last published letter to the Secretary of War: "The apparent determination of the Department to place me in an attitude antagonistical to the Government, has an apt illustration in the well-known fable of Esop. But I ask no favor, and shrink from no responsibility. While intrusted with the command in this quarter, I shall continue to devote all my energies to the public good, looking for my reward to the consciousness of pure motives, and the final verdict of impartial history." What a pregnant sketch is this-what a graphic limning of the character of the Administration, in two lines! Here is an old soldier of the Republic, covered all over with the glory of his achievements and victories, who is forced to declare, in substance, that at the end of his arduous and eminent services, the Administration has turned upon him with a deliberate purpose of fastening on him a groundless quarrel. the globe, when our own beloved country is spoken of, and designed to be named with distinguished honor, it is called THE COUNTRY OF WASHINGTON. Without its great names no country is great, or even respectable. Greece, and Rome, and Italy, are immortal on account of the immortal names that lived in those countries and illustrated their history. Among the names of real and undying renown-comparatively few in number as yet-belonging to this country to be mentioned with respect and admiration wherever we are known, and wherever we shall be known in coming times, is undoubtedly that of WINFIELD SCOTT. We do not think it too much to say that no living American citizen, now that the campaign of 1847 in Mexico is closed, has done as much to give lustre and worldwide renown to the name of his country as General Scott. Taylor, we know, has done much, and other eminent citizens have had their share in different ways, in illustrating its history. Among the most eminent of these is HENRY CLAY. And there is one citizen in particular, whose name, in a sphere less dazzling and brilliant than that of Scott, but of quite as much solid worth and advantage, more than those of all our other living statesmen together, (as Burke said of Chatham, in reference to England,) "keeps the name of this country respectable in every other on the globe." We refer, of course, to DANIEL WEBSTER. By the side of Webster, we place Scott, though mainly distinguished in another field of glory, as one who, from this time forward, is to keep the name of his country respectable, and give it lustre and renown, wherever its name is or shall be known in the world. His fame is the property and birthright of his countrymen, and is and will be dear to every American who loves his country, and his country's honor. It is this man whose characterthe men of the present Ad ministration have shown themselves incapable of But it is our purpose to devote this article to some exposition-such as our limits will allow-of the treatment which General Scott has received at the hands of the Administration. Nothing more unjustifiable, and, to say truly what we think and feel, nothing more atrocious, in the same line, ever marked the conduct of any government. General Scott was a marked character in this country before the Mexican war. He had rendered great and distinguished services to the country. He had shown the truest devotion to its great interests, its honor, and its renown, and he had served the country with very striking ability, both in civil and military employment. And now in this Mexican war, in a single campaign, he has placed his name on the same roll of immortal fame with the highest military geniuses of the world; inferior to none in those grand qualities which constitute a great Commander so far as he has had opportunity to display these qualities, and superior to most, if not to all, in the grander virtues of a considerate, humane and Christian Warrior. The truly great men of a country are the best property it possesses, or can possess. Their renown constitutes its re-object of their jealousy and their malevonown; their fame is its fame. In the names of its great men the country lives, and becomes known and honored in the world. At this day, in every quarter of appreciating, and whose fame-the rich property of the country-has only attracted their attention to make him the lence. This is the Eagle hawked at by the mousing owls. After a long course of sinister and unmanly dealings with him, their rage has finally broken over all bounds of prudence, and vented itself in an open and undisguised effort to crush him at a blow. Personally absent from the country, a state prisoner at large in the proud capital of Mexico, conquered and captured under his lead, the Secretary of War takes this occasion to draw the well-earned reputation of the brave and gallant soldier within his rough embrace, to see if he cannot, after the manner in which the relentless Bruin treats his victim, at one rude hug, squeeze the vital breath out of it. Under the plausible pretence and pretext of defending himself and the President against the complaints of General Scott, on account of their neglects and unmerited rebukes, and their failure to give him their sympathy and support, he enters on an elaborate essay, running through nine columns of closely printed matter in a newspaper, to show that Scott not only wants the qualities of an able and even a safe Commander, but lacks also those of a just and honest man. This is the real object and scope of his communication. To say that this essay is ingenious and able, is only to give Governor Marcy credit for the talent he is known to possess. To say that it is wholly destitute of generosity, candor, fair dealing, manliness, and