Winfield Scott

Winfield Scott was a United States Army general whose exceptionally long career stretched from the War of 1812 to the opening of the American Civil War. He became the army’s senior professional officer and won particular fame for the campaign from Veracruz to Mexico City during the Mexican–American War.

Scott served as commanding general of the U.S. Army for two decades and ran unsuccessfully for president as the Whig candidate in 1852. In 1861 he proposed the broad Union strategy later nicknamed the Anaconda Plan before age and ill health forced his retirement.

In Jeff Shaara’s Gone for Soldiers, in 1847, Winfield Scott lands an American army at Veracruz and begins an inland campaign towards Mexico City. In Robert Shea’s Shaman, Historical figures including Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor and Jefferson Davis enter the narrative, but the novel remains centred on Sauk families facing hunger, flight and the destruction of their homeland.