Pope, John

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John Pope (1770-1845) served from 1829 to 1835 as the third territorial governor of Arkansas. He had been elected senator from Kentucky from 1807 to 1813. A brother-in-law of John Quincy Adams, he nevertheless supported Andrew Jackson in 1824 and worked vigorously for his election in 1828. His political “spoils” came in the form of the governorship to fill the unexpired term of Geoge Izard and subsequent reappointment to a full term. A proponent of internal improvements and transportation, he became embroiled in a controversy over road and other public contracts immediately upon his arrival in Arkansas and found a fierce political enemy in Robert Crittenden, the territorial secretary who had acted as governor between Izard’s death and Pope’s arrival. After his term as governor, Pope moved to Kentucky where he was elected as a Whig to three terms in the U. S. House of Representatives. Pope served as governor during Choctaw removal and the early part of Creek removal.

Source: The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York: James T. White & Company, 1909), 10: 184; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1894, 5: 68.