Winfield Scott wore the uniform for more than half a century1, longer than any other American general, spanning the War of 1812 to the Civil War. He captured Mexico City in a campaign studied for its daring, and in 1861, old and infirm, he sketched the grand strategy that would ultimately strangle the Confederacy.
The War of 1812 and after
Born in Virginia in 17861, Scott became a hero of the War of 1812, distinguished in hard-fought battles on the Niagara frontier. Over the following decades he professionalised the army, wrote its drill manuals2, and earned the nickname 'Old Fuss and Feathers'1 for his insistence on discipline and ceremony.
Major General Winfield Scott in an engraving by David Edwin after Joseph Wood, published in 1814 when the War of 1812 made him a national hero. Public domain
The march on Mexico City
In the Mexican-American War, Scott led a bold campaign in 1847, landing at3Veracruz and driving inland against larger forces to capture Mexico City. The operation, cutting loose from his supply base deep in enemy country, was later reportedly praised by military thinkers, including the3Duke of Wellington, as a model of its kind.
Map of the siege of Vera Cruz by Scott's army in March 1847, drawn from surveys by his engineers, among them George McClellan and Joseph Johnston. Public domain
The Anaconda Plan
By 1861 Scott was aged and could barely mount a horse, but as general-in-chief at the outbreak of the Civil War he proposed the strategy the press mocked as the 'Anaconda Plan': blockade the Southern coast and seize the Mississippi4 to squeeze the Confederacy slowly to defeat. Derided at first, it foreshadowed how the war would actually be won. He retired that year and died in 1866.1
Scott's Great Snake, a cartoon map by J. B. Elliott published in 1861, shows a serpent coiled around the Confederacy along the coast and the Mississippi. Public domain
Sources and notes
Numbered notes in the text point to the works below.
He was a US Army general (1786 to 1866) who served for half a century, from the War of 1812 to the start of the Civil War.
What is Winfield Scott famous for?
For his victorious 1847 campaign that captured Mexico City, and for devising the Anaconda Plan at the outbreak of the Civil War.
What was the Anaconda Plan?
Scott's strategy to defeat the Confederacy by blockading its coasts and taking the Mississippi, slowly cutting it off, as an anaconda constricts its prey.
Why was Scott called 'Old Fuss and Feathers'?
For his strict insistence on discipline, drill and military ceremony.
Did Winfield Scott run for president?
Yes. He was the Whig candidate in the 1852 presidential election5, which he lost.
Strangle the Confederacy with the Anaconda
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