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Last fall, a fine article by Steven Malanga in City Journal observed that, “even in
the city that once worshipped him [New York], few signs of [Winfield] Scott’s
long residence remain.”
As I discovered on a
trip to Washington in November, when I snapped this photo of this statue of General Winfield Scott, not every
American city had neglected this great 19th-century general. But I
think that “Old Fuss ‘n’ Feathers” would still feel aggrieved about his place
in the capital and our nation’s memory, scowling as he asks from his perch atop
the equestrian statue in the circle named for him:
*"How could you place
my statue near Daniel Webster, who got in the way when I wanted the Whig
nomination for President?”
*"You know how I hated
compromise, so why did you satisfy my family with this stallion I’m sitting on
rather than my favorite mare?”
*“Why did you stick me
at one of the worst traffic circles in DC? No wonder nobody wants to stop and
look at me—pedestrians are terrified about being run over! (And, to tell the
truth, all those loud machines frighten me worse than the British, Indians and
Mexicans ever did!”)
Scott was the most
significant—and most successful—American soldier to serve in the half-century
before the Civil War. Indeed, through his extensive teaching at West Point, his
training (he wrote a pioneering code of conduct, regulations and organization for the
army), and his mentoring to talented junior officers who would command Union
and Confederate forces in the Civil War, he has a fair claim to being most
responsible for the rise of the U.S. Army as a professional unit.
For all his talent and
valor, Scott has been overlooked. Part of the reason is that his most
significant service was in the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War, conflicts
deeply controversial in their own time and overshadowed today by questions of
overreach and imperialism.
But you can find clues
to Scott’s relative neglect even in the statue built by sculptor Henry Kirke Brown to atone for that error. There’s that resplendent
lieutenant general’s outfit, for instance—a reminder that just about the first
thing Scott did after receiving his commission in the army was to run out and
buy a shiny uniform.
We have here a haughty,
vainglorious guy, then—someone who, especially early in his career, got in
trouble for shooting his mouth off about what a sorry lot his superiors were.
What was so
infuriating to those who preferred him to be humbled was how often he turned
out to be right:
* In 1810, he was
court-martialed and suspended for a year because of derogatory remarks about
Gen. James Wilkinson (being a "liar and a scoundrel" was the least of them, evidently). During the War of 1812, though, Wilkinson was relieved of command
because of his mismanagement—and after his death, Spanish archives revealed
that he was a paid agent of that government and a traitor to the U.S..
*In the
Mexican-American War, Scott plunged so deeply into enemy territory that he
decided to cut off from his supply line, living off the land. The strategy
would be copied and used successfully in the Civil War by Ulysses S. Grant in
the Vicksburg campaign and by William T. Sherman in his “March to the Sea.”
*By the start of the
Civil War, the 75-year-old Scott, overweight and weary, resigned, then watched
in disgust as successor George B. McClellan ignored his “Anaconda Plan” for
destroying the Confederacy. It took three years and a few more commanders of
the Army of the Potomac before Grant implemented this strategy of splitting the
Confederacy through blockading Southern ports and coordinated troop movements
that would prevent reinforcement of key enemy armies.
The next time you go
near this downtown DC roundabout, then, make sure you salute smartly in the
direction of this equestrian statue and exclaim, “Great Scott!”
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