Winfield Scott

American military leader

• Born: June 13, 1786
• Birthplace: Petersburg, Virginia
• Died: May 29, 1866
• Place of death: West Point, New York

The leading American commander during the Mexican War, Scott had a military career that lasted more than fifty years and left his mark in U.S. military history by transforming the republic’s feeble army into an efficient professional force.

Early Life

Winfield Mason Scott was the son of William Scott, a captain on the patriot side in the American Revolution who died in 1791, leaving only a modest inheritance and little in the way of a memory for the young boy. His mother, Ann Mason, was descended from an important Virginia family, and she spent her widowhood teaching her son the ways of the Virginia gentry until her death in 1803.

Young Scott was educated by private tutors in Petersburg and at the new capital at Richmond. At the age of nineteen, he enrolled at the College of William and Mary. He showed little aptitude for college work and left the Williamsburg school after a year without earning a degree. The young man decided on a career in the law, and in accordance with the custom of the day, studied law with an established attorney. When a war scare after 1807, however, caused Congress to vote funds to enlarge the United States Army in anticipation of war with Great Britain, Scott abandoned a legal career for the sword. In May, 1808, Scott became a captain in the regular army.

Scott was exceedingly tall by the standards of his day—six feet, five inches—and in his younger years, muscular but not fat. Photographs of the elderly Scott showing his three-hundred-pound bulk do not give an accurate picture of the young captain. Along with a striking figure, Winfield Scott bore a somewhat haughty manner. This was characteristic of many Virginia gentlemen of the time, but Scott was both especially quick to take offense at perceived snubs and insults and not shy about voicing his own opinions. Indeed, his lack of tact got him court-martialed during his first tour of duty at Natchez in the Mississippi Territory in 1810. Captain Scott openly proclaimed the former commanding officer, General James Wilkinson, a traitor in league with former vice president Aaron Burr. For this affront, Wilkinson had the young man disciplined for disrespect to a superior officer. Scott postponed marriage until the age of thirty; when he did wed, he chose Maria Mayo, the daughter of an important Richmond editor, for his bride.

Life’s Work

The War of 1812 brought a host of young officers forward into national prominence. At the start of the war, the United States Army was commanded by men who had learned their military skills back in the Revolutionary War. Most of the commanders of the first year of the war were simply incompetent to fight a war on the offensive as called for by the leaders in Washington, and not until they were replaced by younger men did the war go more favorably for the Americans. The two great young generals who emerged in 1813 and 1814 were Andrew Jackson and Winfield Scott, a pair of men who later became bitter rivals.

The great task for an American commander in the War of 1812 (as in the revolution) was to solve the problem of making raw American troops stand up in the field to trained British regulars. Much of the American force consisted of state militiamen serving limited terms with little training. Too often in battle, the militia ran or refused to fight. Scott, more than any other commander on the Canadian front, managed to shape an army of militiamen and regulars into an effective fighting force. A measure of the success of his efforts may be seen by looking at the first and last battles on the Niagara Frontier, the stretch of land connecting Lake Erie to Lake Ontario and separating the United States from British North America.

In October, 1812, shortly after gaining the rank of lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, Scott participated in the Battle of Queenstown on the west bank of the Niagara River. The attack was a disaster for the Americans, as a large body of American militia refused to cross the river, claiming that their mission included only defense of New York and not the invasion of Canada. Scott’s party, outnumbered and badly outfought, was captured by the British, and the young Virginian had to spend an enforced stretch in British captivity until he could be exchanged.

During the summer campaign of 1813 on the lakes, Scott distinguished himself by leading a successful assault on the British Fort George on the Niagara River and, later, by aiding in the burning of York (modern Toronto). The next spring—May, 1814—Scott was promoted to brigadier general and was given responsibility for training the men under the command of General Henry Dearborn for a campaign to clear the Niagara Frontier of British forces.

In July, Scott led American troops, both regulars and state militiamen, in the fierce Battles of Chippewa (opposite Buffalo) and Lundy’s Lane (near Niagara Falls). The latter battle was perhaps the bloodiest of the war, with four hundred killed on both sides. The effect of the July fighting was to establish American control of the Niagara region and to show that Americans could stand up to British veterans who had fought successfully against Napoleon. At Lundy’s Lane, Scott himself showed extraordinary personal courage: He had several horses shot from under him and was hit twice by bullets, in the ribs and shoulder. He spent a month recovering in Buffalo before journeying to Philadelphia for further treatment, and at war’s end Major General Scott was still recovering from his wounds.

In 1816, Scott journeyed to Europe not so much to sightsee as to interview veterans of the Napoleonic Wars. He came back filled with new ideas about how to train and lead a new American army and over the next thirty years put his ideas into practice. In 1817, he was called to New York City to head the Eastern Military District, a command he held until 1831. During these years, the general devoted himself to improving the training of troops, an effort that first saw print in his 1821 publication General Regulations for the Army: Or, Military Institutes . This writing consisted of rules for camp life and drill and reflected Scott’s experiences in the War of 1812 and his European interviews. He later amplified his ideas on the use of the foot soldier in his Infantry Tactics (1835), a manual used by the army until the Civil War.

