Book Reviews-Great Commanders - General Scott-1894; VA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY, 1894 Transcribed by Kathy Merrill for the USGenWeb Archives Special Collections Project ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net *********************************************************************** Book Reviews Great Commanders - General Scott Marcus J. Wright William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Papers, Vol. 2, No. 4. (Apr., 1894), pp. 281-282. GREAT COMMANDERS - GENERAL SCOTT. By Gen. Marcus J. Wright. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1894. The variety and length of service of the subject of this memoir must have made the work no easy task. Gen. Wright wields an able pen and his sketch is a decided success. The book, which is a duidecimo of 350 pages, is full of interesting facts, and Gen. Wright is especially to be congratulated on the happy effect of his summaries of circumstances in which the portrait of Scott is displayed at different times to the best advantage. It may be readily conceded that, perhaps with two exceptions (Gens. Jackson and Taylor), Scott was the ablest man of his profession, before the war, in America. But this general con- cession to the merits of Gen. Scott hardly justifies the extent of Gen. Wright's euologies. Scott's life on the whole must have been a decidedly unsatisfactory one to himself. Scott figured in four wars, and none of them was he the hero. Gen. Jackson bore off the honors of the war of 1812, Gen. Worth of the war with the Seminoles, Gen. Taylor of the war with Mexico, and his resignation followed close upon the disgrace of Bull Run. Apart from his personal weakness - his admitted vanity and prejudices - there are some things in his conduct not at all creditable to him as a soldier, e.g., his playing sick in order to spy out the movements of the nullifiers (61-64), his refusing to grant the request of the foreign con- suls for time to permit the neutrals and women and children to withdraw from Vera Cruz in 1847 (page 169), his levying money on the city of Mexico for the support of his army and running the Mexican revenues, and his weakness in noticing anonymous letters by which he provoked the quarrel with Gen. Worth. Nothing is more melancholy than Scott's last days. He was physically disabled for three years, according to his own statement, and yet held on to his honors as commander-in-chief till he was actually ignored into resignation by McClellan and Lincoln. The former paid no attention to his orders, and the President's praise, when accepting his resignation was cheaply given after studious failure to call McClellan to account. In addition, Scott could not help feeling that he was suspected by his Northern friends as a Virginian born, and that he had incurred the hatred of all his kin in Virginia for arraying himself with the enemies of his State, many of whom were filled with the resentments of generations. Turning from Scott to the author, it may be objected that in some of his accounts Gen. Wright has failed to give the full historic significance. I specify the tariff and Texas measures. It is true that the Southern States disapproved of nullification, and that even in South Carolina there was an anti-nullification party. But on the subject of the tariff and coercion there was but one sentiment throughout the South. A blow struck in 1833 and the whole South would have flown to arms, as it did in 1861. The issue would not have been doubtful at that time, even though a far more able President than Lincoln sat in the chair. Two things would have offsetted this disadvantage, the imperfect means of communication then existing, and the population of the sections, which was not so vastly disproprotionate as in 1861. General Wright follows Benton in his account of the circumstances leading Page 282. to the Mexican war. It was Benton's plan and the plan of the Abolitionists to make Calhoun, as the ultra slave-owner, responsible for the Mexican war. But Calhoun offered no resolutions in 1836, as General Wright says he did, and he afterwards denied that he took a leading part in the discussion about Texas at that time. Negotiations were already pending for Texas when Gilmer wrote his letter in 1842-'43. Gilmer did not correspond with Calhoun until late in the year 1843. Gilmer was not "the particular friend of Calhoun", but one of the "corporal's guard" of President Tyler, and later his Secretary of the Navy. The negotiations were kept strictly secret, and Calhoun knew nothing about them till he became Secretary of State. Brown sent Gilmer's letter to Jackson and received one in reply, but Jackson had always been in favor of annexation, and was not trapped into approval as alleged. Long before his letter was published he had written numerous other letters to the President and to members of Congress, emphatically in favor of the rumored policy of annexation. The letter to Gilmer did not appear first in the Enquirer, as Benton alleges, but in the National Intelligencer, which had already announced the fact of the treaty. Calhoun ex- pressly stated that he though the moment "very unpropitious for annexation", and that "he strongly protested against accepting office" under Mr. Tyler. After the defeat of the treaty in the Senate he advised that no further efforts be made. [See on the Texas question, Calhoun's Speeches, IV., 333, 369; Yoakum's Texas, II., page 423, note; 425; Letters and Times of the Tylers, II.; Anson Jones's Official Correspondence.]