Winfield Scott

• 1. Introduction

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  Winfield Scott stood six feet, five inches tall and weighed 230 pounds, and he spent the better part of six decades reshaping the United States Army from the inside out. Born near Petersburg, Virginia, on the 13th of June 1786, Scott died at West Point on the morning of the 29th of May 1866 -- the same day, the same month, as his own birth -- having outlasted nearly every rival and adversary he had ever faced. He served as Commanding General of the United States Army for twenty years, fought in four major conflicts, and came within striking distance of the presidency three times without ever winning it. The Duke of Wellington once called him "the greatest living general." His own soldiers called him Old Fuss and Feathers. Who was Winfield Scott, and how did a Virginia planter's fifth child become the grand old man of an army he never stopped trying to improve?

• 2. The Making of a Soldier

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  Scott began his adult life not as a soldier but as a lawyer. He attended the College of William and Mary briefly in 1805, then left to study law under attorney David Robinson in Petersburg, where his fellow clerks included the future jurist Thomas Ruffin. During his time in Robinson's office, Scott attended the treason trial of Aaron Burr and formed a lasting contempt for General James Wilkinson, the Senior Officer of the United States Army, who offered forged evidence and self-serving testimony to cover his own role in the Burr conspiracy. That encounter hardened Scott's convictions about professional integrity at a moment when he had not yet put on a uniform.

  He joined the army in May 1808 as a captain of light artillery, commissioned just before his twenty-second birthday. He recruited his company from the Petersburg and Richmond areas and traveled with them to New Orleans, where he was appalled to find an army of just 2,700 officers and men in what he later described as a condition of "sloth, ignorance, or habits of intemperate drinking." The collision with Wilkinson was swift and costly. Scott clashed with the general over a bivouac site that Wilkinson owned personally and refused to relocate despite the illnesses and deaths it caused among the men. Convicted in a court-martial in January 1810 -- partly for disrespectful comments about Wilkinson, partly for a $50 shortage in a $400 recruiting account -- Scott had his commission suspended for a year.

  He spent that year in Virginia studying military tactics and practicing law in partnership with Benjamin Watkins Leigh. He also fought a duel with a Wilkinson ally, William Upshaw, whose bullet grazed the top of Scott's head. Both men survived. When his suspension ended, Scott returned to the army convinced that the institution needed officers who combined professional discipline with genuine care for their troops. He would spend the next five decades trying to build exactly that.

• 3. Trial by Fire, 1812-1815

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  The War of 1812 gave Scott every test he could have wanted and several he did not. Promoted to lieutenant colonel and assigned as second-in-command of the 2nd Artillery Regiment, he led two companies north to join the force preparing to invade Canada. President James Madison had made the invasion the centerpiece of his war strategy, aiming to capture Montreal and sever the St. Lawrence River.

  At the Battle of Queenston Heights in October 1812, Scott took overall command of U.S. forces at Queenston after Colonel Solomon Van Rensselaer was badly wounded. A British column under Roger Hale Sheaffe arrived in superior numbers, and Scott was forced to surrender after militia reinforcements failed to materialize. Held as a prisoner, he was treated hospitably by the British, though two Mohawk chiefs came close to killing him in captivity. Released in a prisoner exchange in late November, he was promoted to colonel.

  By early 1814 Scott was a brigadier general leading a regiment under General Jacob Brown. On the 5th of July 1814, Scott's brigade delivered what observers called "the first real success attained by American troops against British regulars" at the Battle of Chippawa. A few weeks later, a scouting expedition he led was ambushed, starting the Battle of Lundy's Lane. British reinforcements under General Gordon Drummond decimated his brigade, and Scott himself was severely wounded. He spent the months that followed recovering under the care of physician Philip Syng Physick.

  The Battle of Chippawa earned Scott a brevet promotion to major general and a Congressional Gold Medal. In October 1814 he was appointed commander of American forces in Maryland and northern Virginia in the aftermath of the Burning of Washington. When news of the Treaty of Ghent reached the United States in February 1815, Scott had already established himself as the war's most celebrated American field commander. In 1815, the Pennsylvania Society of the Cincinnati honored him with honorary membership; his insignia, a one-of-a-kind solid gold eagle nearly three inches tall made by Philadelphia silversmiths Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner, now rests in the collection of the United States Military Academy Museum.

