, but Sibley and Sully carried it out. Both scored significant victories in Dakota east of the Missouri River. On July 24, 1863, Sibley confronted nearly a thousand Sisseton warriors at Big Mound and routed them so decisively that they headed for the British Possessions. On July 27 Sibley
camped at Dead Buffalo Lake, only to be assailed by 1,600 Santees united with Tetons who had been hunting bison. Howitzer fire and counterattacks drove the Indians off. The next day the warriors attacked again, at Stony Lake, smashing at both flanks. Again Sibley’s howitzers won the day. The Indians raced to cross the Missouri River.

  Meanwhile, delayed by low water in the Missouri, General Sully did not reach the battle zone until late August. Sibley had already turned back to Minnesota. On September 3 about a thousand warriors struck a scouting battalion from Sully’s command at Whitestone Hill. Surrounded, the battalion held on until a courier who had slipped out brought Sully’s entire command to the rescue. The troops drove the attackers into a deep ravine and held them under a heavy fire until nightfall allowed them to escape. About three hundred warriors died in the ravine.8

  The campaign of 1863 both cost the Indians dearly and roused them to further hostility. Minnesota was now secure, but the Upper Missouri region swarmed with angry Teton Sioux as well as refugees from the Eastern Sioux. Immigration to the Montana goldfields by wagon train and river steamer had increased dramatically, and the gold-seekers and their routes were imperiled by the Sioux. Pope planned a summer 1864 campaign. General Sully would lead his brigade up the Missouri River, establish two military posts, and fight any Sioux inclined to oppose him. Sibley’s brigade, now under Colonel Minor T. Thomas, would march to the Missouri River from Minnesota.9

  The two brigades united on June 29, 1864, even as the various tribes of Tetons coalesced and moved west toward the badlands of the Little Missouri River. With 2,200 men, Sully found trails leading to a large Sioux encampment at the base of Killdeer Mountain that harbored about 1,600 warriors. Sully discovered the sprawling village of tipis on July 28. Dismounting his cavalry and forming a hollow square enclosing his artillery, he launched his attack. Warriors rode forth to contest him, but after heavy fighting they retreated to their lodges to save their women and children. During the night they hastened west into the forbidding Dakota Badlands. The next day the troops burned the Indian camp and all its stores, a grievous loss.10

  Sully’s victory ended Pope’s operations of 1864. The Sioux had not been conquered. The army would fight them for another fifteen years, but Pope had planted forts on the Upper Missouri and demonstrated his ability to exercise overall command of military operations against Indians. The experience had led him to thoughtful conclusions about dealing with Indians.

  Pope had arrived in Minnesota in 1862 as an advocate of stern measures toward Indians. He even talked of extermination if they did not behave themselves. Two years of campaigning, however, convinced him that war and peace alone were not enough. The whole system of treating Indians was wrong and should be remedied. As with past issues, Pope had the answers and set them to paper in a long treatises. The treaty system and the accompanying practice of paying annuities, which opened the way for unscrupulous traders, should be abolished The “semi-civilized” tribes should be disarmed and moved behind the frontier of settlement, to be educated and Christianized under civilian agents. The “wild tribes” should be placed under military control and gathered around military posts under army authority, to be Christianized and taught to farm. The government should quit paying Indians for lands they supposedly owned, thus allowing them to be robbed by whites and having to fight wars with them. The Indians should be treated as wards of the government. Finally, new trade regulations to be enforced by the military should be drafted (which he himself did).

  Pope submitted this proposal to the War Department in April 1864. General Halleck was sympathetic and had it published in the Army and Navy Journal. But the nation had a civil war to fight and the Indian Bureau furiously opposed any tampering with Indian policy. Still, Pope embraced his cause and never let go of it.11

  Pope supposed that the controversy over Indian policy, together with a spat with War Department inspectors over his troop returns, had put him in bad odor in Washington, D.C., so a telegram on November 23, 1864, summoning him there caused worry. At the War Department he was ordered to report at City Point to General Grant, then conducting the siege of Petersburg. Ridding himself of unsatisfactory department commanders, Grant offered Pope the Department of the South. Pope balked, citing the trials of occupation duty and his wish to serve on the frontier. Grant yielded and recommended to the president that the Departments of the Northwest, Missouri, and Kansas be merged into a single Military Division of the Missouri, with Pope commanding from St. Louis. On February 3, 1865, Pope took command, with a brevet of major general in the Regular Army following on March 13 for “gallant and meritorious service in the capture of Island No. 10.”

  MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSOURI

  Pope’s new command presented challenges that few other Union generals had to meet. Missouri alone, still swarming with guerrilla bands and freebooters as well as the remnants of Confederate armies, demanded close attention. Fortunately, Major General Grenville M. Dodge commanded the Department of the Missouri, which now included the Department of Kansas after the exile of the inept Samuel R. Curtis to the Department of the Northwest. Dodge was a competent volunteer general and served Pope as well as his meager resources permitted.

