Winfield Scott

Scott was born near Petersburg, Virginia, in 1786. After training as a lawyer and brief militia service, he joined the army in 1808 as a captain of the light artillery. In the War of 1812, Scott served on the Canadian front, taking part in the Battle of Queenston Heights and the Battle of Fort George, and was promoted to brigadier general in early 1814. He served with distinction in the Battle of Chippawa, but was badly wounded in the subsequent Battle of Lundy's Lane. After the conclusion of the war, Scott was assigned to command army forces in a district containing much of the Northeastern United States, and he and his family made their home near New York City. During the 1830s, Scott negotiated an end to the Black Hawk War, took part in the Second Seminole War and the Creek War of 1836, and presided over the forced removal of the Cherokee. Scott also helped to avert war with Great Britain, defusing tensions arising from the Patriot War and the Aroostook War.


In 1841, Scott became the Commanding General of the United States Army, beating out his rival Edmund P. Gaines for the position. After the outbreak of the Mexican–American War in 1846, Scott was relegated to an administrative role, but in 1847 he led a campaign against the Mexican capital of Mexico City. After capturing the port city of Veracruz, he defeated Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna's armies at the Battles of Cerro Gordo, Contreras, and Churubusco. He then captured Mexico City, after which he maintained order in the Mexican capital and indirectly helped envoy Nicholas Trist negotiate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which brought an end to the war.


Scott unsuccessfully sought the Whig presidential nomination three times, in 1840, 1844, and 1848. He finally won it in 1852, when the party was already dying off. The Whigs were badly divided over the Compromise of 1850, and Franklin Pierce won a decisive victory over his former commander. Nonetheless, Scott remained popular among the public, and in 1855 he received a brevet promotion to the rank of lieutenant general, becoming the first U.S. Army officer to hold that rank since George Washington. In 1859 he peacefully solved the conflict of the Pig War, ending the last in a long series of British-American border conflicts. Despite being a Virginia native, Scott stayed loyal to the Union when the Civil War broke out and served as an important adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the opening stages of the war. He developed a strategy known as the Anaconda Plan, but retired in late 1861 after Lincoln increasingly relied on General George B. McClellan for military advice and leadership. In retirement, he lived in West Point, New York, where he died on May 29, 1866. Scott's military talent was highly regarded by contemporaries, and historians generally consider him to be one of the most accomplished generals in U.S. history.

In March 1817, Scott married Maria DeHart Mayo (1789–1862).^[63] She was the daughter of Abigail (née DeHart) Mayo and Colonel John Mayo, a wealthy engineer and businessman who came from a distinguished family in Virginia.^[64] Scott and his family lived in Elizabethtown, New Jersey for most of the next thirty years.^[65] Beginning in the late 1830s, Maria spent much of her time in Europe because of a bronchial condition, and she died in Rome in 1862.^[66] They were the parents of seven children, five daughters and two sons:^[67][68]