The 1830’s were an extraordinarily busy time for the middle-aged Scott. He did more hard riding during this decade than any other. In the summer of 1832, President Jackson ordered him to take a regiment west to help in the suppression of the Sac rebellion led by Black Hawk. This was only one of a series of wars between Native Americans and white Americans prompted by Jackson’s “removal” policy. The Sacs were defeated by Illinois and Wisconsin militiamen before Scott reached the Upper Mississippi country. The regiment was devastated by a cholera epidemic. Scott remained long enough to negotiate Black Hawk’s surrender and the removal of the Indians west of the Mississippi. Next, the general traveled to Charleston, South Carolina, on a confidential mission for the president to survey the state of federal installations in the city and harbor in light of the threats made by the “nullifiers” in the Palmetto State. Scott made sure the hotheads in South Carolina knew that the federal government stood prepared to defend its property and the right to collect tariff duties.

After the successful defusing of the tariff showdown, Scott’s next field assignment came in early 1836, when President Jackson sent him to Florida to put down the Seminole rebellion (again in response to Jackson’s removal policy) led by Osceola. After six months with little success against the Indians, Scott was recalled to Washington and there faced a “court of inquiry” about his conduct in prosecuting the Florida war. Scott was enraged at this insult from the president but still managed to convince the court that his strategy of fortifying outposts in the swamps to launch small raids against the Indians was preferable to marching columns of hundreds of men back and forth in search of the Indians. The court cleared Scott of any malfeasance, and in the end, his strategy of counterguerrilla warfare against the Seminoles proved successful.

Almost as soon as the Washington charges were settled, Scott had to deal with a series of frontier crises. First, in January, 1838, he traveled to Buffalo to prevent the smuggling of American arms to Canada after the famous Caroline Affair. His apt diplomacy, surprising to some in a military man, helped ease a potential causus belli between the United States and Great Britain. Then, in May, Scott traveled to Tennessee to organize the army’s handling of the removal of fifteen thousand Cherokees westward to the trans-Mississippi Indian Territory. Again, the army was needed to enforce a Jackson removal treaty, but the results were especially horrible as thousands of Indians suffered on what became known as the Trail of Tears . By the time the march was actually under way, however, Scott was otherwise engaged in more frontier diplomacy, this time at Detroit, where he sought to prevent a new border skirmish between the Americans and the British across the river.

With that task accomplished, the general ventured in winter across the northern United States to the Maine-New Brunswick border to prevent yet another border flare-up from exploding into war, this time in March, 1839, the so-called Aroostook War over the proper boundary along the St. John’s River. While Scott was engaged in his journeys for peace, leaders of the Whig Party mentioned his name as a candidate to run for the presidency in 1840. Though he never became president, Winfield Scott hoped for the next twenty years to achieve that goal, and in 1852 he did get the Whig nomination but failed to convince the electorate.

In 1841, Scott finally became the senior officer in the United States Army and alternated his attention between military affairs and his political ambitions. His job was made harder in 1845 when a Democratic administration, hostile to Scott, came into office determined to engage in a war with Mexico. Scott was thought too old to command in the field the American detachment sent to acquire the Rio Grande territory in 1845 and 1846, and when this force did provoke a war, Scott’s subordinate Zachary Taylor earned the glory at Monterrey and Buena Vista. President Polk found winning a peace harder than winning battles, however, and during the late fall of 1846 had to turn to Scott to lead a campaign to bring the Mexicans to surrender.

From March through September of 1847, Scott led one of the most brilliant campaigns in the history of the United States Army. Against a larger enemy fighting to defend its own capital, Scott captured Mexico City despite disease, despite the forces of Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna , and despite the sniping of various Democratic politicians (one of whom was on his staff by presidential order). The campaign began at Veracruz with an amphibious landing, the first such coordination between the army and navy in United States history. Scott laid siege to Veracruz for a week, bombarding the city daily and earning a reputation among the Mexicans as a barbarian because of the hundreds of women and children killed in the shelling.

Scott then began his march to Mexico City, first defeating the Mexican Army at the mountain heights of Cerro Gordo, where the enemy had hoped to bottle up the Americans. From April 19, 1847, through mid-May of the same year, Scott and his army advanced along the National Road toward Mexico City. When he got within fighting distance, the Mexicans asked to begin peace negotiations. Scott’s army had decreased to five thousand men because of disease, and he used the summer months of negotiation to rebuild his army to fourteen thousand well-drilled men.