• 4. Diplomat in Uniform

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  Between wars, Scott accumulated a record as a peacekeeper that rivaled his battlefield accomplishments. Assigned to command army forces in the Northeastern United States after 1816, he made his headquarters in New York City and in 1835 wrote Infantry Tactics, Or, Rules for the Exercise and Maneuvre of the United States Infantry, a three-volume drill manual that served as the army's standard reference until 1855.

  President Andrew Jackson ordered Scott to Illinois in 1832 to take command of the Black Hawk War, but the fighting had ended by the time Scott arrived. Scott and Governor John Reynolds then concluded the Black Hawk Purchase with Chief Keokuk and other Native American leaders, opening much of present-day Iowa to white settlement. When the Nullification Crisis threatened to fracture the Union that same year, Jackson sent Scott to Charleston, South Carolina, where he strengthened federal forts while working to draw public sentiment away from secession. The crisis subsided in early 1833 with the passage of the Tariff of 1833.

  In the late 1830s, Scott defused two separate crises that threatened war with Britain. When Americans began crossing into Canada to support the Rebellions of 1837-1838 -- and after Canadian forces burned an American steamboat in the Caroline affair -- Scott was dispatched to western New York. He issued public appeals warning Americans to stand down, drawing on the goodwill he had accumulated in the region during the War of 1812. When the Aroostook War broke out over the disputed Maine-Canada border, Scott negotiated a truce with British commander John Harvey after winning the support of Maine Governor John Fairfield. In 1859, Scott solved a final British-American border dispute, the Pig War over the San Juan Islands in Washington Territory, by reaching an agreement with British official James Douglas to reduce military forces on the islands.

  Scott's success in keeping the peace with Britain twice under President Martin Van Buren confirmed his standing with the broad public and fueled the newspaper speculation that would eventually make him a presidential candidate.

• 5. The Mexican Campaign

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  No campaign in Scott's career matched the audacity of his drive on Mexico City in 1847. President James K. Polk had never liked Scott, partly because of Scott's Whig Party affiliation, but with Congress unwilling to create the rank of lieutenant general for Senator Thomas Hart Benton, Polk reluctantly gave Scott command of the invasion. The officers who joined Scott's force included Major Joseph E. Johnston, Captain Robert E. Lee, and Lieutenants Ulysses S. Grant, George B. McClellan, George G. Meade, and P. G. T. Beauregard -- a gathering of names that would define the next American war.

  Biographer John Eisenhower later wrote that the landing at Veracruz was, up to that time, "the most ambitious amphibious expedition in human history." On the 9th of March 1847, Scott safely put ashore his 12,000-man army, encircled Veracruz, and began bombarding it. The Mexican garrison surrendered on the 27th. Seeking to avoid a popular uprising, Scott ordered his soldiers to salute Catholic priests on the streets of the city, a gesture designed to secure the cooperation of the Church.

  At Cerro Gordo in mid-April, Scott found Santa Anna holding a strong defensive position with his left flank unguarded, assuming the wooded terrain was impassable. Scott exploited the gap: David E. Twiggs and Colonel William S. Harney captured the key height of El Telegrafo in hand-to-hand fighting, and Mexican resistance collapsed. Scott captured roughly 3,000 soldiers. He then pressed toward Mexico City, cutting himself off from his supply base at Veracruz.

  By August, Santa Anna had assembled an army of approximately 25,000 men outside a city that, lacking walls, was essentially indefensible. Scott's forces defeated Valencia's army at Contreras on the morning of August 20, then immediately attacked at Churubusco. Among those who fought for the Mexicans at Churubusco were 72 members of the Saint Patrick's Battalion, American deserters captured in arms against their former army. All 72 were court-martialed and sentenced to death. Scott spared 20, but the rest were executed. After capturing the fortress of Chapultepec on the 13th of September, Scott accepted the surrender of remaining Mexican forces the following morning. Nicholas Trist, who had initially feuded with Scott but came to work closely with him, defied orders to return to Washington and continued negotiations. On the 2nd of February 1848, Trist and the Mexican negotiators signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war.

• 6. The Whig Who Lost

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  Scott sought the Whig presidential nomination in 1840, 1844, and 1848 without success. He finally won it in 1852, when the party was fragmenting and desperate. The 1852 Whig National Convention opened on the 16th of June, with the vote split among Scott, President Millard Fillmore, and Secretary of State Daniel Webster. After 46 ballots failed to produce a nominee, the delegates adjourned for the weekend. Webster's supporters began defecting to Scott, and the general secured the nomination on the 53rd ballot.