regard for the truth of history and for justice, is only to characterize it as it deserves. That it may temporarily mar the brightness of General Scott's fame, as it was designed to do, until the public can be put in possession of all the facts, is not at all unlikely; but we have no fears for his eventual renown. Mr. Polk may have his day of power, and Governor Marcy-the only man of real ability in his cabinet-may be his chief executioner; but they will find there are some things which their official tyranny is not potent enough to reach. They may soil and smirch the reputation of General Scott, but they cannot permanently injure or obscure it. They may make Socrates drink poison, but he will be immortal in his fame in spite of them. It is impossible for us, in a single article, to review in detail the long and labored Letter of the Secretary of War of the 21st of April, to which we have referred ;— though we hope to be able, before we are through, to examine some portions of its contents, from which the character of the whole may be inferred. What we pur pose chiefly to undertake in this article, is to bring to the notice of our readers the conduct of the Administration-false, insincere, jesuitical, hollow and heartless as it has been-towards General Scott, from the commencement of the Mexican War. When the real character-the unmitigated baseness-of that conduct is once known to the country, the Secretary's Letter will then be read with no fear of danger to anybody's reputation beyond the circle of the Administration. When this war broke out, General Scott was Major-general commanding in chief the army of the United States, having his head-quarters at Washington. After the war had been carried on for six months, according to the President's ideas of prosecuting a war with vigor, and no peace or prospect of peace was secured, General Scott was called to the field. He carried the war to the capital of the enemy's country, by a series of achievements amidst difficulties and discouragements, never surpassed in any campaign in the whole history of human wars; and a treaty of peace was made-wanting, however, as yet, the ratification of the Mexican Government. When all this was done, General Scott was dismissed from the service of the country as commander of the army still in the field, in very exact accordance with his own prediction recorded in a letter to the Government, written on the 25th of July last. Detained still in Mexico by the order of the Government, he employed an early moment of leisure "to recall some of the neglects, disappointments, injuries and rebukes" which he had suffered from the Administration. This was his letter of the 24th of February, and which has been made the occasion of the Secretary's assault upon his character and fame in his elaborate paper of the 21st of April-a paper more replete with ill-disguised bitterness, with unfounded accusations, and slanderous imputations, than ever before emanated from an Executive Department of this government. General Scott's letter brought no new complaints, or none of any importance, against the Administration. The same complaints had been made before, in successive communications to the Department of War, as the events had occurred, and to which answers, and explanations, and argumentations had been offered in reply-or such explanations and argumentations (apologies and excuses in reality) had accompanied the offensive acts. The General's present letter was a summary of these complaints, in which they were brought together, and placed on record, for more easy reference. And we make bold to say, in the face of all the ingenious plausibilities of the Secretary's reply, that there is not one of these complaints that has not a substantial foundation in truth, and so it will be made to appear when the facts shall be brought to light. The Secretary's Letter in reply had not so much for its object to defend the Administration over again against these complaints, as to attempt a justification before the country, in the absence of the General, for its contemptuous dismissal of him from the command of the army in the field, by this assault on his character and conduct. We shall undertake to show how much credit for candor and honesty is due to the Administration in this attempt. The substance of the complaints of General Scott, leaving all specifications out of the case, as these complaints are clearly gathered from his recent and previous communications, was this: That the confidence, and the active, candid and steady support of the Executive Government, had not been extended to him, as had been solemnly promised when he took the field, but on the contrary, he had been subjected to neglects, mortifications, disappointments, injuries and rebukes from the Government; and that the War Department, from which he had expected better things, so far from coming to his rescue or relief in the trying circumstances in which he had been placed, had wholly failed to give him its support, or even its sympathy. This we say is the substance of the complaints preferred by General Scott, and we are prepared to maintain and show that it is true to the letter, and that much more than this is true; though it has suited the purpose of the Secretary of War, in his defence, to talk as if he was really surprised that such notions should have found a lodgment in the General's mind, and to speak of the whole thing as a delusion," "a fondlycherished chimera," and the offspring of "a mind of diseased sensibility." We wonder a little that the Secretary should 66 have dared to venture on so bold a tone of defence as this, in the face of