Postbellum Years
In April 1867, Pope was named governor of the Reconstruction Third Military District and made his headquarters in Atlanta, issuing orders that allowed African Americans to serve on juries, ordered Mayor James Williams to remain in office another year, postponing elections, and banned city advertising in newspapers that did not favor Reconstruction. President Andrew Johnson removed him from command December 28, 1867, replacing him with George G. Meade.
Pope returned to the West and served with distinction in the Apache Wars. He made political enemies in Washington recommending that the reservation system would be better administered by the military than the corrupt Indian Bureau. He engendered controversy by calling for better and more humane treatment of Native Americans. Others point to quotes from John Pope regarding killing and displacing specific Native American tribes (specifically the Sioux Indians) author Walter Donald Kennedy states the following (including a quote from John Pope himself): "Union general John Pope gave expression to how the 'Indian problem' was to be handled when he stated, 'It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux.' Pope planned to make a 'final settlement with all these Indians.' His plan was to shoot and hang as many as possible and then remove the rest from the land."
Pope's reputation suffered a serious blow in 1879 when a Board of Inquiry led by Maj. Gen. John Schofield concluded that Fitz John Porter had been unfairly convicted and that it was Pope himself who bore most of the responsibility for the loss at the Second Battle of Bull Run. The report characterized Pope as being reckless and dangerously uninformed about the events on the battle, and credited Porter's perceived disobedience with saving the army from complete ruin.
John Pope was promoted to major general in the regular army in 1882 and retired in 1886. He died at the Ohio Soldiers' Home near Sandusky, Ohio. He is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri.
Read more about this topic: John Pope (military Officer)
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“Poor Poe! At first so forgotten that his grave went without a tomb-stone twenty-six years ... today in danger of becoming the life study of a few professors.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)