  The 1852 Democratic nominee was Franklin Pierce, a Northerner who had served under Scott as a brigadier general in Mexico and who had resigned from the U.S. Senate in 1842. Pierce had held only the minor office of United States Attorney for the District of New Hampshire since then, but he emerged as a compromise candidate partly because of his connection to Scott. Democrats attacked Scott over his 1809 court-martial and the execution of the Saint Patrick's Battalion members. Scott proved a poor candidate. In the South, distrust and apathy led many Southern Whigs to vote for Pierce or stay home. In the North, many anti-slavery voters chose John P. Hale of the Free Soil Party. Scott won four states and 44 percent of the popular vote; Pierce won just under 51 percent of the popular vote and a large majority of the electoral vote. It was the worst defeat in Whig history.

  After the defeat, Scott continued his duties as the army's senior officer. In 1855, on President Pierce's recommendation, Congress promoted him to brevet lieutenant general, making him the first U.S. Army officer to hold that rank since George Washington. The appellation Grand Old Man of the Army followed naturally.

• 7. Old Fuss and Feathers Faces the Union's Crisis

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  When the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln accelerated the secession crisis, Scott was 74 years old, too heavy to mount a horse, and unable to walk more than a few paces without stopping. He was also the most experienced military mind in the country. Despite being a Virginia native, he stayed loyal to the Union without apparent hesitation.

  Lincoln sent an envoy, Thomas S. Mather, to ask whether Scott would remain loyal and keep order during the inauguration. Scott's response was direct: "I shall consider myself responsible for Lincoln's safety. If necessary, I shall plant cannon at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and if any of the Maryland or Virginia gentlemen who have become so threatening and troublesome show their heads or even venture to raise a finger, I shall blow them to hell." The inauguration proceeded without a major incident.

  Scott also advised Lincoln to offer Robert E. Lee command of the Union forces; Lee declined and served the Confederacy instead. Scott then developed the Anaconda Plan, a strategy calling for control of the Mississippi River and a naval blockade of Southern ports that aimed to force Confederate surrender with minimal casualties on both sides. Northern newspapers derided it, preferring an immediate assault on the Confederacy. Lincoln selected General Irvin McDowell to command the main Union army, though Scott considered him unimaginative and inexperienced. McDowell led 30,000 men to defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run.

  After Bull Run, Lincoln replaced McDowell with George B. McClellan and began meeting with McClellan privately, without Scott. Frustrated by his diminishing influence, Scott resigned in October 1861. He favored General Henry Halleck as his successor; Lincoln chose McClellan.

  In retirement at West Point, Scott remained useful. On the 23rd and the 24th of June 1862, Lincoln made an unannounced visit and spent five hours consulting with Scott on the war and War Department staffing. After McClellan's defeat in the Seven Days Battles, Lincoln took Scott's advice and appointed Halleck as the army's senior general. In 1864, Scott sent Grant -- who had by then succeeded Halleck as the lead Union general -- a copy of his newly published memoirs inscribed "from the oldest to the greatest general." The strategy Grant used to bring the Confederacy to its knees followed the same logic as Scott's Anaconda Plan.

• 8. A Legacy Carved Wide

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  At West Point on the morning of the 29th of May 1866, Winfield Scott died at age 79. President Andrew Johnson ordered flags flown at half-staff. Grant, George G. Meade, George H. Thomas, and John Schofield attended the funeral. He was buried at the West Point Cemetery.

  The names Scott left on the American map suggest how deeply he had been woven into the country's fabric. Scott County appears in Iowa, Kansas, Virginia, Minnesota, and Tennessee. Communities bearing his name or his first name include Winfield in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Alabama, Tennessee, and West Virginia, as well as Fort Scott, Kansas. Fort Winfield Scott at the Presidio of San Francisco served as part of the coastal defenses of San Francisco Bay from 1861 to 1970.

  The officers who carried his name into their own careers included Union General Winfield Scott Hancock, Confederate General Winfield Scott Featherston, and Admiral Winfield Scott Schley. The U.S. Army Civil Affairs Association regards Scott as the "Father of Civil Affairs"; its regimental award medallions bear his name.

  Among the assessments his contemporaries left behind, the most striking may belong not to a general or a statesman but to Fanny Crosby, the hymn writer, who recalled that Scott's "gentle manner did not indicate a hero of so many battles; yet there was strength beneath the exterior appearance and a heart of iron within his breast. But from him I learned that the warrior only it is, who can fully appreciate the blessing of peace." Scott's papers are held by the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.