In July and August 1862, 30,000 men in two corps of Gen. John Pope's newly formed Union Army of Virginia camped across much of Rappahannock County after Confederate Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson had recently defeated them during Jackson's Shenandoah Valley campaign. They included Gen. Nathaniel's P. Banks's 2nd Corps, which camped on this ground, and Gen. Franz Sigel's 1st Corps at Sperryville, Woodville, and Thornton Gap, while Gen. Irwin McDowell's 3rd Corps camped near Warrenton. Pope arrived late in July 1862 after making pronouncements that irritated foes and many others, declaring to his officers and men, "Let us understand each other. I have come to you from the West, where he have always seen the backs of our enemies." He had been successful at New Madrid and Island No. 10, helping secure the upper Mississippi River for the Union, but his attitude failed to endear him to his army. When he said his headquarters would be "in the saddle," wits replied that his headquarters were where his hindquarters belonged. He also announced that his army "will subsist upon the country in which their operations are carried on," and that "if any person, having taken the oath of allegiance [to the Union], be found to have violated it, he shall be shot, and his property seized and applied to the public use." Although Pope was carrying out President Abraham Lincoln's policies to bring "hard war" to the South, he bore the brunt of Confederate outrage. John Pope (1822-1892) alienated many contemporaries with his bombast, so that qualities such as giving a field command to the outstanding cavalryman Gen. John Buford are often overlooked. Grief over the death of his infant daughter just as he took command likely affected his behavior. After his defeat at the Second Battle of Manassas, he was relieved and reassigned to the West, where he acquitted himself well in combat with the Indians. As commander in Atlanta during Reconstruction, he promoted the interests of freedmen. Reassigned again to the West, he at times proposed to "utterly exterminate" the Sioux, but he also supported better treatment of Indians.
