Presidential Decisiveness in the Waning Days

Court-martial Pope!

Pope as General - still brash

As one of his last acts as Commander-in-Chief, James Buchanan decided to court-martial Captain John Pope for insubordinate remarks he made during a lecture in Cincinnati. In an editorial on the subject The New-York Times agrees that it was wrong for a military man to make disparaging remarks about the president, but that in pushing for the trial to be on March 4th, Inauguration Day, President Buchanan came across as vindictive. The Times also implies that Pope might have felt a little more brash because he was one of the four military men assigned to accompany President-elect Lincoln on his train trip from Springfield to Washington. Here’s some excerpts from the editorial in The New-York Times March 2, 1861:

The Sin of Capt. Pope.

Whatever agreeable reminiscences of the outgoing administration may be treasured by those departments of the public service who are busily paying their adieux to the Old Public Functionary, it is safe to say the military arm is not likely to tender him any very regretful embrace. Throughout these hapless four years the army has indeed fared badly. …

But the proper time has not yet arrived for this military review, as Capt. POPE has reason already to know. The fact was illustrated by the lecture we have referred to. Permitting himself on that occasion to forget the soldier in the lecturer, the Captain indulged in well-merited censure of the President’s course in view of the Southern revolution, speaking, in fact, of that venerable man, very much in the way that all men, who do not wear epaulettes and aquiline buttons, agree in speaking. Whether any aggravation of this error lay in the fact of his having subsequently joined the suite of the President elect, and in that guise traveled to Washington, we are not informed; but for those injudicious words Capt. POPE is to be tried by Court-martial at Newport, Ky., and, that he may not go strengthened to the trial by a previous vision of Mr. LINCOLN’S inauguration, the tribunal will meet on Monday next. And to complete the summary and energetic character of these proceedings, two of the Captain’s military companions in the late pilgrimage, are to hasten with him to Kentucky, in order to act as his Judges.

Rash Words on the banks of the Ohio: Cincinnati 1862

The verdict can be of but one description. Capt. POPE in assuming arms as a profession, laid down various privileges belonging to the civilian, among them that of discussing political questions with unlicensed freedom, and of publishing his opinions of the Administration which he is employed to serve. …

But, on the other hand, it is impossible to conceive of a spectacle more pitiable than that of the departing President thus urging a sort of posthumous vengeance against an offender, at a period when a self-depreciatory charity with all men would much more become and dignify his retreat. It seems as if Mr. BUCHANAN were resolute to leave no day without its censurable act; no hour of his career, not even those final moments which are usually purged of passionate and evil influences, without some draft upon the contempt and indignation of posterity. Had the fault of Capt. POPE been at all singular; had the one voice of condemnation been a unit among applauding millions, the selection of the single culprit would have been less distinctly indicative of the malignant humor which prompts the Old Functionary. But Capt. POPE was simply singular in being the only one out of condemning millions whom the vindictive wrath of the President could reach, and even pursue beyond the official term; and hence his sacrificial and expiatory character as he goes forth into the western wilderness, the scapegoat of an offending nation. While, therefore, the technical crime will in all likelihood be proved against the Captain, the sympathy and regard of the people will attend him, while the judgment will be unanimously rendered against his prosecutor; a result which will insure the utmostpossible justice to all parties concerned. Let the trial therefore proceed.

Cincinnati Civil War Round Table quotes a bit of Pope’s Cincinnati address:

It is impossible to control the astonishment and indignation which every American must feel when he considers in what a position a few months of the administration of a bad or weak man have placed this great and prosperous country. If we overcome this damage, it will at least serve as a warning, and a most impressive one, to the American people, to be careful for the future in the selection of a chief magistrate.

John Pope graduated from West Point as an Engineer and made the military his career until 1886. He could be rash and brash.

You can read the entire editorial at The New York Times Archive

Cincinnati-in-1841