Administration to command an army in Virginia, and only assumed the
place from the feeling that a soldier must stand where he is put.
Arrived at Washington, he found himself in an atmosphere hot with
wrath and mortification. The Peninsular campaign had failed and strong
spirits like Stanton and Ben Wade, Chairman of the Committee on the
Conduct of the War, were on fire through disappointment. The new
General, whose position until within a few months had been a humble
one, was brow-beaten and dominated by powerful personalities and
forced to stand for acts and words which were not really his own.
He declared, said Cox, that his bombastic and truculent orders were
practically dictated by others. The declaration that his headquarters
would be his saddle, which Lee so wittily turned, saying, "then
his headquarters would be where his hindquarters ought to be," Pope
declares he never made. When his environment had in this way aroused
prejudice against him, he was set to command an army whose higher
officers felt outraged at his sudden rise over their heads and whose
soldiers were discouraged by defeat. He was expected to oppose skilful
and victorious foes with instruments that bent and broke in the crisis
as he tried to wield them. Only supreme genius could have wrought
success in such a situation, and that Pope did not at all possess. He
was only a man of resolution, with no exceptional gifts, who desired
to do his best for his country. In the West he had proceeded usefully
and honourably, and it was the worst misfortune for him that he was
taken for the new place. I hope that history will deal kindly with
him and that, since he was a worthy and strenuous patriot, he will not
live merely as an object of execration and ridicule.

In August, 1863, my too brief term of service having expired, I came
home to the Connecticut Valley and resumed my pulpit, which I had left
for a vacation and powder-smoke. Gettysburg and Vicksburg had taken