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An Old Warhorse

www.sonofthesouth.net

Originally aired on May 22, 1998 - In part 195 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles the career of Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott, the nation’s foremost military hero since George Washington. His military ideas would eventually win victory for the North.

#195 – General Winfield Scott

When civil war came, he was 74 years old. He held the rank of lieutenant general which only George Washington had worn. The hero of two wars he was by 1861 so fat and infirm that he could not mount a horse to inspect soldiers, much less lead them into battle. His great reputation and his stout old heart were all that he could place at the government’s disposal.

Civil War historians are quick to dismiss General Winfield Scott as a useless fossil. But there was a great deal more to the man in his contributions in that war. Scott was born in 1786 on a farm near Petersburg. In 1808, President Thomas Jefferson appointed him to the army. Scott was the hero of the Canadian campaign in the War of 1812. He became general in chief of the armies in 1841 and was the architect of American victory in the Mexican War. In 1852, he was the Whig candidate for President of the United States.     

The firing on Fort Sumter was the third war for Scott. When asked to cast his lot with Virginia, the general thundered, “I have served my country for more than fifty years so long as God permits me to live I will defend that flag with my sword even if my native state assails it”. These high sounding sentiments came from an incapacitated source. By 1861, Scott was Washington’s most imposing monument. A magnificent mountain of a man eroded and crumbling with age.

He stood almost six feet five inches tall. Yet he could not walk even a short distance without effort. Age, infirmity, and an epicurean appetite had ballooned his massive frame to somewhere beyond three hundred pounds. His attention span was thin. After a one hour conference with anyone, including the President, Scott slipped into deep sleep. Only his vanity was equal to his reputation as the nation’s foremost hero since the sainted George Washington.

New Union generals dismissed Scott as a swollen and grotesque caricature of a soldier. Yet the old man still had a clear eye for war and in the opening weeks of the conflict he developed a military plan for ultimate Northern victory. “The Confederacy,” he said, “could not be defeated in quick or piecemeal fashion”. A step by step process was needed. The Navy would blockade the entire southern coast. Army units and naval vessels would ride down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. Other Union forces would mass all along the northern border of the Confederacy. With the South sealed off Scott proposed to have northern armies wait for the Confederacy to die of suffocation.  

The Virginian in Scott caused him to still cherish the illusion that his southern brethren would come to their senses if the North acted firmly, but with restraint. When Scott’s proposal leaked out, military secrets at that time were no more sacred than political secrets are today, the public heaped contempt on the general. Newspapers labeled Scott’s thinking “the anaconda plan”. Something about the picture of a huge snake slowly constricting the life out of an enemy struck many patriots as ridiculous. There was no dash to it. Nothing to stir the pulses. Besides such a plan would take too long in a war that one battle would surely decide.

So Scott’s plan was shelved and in late 1861, the old soldier retired from the army. However, his successor, U. S. Grant, resurrected and implemented that strategy in 1864. It was Scott’s ideas and Grant’s persistence that eventually won the Civil War for the North.

Winfield Scott died in May, 1866. The Union he loved was then permanent. By his wish he was buried in the Post Cemetery at West Point. A school Scott always wished he could have attended.