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, where he fought against Indians in the aftermath of the Sioux Uprising (1862). During Reconstruction (1865–1877), he held military administrative posts in the South. He died in 1892.