General John Pope

During the Civil War, General Pope was the general in command of the Union Army at the Second Battle of Bull Run in September, 1862. The story Jenny tells in Flags in the Dust about her brother Bayard accompanying General J.E.B. Stuart's raiding party to Pope's headquarters in Virginia in April, 1862, forms a mythic part of the Sartoris inheritance. In April 1862, however, Pope was in fact in Mississippi. It was his success there that led Lincoln soon afterwards to bring Pope east and put him in command of the North's Army of Virginia. He lost that position, however, after losing to Lee at Bull Run. "Pope" is mentioned again in a list of Civil War generals in Requiem for a Nun (188).