The Army Under Pope

by John Codman Ropes

This is volume four of the sixteen-volume series on the Army and the Navy in the Civil War

Genres: Civil War

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Mark Saha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vol.4 - The Army Under Pope
The Scribners History of the Civil War (1883)

While McClellan was evacuating the Peninsula [Vol. 3], Lee's army now turned on the Union Army of Virginia (the only Union Army named after a state instead of a river), which was all that was left protecting Washington. Lee inflicted a decisive defeat on it at 2nd Bull Run. With no other force to oppose him, Lee now moved west to cross the Potomac near Harper's Ferry and invade the North. McClellan's forces evacuating the Peninsula were hastily diverted from their Alexandria and Aqua Creek destinations to land in Washington and improvise a hasty pursuit.

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This book is part of the Scribners's series of 16 volumes on the Civil War on land and at sea, published in 1882-3. It took congress twenty years to finally allocate funds to have all official documents and battlefield communications assembled and sorted through. Americans could at last have an inside look at who actually said or did what, and when.

While that massive project was still underway, Scribners persuaded highly qualified people - most of them participants -- to write the individual volumes of this history in light of the new information. There is an immediacy to these brisk and readable accounts, making them a very good starting point for someone who wishes to study the conflict. After reading these, you can pick up any modern volume on any aspect of the war with good contextual grasp of how it fits into the overall picture.

Where these volumes fall short is maps, which are essential but inadequate because the publisher wanted to keep the price of each volume to one dollar – within reach of the ordinary person. The publisher advised readers to keep an atlas handy. Fortunately, today you can google “images” for good maps of almost anything under discussion. For the three naval volumes, you can also google images of the specific ships, or types of ships, under discussion.