  Pope’s division command lasted only until June 27, when a reworking of military boundaries gave General William T. Sherman division command and relegated Pope to the Department of the Missouri. Even so, he dealt with the same Indian problems he that would have in division command. His most serious challenge, indeed a crisis, lay west of Missouri all the way to the Rocky Mountains. On November 29, 1864, Colorado’s rogue militia colonel, John M. Chivington, had perpetrated the Sand Creek Massacre on peaceful Cheyenne Indians. Sand Creek sparked an uprising of the plains tribes from the Arkansas River to the Upper Missouri. Frontier ranches and settlements fell victim to roving war parties as freight trains, stagecoaches, and travelers on the overland trails fought off feathered warriors.

  Pope and General Dodge planned a spring 1865 campaign that would have Brigadier General James H. Ford thrust south of the Arkansas River against Cheyennes, Arapahos, Kiowas, and Comanches. Brigadier General Patrick E. Connor would move north from the Platte against the Sioux and Cheyennes. General Sully would push across Dakota and establish a supply base for Connor on Powder River.12

  Pope and Dodge had hoped to get the three commands in motion by early spring, but bad weather, orders to muster out Volunteer units, and an Indian peace commission in the south frustrated their efforts. General Ford was mustered out even before he could get underway. Brigadier General John B. Sanborn took his place; but the peace commissioners won, and military operations never commenced.13

  General Connor had modest success although also plagued by regiments that were ordered mustered out and others threatening mutiny. His offensive got underway in early August. Sully had been diverted, but Connor sent three columns to converge on the Powder River country. Connor himself led one, which attacked an Arapaho village on August 29. That was the only success, if it could even be labeled that. In early September the other two columns fought several engagements with the Sioux on the lower Powder, but Sioux aggressiveness only complicated more severe conditions. Exhausted supplies, exhausted men and horses, rain, snow, overflowing rivers, freezing temperatures alternating with broiling heat, and 225 dead horses all contributed to an inglorious finale to Pope’s elaborately planned campaign.

  After the Connor expedition, Pope was bedeviled by two conditions that froze his plans for military operations. The Civil War was over, and the mutinous troops had to be discharged. Reflecting this necessity, the War Department applied such extreme pressure on Pope to economize that he had to use his much-reduced force solely to garrison the forts and protect the overland trails. The other interference came from the growing power of the Interior Department and its Bureau of Indian Affairs. With Senate backing, the civilians set about making the treaties that Pope so abhorred. As he advised General Sherman, “I must again state to you that I do not consider the
treaties lately made with the Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahos, and Comanches worth the paper they are written on, for reasons I have given you so often that you must be sick of hearing them.”14

  Pope’s Indian service was interrupted on September 1, 1866, when he was mustered out of the Volunteers and donned the single star of a Regular Army brigadier general. A month later he took leave of absence for six months, then was assigned to the Reconstruction Third Military District, which consisted of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. He endured that disagreeable duty from April 1 to December 28, 1867. The more congenial Department of the Lakes returned him to Cincinnati from January 13, 1868, to April 30, 1870. On that date orders sent him back to Indian duty, which occupied him until his retirement in 1886.

  DEPARTMENT OF THE MISSOURI

  Pope assumed command of the Department of the Missouri on May 3, 1870. Headquartered at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the department embraced Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, the Indian Territory, Colorado, and New Mexico. New Mexico was a separate district whose commander reported to Pope. General Grant’s election to the presidency elevated General Sherman to head the army and Lieutenant General Philip H. Sheridan to command the Military Division of the Missouri from Chicago. Pope now reported to Sheridan.

  With Cheyennes and Arapahos striking at construction workers on the Kansas Pacific Railway and Kiowas and Comanches raiding south into Texas, Pope at once confronted two of the three issues that would dominate his thinking throughout the years during which he commanded the department. First, the treaties that he had vociferously assailed as terrible policy had created reservations with which he had to deal. In the Indian Territory (moved to the Department of Texas in 1871 and thus out of Pope’s jurisdiction), the Kiowa and Comanche Reservation bordered Texas on the south, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Reservation bordered Kansas on the north. To complicate the military mission, President Grant’s Peace Policy placed reservations off-limits to the army. Warriors off the reservations could be pursued and attacked but were safe once on the reservation. Post commanders on the reservations knew who the leaders of the raids were and even when they departed or returned, but they could take no action. Even so, as Pope complained, the army bore some of the blame for the raids. This was especially true, he noted, of Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson at Fort Sill, on the Kiowa-Comanche Reservation. Texans denounced Grierson for not preventing the raids, and even some of the officers in Texas faulted him. Pope called in vain for War Department orders specifying the exact relations between reservation Indians and local commanders. To Pope, this situation reinforced his denunciation of federal Indian policy while he was commanding in the Northwest.15