Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.2 | The History Cooperative

Winfield Scott: The Quest for Military Glory. By Timothy D. Johnson. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. xii, 315 pp. $35.00, isbn 0-7006-0914-8.)

Winfield Scott entered the United States Army in 1808 and served for fifty-three years, including forty-seven as a general officer. It is unlikely that any other American soldier ever wielded as much influence for such a long time, and Timothy D. Johnson has written a very good book describing Scott's life and times. 1

"Certainly no other officer in the army," writes Johnson, "possessed his combination of ability and arrogance." Petty bickering and rivalry marked Scott's entire career. A court-martial in 1810 found Captain Scott guilty of unofficerlike conduct and suspended him for a year. Such a course of action might have convinced other men that they were not cut out for military life, but not Scott. In the field, Scott proved to be a good soldier, winning promotion to brigadier general at the age of twenty-seven during the War of 1812. During that war the lack of preparedness of many of the men under his command prodded him to institute a rigorous training regimen. This, according to Johnson, marked the birth of professionalism in the United States Army, "with Winfield Scott acting as midwife." . . .

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