General Scott

Winfield Scott rose from a fractious Virginia boyhood to become the most celebrated American soldier of his generation, a man who commanded armies in the War of 1812, led the Mexican-American War, and became the model for the modern U.S. Army. This late-19th-century biography by Marcus J. Wright, himself a former Confederate officer, traces Scott's improbable ascent from court-martialed young lieutenant to general-in-chief of the United States Army. The text captures a vanished era of military politics, where a man's career could be destroyed by a single blunder or elevated by powerful patrons. Wright paints Scott as a figure of relentless self-improvement, a writer of manuals and a student of strategy who transformed himself from an awkward, ambitious youth into 'Old Fuss and Feathers,' the dignified commander who dominated American military life for half a century. For readers interested in how the American military was forged in its early republic years, this volume offers a window into the personalities, conflicts, and ambitions that shaped the nation's martial traditions.