Thursday, October 27, 2005

The general was a Pope

Recall yesterday I asked if anyone knew the name of the Civil War Union general who, upon taking a command promised. "I'll have my headquarters in the saddle."

Well, JinC's most faithful reader, Anonymous, and history teacher and blogger Betsy Newmark have identified him as John Pope.

Pope's biographical sketch at www.civilwar.com includes this:

In bombastic fashion he declared his headquarters would be in the saddle. This led to a quip that he didn't know his headquarters from his hindquarters.
You can read more about Pope here.

Now, can we tie the "hindquarters" remark to Lincoln? I've heard he said he was concerned to have a general whose "headquarters are in his hindquarters."

I don't have a Lincoln biography in the house, and won't get to the library until Sunday.

In the meantime, can anyone find a source that cites Lincoln as having made the "hindquarters" remark?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Claremont guys think it was Lincoln too.

http://www.claremont.org/writings/980212meese.html

-AC