John Codman Ropes

John Codman Ropes (1836–1899) was an American lawyer and military historian. Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where his father was a merchant, he grew up in Boston, graduated from Harvard and became a successful lawyer. A spinal deformity kept him out of the Civil War, in which his brother Henry was killed at Gettysburg, but he became one of its first serious students and founded the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts. He wrote The Army under Pope, The First Napoleon, The Campaign of Waterloo and an unfinished Story of the Civil War, and was known for close analysis of command decisions.