In August, when negotiations collapsed, Scott made his famous daring march south along Lake Chalco and flanked the Mexican forces, attacking Mexico City by the back door along the road from Acapulco. On August 20, Scott’s men captured the mountain pass at Cherabusco, just four miles south of the capital. Again, the Mexicans asked to negotiate, and again the talks led nowhere. From September 8 through September 13, Scott carried out a series of feints against the Mexican forces and, at the climactic battle of Chapultepec, stormed into the city. His smaller army defeated the Mexican army of thirty thousand men.

The peace that followed was anticlimactic, and Scott became embroiled in charges and countercharges with Democratic officers in the army and politicians back in Washington. Although he was the acknowledged conqueror of Mexico, he was not universally seen as a hero, and he had to watch the junior Zachary Taylor receive the Whig nomination for the presidency in 1848. The difference in popular estimation between the two generals may be seen in their nicknames: Taylor was “Old Rough and Ready,” Scott “Old Fuss and Feathers.”

When Scott did finally run for the presidency in 1852, his opponent (and former subordinate in Mexico) Franklin Pierce trounced him, mainly because Scott’s Whig Party had self-destructed over a number of issues. Scott was honored for his services in 1853 and became lieutenant general of the army, a post he held until his retirement in October, 1861. He distinguished himself when the Civil War broke out, first by not succumbing to rebel blandishments to join the Confederacy and second by devising a plan that ultimately was carried out in defeating the rebels, the so-called Anaconda Plan. The plan bore that name because Scott envisioned a slow, squeezing attack against the South, first down the Mississippi, then a gradual frontal attack in Virginia, combined with a naval blockade to cut off the South’s commerce. The strategy worked, though at a terrible cost that Scott could not foresee: 600,000 died. The old man spent much of the war working on his memoirs and, when he felt the end near, asked to be carried to West Point so that he could die at the Military Academy. Scott’s death came on May 29, 1866.

Significance

Winfield Scott came into the army when it was a tiny force and the nation was still a small, self-conscious republic; when he left the United States Army, it was on the verge of becoming the army of the “Coming of the Lord,” the Union Army of two million soldiers that destroyed slavery and the rebel republic. The problem with which he wrestled as a military man was the same on the Niagara Frontier as in Mexico and would be, too, for the Union Army at the Battle of Bull Run: how to take an army of raw volunteers and make them an army capable of fighting European regulars. In other words, how could one ask amateurs to kill and be killed? This was a task at which George Washington had failed until the last year of the revolution, and it is to Scott’s credit that he succeeded in 1814 and in 1847.

Most European observers had expected the Mexicans to win the war in 1846 precisely because Mexico had an army trained by Europeans and the Americans were still the same amalgamation of volunteers and militia that had performed so poorly in the War of 1812. Scott’s solution to the problem of how to make obedient but innovative soldiers out of the manpower of a democratic society was to emphasize drill as well as humane treatment. During his commands after 1817, he sought to make the life of the common soldier more comfortable and less harsh, on the theory that men fought better when not brutalized by their own officers. The outcome at Lundy’s Lane and Chapultepec shows that Scott indeed did adjust the hierarchical organization of military life to the democracy of the new republic.

Bibliography

Bauer, Jack K. The Mexican War: 1846-1848. New York: Macmillan, 1974. This volume in the Wars of the United States series is useful for those interested in Scott as a strategist. It contains a good account of the Veracruz to Mexico City campaign, along with fine maps.

Eisenhower, John S. D. Agent of Destiny: The Life and Times of General Winfield Scott. New York: Free Press, 1997. Eisenhower, a military historian (and son of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower), provides a detailed account of Scott’s military actions and the politics behind them. He portrays Scott as a courageous soldier and skilled military manager whose character was marred by ambition and vanity.

Johannsen, Robert. To the Halls of Montezuma: The Mexican War in the American Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Discusses how contemporaries saw the Mexican War and is especially perceptive about why Zachary Taylor became a hero and Scott did not.

Mahon, John K. The War of 1812. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1972. Gives Scott his due as part of the new generation of commanders who emerged in 1813. Helpful maps show the battles along the Niagara Frontier.

Peskin, Allan. Winfield Scott and the Profession of Arms. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2003. Comprehensive biography portraying Scott as a visionary military manager who anticipated significant changes in technology and business principles and adapted U.S. Army practices in response to these changes.

Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis: 1848-1861. New York: Harper and Row, 1976. This political history of the coming of the Civil War treats Scott’s election campaign of 1852 in the context of the breakup of the Whig Party. The author finds Scott a better general than a politician.

Scott, Winfield M. Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott. 2 vols. New York: Sheldon, 1864. This is the essential starting point for Scott students. It is long-winded and touchy about points of honor, but Scott does get the final say against his critics. Scott’s Memoirs are thin with regard to the subject’s political career, emphasizing instead his military exploits.

Weigley, Russell F. History of the United States Army. New York: Macmillan, 1967. The author evaluates Scott both as a strategist in war and as a molder of the army. He sees Scott as an excessively vainglorious man, but still the builder of the professional officer corps.