notorious facts, familiar to him certainly, and not less so to all intelligent and observing persons in the country, and which, wherever they are known, do not fail to convict the Executive Government, not only of having sent General Scott to the field without giving him its confidence, its candid support, or its sympathy, but of having acted towards him in bad faith, and entertaining towards him feelings of opposition and enmity, and a false disposition and design to betray him, and cast him off at the earliest moment at which it might be practicable or safe to do so. The treacherous, insincere and jesuitical conduct of the Executive Government towards General Scott cannot be fully exhibited and understood, without going back to the beginning of this war. When hostilities began, there had been no preparatory augmentation of our forces in the field. An Army of Observation, soon to become an Army of Occupation, was on the frontier towards Mexico, under the command of Taylor, then a Colonel in the line, but holding a brevet commission of Brigadier. It does not admit of a doubt that the President at that period was deluding himself with the notion, that a show of force on the Rio Grande, with perhaps an unimportant brush or two with any small amount of Mexican forces gathered there, would scare the Mexican Government into almost any terms of aecommodation with. the powerful Republic of the North which he might see fit to dictate. For such a little war, Brevet Brigadier-general Taylor, who was known already to be a judicious and brave officer, was regarded as being. quite competent and sufficient. When, however, it became suddenly known at Washington that Mexico had assumed an attitude of determined resistance, and had already, by overwhelming numbers, placed Taylor and his little army in a condition of imminent hazard, a corresponding alarm was felt, and an immediate call was made upon Congress to adopt the war, and meet the exigency by authorizing the organization of a large force for the field. The act for this purpose was passed and approved on the 13th of May, 1846; and on the same day, General Scott, commanding the army in chief, by his com mission, whether that army should be great | On the first point, the letter held this very or small, was satisfied that he would be precise language :-called on to take the field in person, and to hold himself in readiness accordingly. "I fear that we shall not be able to put on the Rio Grande, with our utmost efforts, more than ten or fifteen thousand volunteers by the here, for the commencement of operations befirst of September-the best period, we learn yond, with a view to the conquest of a peace." On the other point the letter held language not less explicit and precise, to this effect: "I do not now expect to reach the Rio Grande much ahead of the heavy reinforcements alluded to above, or to assume the immediate command in that quarter before my arrival." Scott was not a man to loiter over a work like this, though he knew his business too well to rush on such an enterprise as that of a war of invasion, to be carried into a far-distant country, without some intelligent plan of operations, and some corresponding preparations. It suited the objects of the Executive Government, which had at heart the permanent conquest and acquisition of the northern and western provinces of Mexico, to lay its plans of a campaign for the invasion of these provinces by a grand army of 30,000 men, divided into three columns, and thus striking at three distinct and distant points at the same time. Scott was to command the whole, taking the immediate head of the most formidable column, that which should enter the enemy's country by way of the lower Rio Grande. In repeated in-organized and ready for operations, before terviews between him and the President and Secretary of War, this plan of operations was discussed and adopted. Let it be carefully observed that it was to the command of a new army in the field of 30,000 men, to be employed in a definite campaign, according to a definite plan of operations, that General Scott was to be assigned. The President and Secretary both knew that he would hold it to be un generous and unjust to Taylor to supersede him in his command of the small force with which he had entered the field. When a new army was raised, and a regular campaign was to be entered upon, Scott was ready to take the field. All this was very particularly explained to General Taylor, in a letter from General Scott, dated the 18th of May, which passed twice under the eye of the Secretary, and had his special approval before it was dispatched. And two things are to be particularly noted in this letter, as showing how exactly the main points in the arrangement between the General and the Executive Government were understood and agreed upon. One of these points was the time when the new army, or the principal column, could be placed on the Rio Grande; the other was the time when General Scott should appear there to supersede Taylor by assuming the command. On the 18th of May, then, it was perfectly understood by the President and Secretary, that the new army for the Rio Grande could not probably be placed there, the 1st of September, and that it was not worth the while for General Scott to be there to assume the command much in advance of the new army. In the mean time, they knew very well that he was not idle or unemployed, and that his proper position, the place where he could be most efficient, as Commander-in-chief, in setting on foot and urging forward the necessary preparations and operations for the coming campaign, was his head-quarters