In the summer of 1862, it seemed as if things could get no worse for the Union army. Naturally, they could and did.

In spite of some limited battlefield success, charismatic General George McClellan and his numerically superior Army of the Potomac had been outthought and outmaneuvered by General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in its defense of Richmond, the Confederate capital. Much of the cautious McClellan's problem stemmed from Lincoln's refusal to provide him with reinforcements posted near Washington to defend it from General Stonewall Jackson's brilliantly executed offensive in the Shenandoah Valley, a campaign designed to keep Washington under perpetual threat of attack. McClellan had gotten himself into a predicament on the Virginia peninsula, one made worse by his blind faith in intelligence that reported the Confederate numbers to be far higher than they turned out to be. After recriminations between McClellan and the War Department flew back and forth over the telegraph wires, an exasperated Lincoln flatly ordered him to cut his losses, retreat and return to Washington.

Lincoln created a new army and put it under the command of General John Pope, an abolitionist friend from Illinois who had made a national reputation by capturing a vital island on the Mississippi River. All of the troops near Washington, as well as McClellan's rapidly retreating soldiers, were transferred to Pope's command. Pope, a man held in the utmost contempt by Robert E. Lee for his arrogance, made several poorly judged pronouncements when he took command--statements clearly meant to rub salt in McClellan's wounds. Most famous was his promise to be a more active general during battle than McClellan had been: "My headquarters will be in the saddle." The phrase made good copy to a humiliated North and was picked up in newspapers everywhere.

Unfortunately for Pope, Lee was an avid reader of the Northern newspapers smuggled to his headquarters.

Lee, who so detested Pope that he would not even refer to him by name, designed a brilliant gambling offensive in cooperation with Stonewall Jackson and James Longstreet that would culminate in the humiliation of Pope and the rout of his army at the Second Battle of Bull Run. The defeat was so complete and catastrophic that Pope was quickly reduced to being the butt of jokes such as, "It looks like his headquarters were where his hindquarters should have been." His once-promising military career virtually ended as Lincoln sent him far away from Washington to quell a Sioux uprising in Minnesota, possibly saving him from a messy court-martial. As the final blow to Pope, McClellan was summoned to save the army, which embraced him as their savior as he led them to meet the rebels at Antietam.