at Washington. This is referred to, and briefly sketched, in one of his letters : - "From that moment [when he was told to hold himself in readiness for this service] I have occupied myself incessantly with the vast preliminary arrangements, which can only be made advantageously at this place, through the respective chiefs of the general staff--the Adjutant General, Quartermaster General, Commissary General of Subsistence, Chief of Ordmuch occupied also in the distribution of the nance, and Surgeon General. I have been quotas of volunteers needed among the several States; in apportioning the horse to the foot; in the study of the routes of march and water conveyances for the several bodies of troops to the best points on the frontiers of Mexico; in the study of the northern, interior, and the Southern routes of that Republic; in looking at the means of transportation on the Rio Grande, and to and beyond that river; in determining the dépôts of supplies of all sorts on this side, &c. &c. As these matters are respective ly settled, orders and instructions have been, and will be, given to the Chiefs of the general staff at this place, and the routes of march and water conveyances, together with the dépôts of supplies of every description, are finally to be communicated to the unknown commanders of volunteers whose services are to be accepted." This sketch is sufficient to show, though very imperfectly and faintly, how General Scott was occupied at Washington, and how necessary it was that he should continue on the spot until all these preliminary arrangements were completed, and the necessary orders under them given; and both the fact of his incessant occupation, and the necessity of his continued presence at Washington, was as well known to the President and Secretary, as to the General himself. Their interviews and discussions had been frequent, frank, and so far as he was concerned, without reserve. Everything in fact, at Washington, in reference to the projected movement and campaign, was going on under his immediate counsel and direction. Neither Mr. Polk, though the constitutional head of the army, nor the Secretary of War, knew the first letters of the alphabet of military science. Neither of them had the slightest acquaintance with the first necessary practical steps, in detail, to be taken to bring the new army into the field, with the necessary supplies of all descriptions, for active operations. They depended upon General Scott, the real Commander-in-chief, and who was on the spot for suggestions and advice in every material step that was to be taken. The labors in which he was actually engaged, with their knowledge and approbation, show conclusively that he was the soul and the centre of all the preliminary arrangements, and practically, of everything that was projected and done to set this campaign in motion. In this state of things, it may well be supposed that it created not a little sur prise on the part of General Scott, when he was told on the evening of the 20th of May, by the Secretary of War, that much impatience was felt at his occupations and delay at Washington. He understood, and it has never been denied, that this impatience was felt, or pretended to be felt, both by the President and the Secretary. We have seen what occurred on the 18th, only two days before, when a record was made of the facts, perfectly well understood, and acquiesced in by all concerned, that the army was not expected to be placed on the Rio Grande in force before about the 1st of September, and that the General was not to be there much in advance of the troops. Personal interviews had been held in the mean time, and it was perfectly well known how effectively and indispensably General Scott was employed at Washington. What, then, was the meaning of this sudden notification of the displeasure of the President and Secretary, because he had not already taken his departure for the Mexican frontier? It was significant certainly, and indicated a great deal more than was expressed. The circumstances and the manner in which the notification was conveyed to the General, made it a rebuke, and it was intended that he should receive and feel it as such. It was saying to General Scott, We, your superiors, have come to the conclusion, that you are committing a fault by delaying to take the field. They knew very well in their souls, at the same time, that he was committing no fault, but was actually rendering the Government, with their own express approval, the best service, in the best place, and in the best way; and they knew that he could not fail to feel this charge as an indignity and an insult. They expected one of two things to happen from it for we have not a doubt that the next resolution of the President, already taken when this rebuke was prepared for General Scott, was to withdraw upon some pretext or other, if he could safely do so, his offer and promise to send him to the field: they expected, either that he would promptly and peremptorily decline this service after such a proof of the treatment he might expect to receive from them when in the field, or that, with the frankness of a soldier, apt to be "sudden and quick in quarrel," giving utterance to his honest indignation at a gross insult and injury, he would commit himself to some expressions, of which, by the aid of the cool, calculating ingenuity of the Secretary, the President might avail himself, as an apology for his change of purpose in regard to the command of the army. The plot succeeded— being exactly such a one as suited the low, characteristic cunning of the President. Early the next morning, the 21st, the |