Fort Scott, Kansas

“ In 1887, 4565 miles of railway were added to the facilities of Kansas City, stretching out in every direction. The development of one is notable as peculiar and far-sighted, the Fort Scott and Gulf, which is grasping the East as well as the South-west; turning eastward from Fort Scott, it already reaches the iron industries of Birmingham, pushes on to Atlanta, and seeks the seaboard. ”

“ Nobody ever seed Jimmy Scott arterwards but they found his floatin sticks here, and gin this the name o' Scott's Bluffs."
The next day, long before sundown, we came in sight of Fort Laramie, where it was the intention of Huntly and mystlf to spend a few days, to refresh ourselves and rest our animals, before attempting the perilous journey of the mountains. On our whole route, from the moment we crossed Kansas river, we had not befn gladdened by the sight of a single white man but ourselves ”

“ When Blunt took command of the Department of Kansas, Colonel Frederick Salomon286 of the Ninth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry was in charge at Fort Scott and the troops there or reporting there were, besides eight companies of his own regiment, a part of the Second Ohio Cavalry under Colonel Charles Doubleday, of the Tenth Kansas Infantry under Colonel William F. Cloud, and the Second Indiana Battery.287 Blunt's first thought was to have Daubleday288 lead the Indian Expedition, the auxiliary white force of which was to be selected from the regiments at Fort Scott. ”

“ At this time General Dearborn was in command of the American forces at Fort Niagara, consisting of about five thousand men. In May, Colonel Scott, with his regiment, joined General Dearborn, and Scott became chief of staff. He first organized the service among all the staff departments, several of which were entirely new, and others disused in the United States since the Revolutionary War. On the British side of the Niagara was Fort George, situated on a peninsula and occupied by British troops. ”

“ The enemy were pursued to the village, where the Americans were re-enforced by the command of Colonel James Miller. It was learned from some prisoners that the British garrison was about to abandon Fort George and preparing to blow up the works. Two companies were dispatched toward the fort, but on nearing it one of the magazines exploded, and a piece of timber striking Colonel Scott, threw him from his horse, resulting {26}in a broken collar bone. Recovering himself, he caused the gate to be forced, entered the fort, and with his own hands pulled down the British flag. ”

“ The father was a native of Washington, D. C., born in 1860. He was reared to manhood in the vicinity of Washington and studied civil engineering in Maryland. He came to Kansas in the capacity of civil engineer on the construction of the Rock Island railroad in the eighties and while there met and married Mary E. Scott. She is a native of Doniphan county, Kansas, and is a daughter of Benjamin and Frances (Helm) Scott; the former is now deceased and the latter resides in Atchison with her daughter. The Scott family were early settlers in Kansas, locating in Doniphan county in 1857. ”

“ Price, but before Price could rally his army and reach us Lane gave up the idea of recovering his horses and went back to Fort Scott. We had one man wounded in the arm.
We all returned to camp on Little Osage and next morning broke camp and started off as usual. I did not know the plan, but when Gates' company was placed in front and led off over the same road we had traveled the day before, I knew an attack on Fort Scott was in mind. When about ten miles out we came to the top of a hill overlooking a wooded valley with a small dry creek running through it. ”

“ On the arrival of Colonel Lindsay at Fort Brooke he was directed by General Scott to relieve the garrison at Fort Alabama, and disband the Alabama volunteers, leaving only regulars there.
They were attacked by the Indians with a loss of four killed and nineteen wounded. General Scott, accompanied by Colonel Gadsden, Captain Augustus Canfield, and Lieutenant Johnson, with a detachment of seventeen men, embarked in a steamboat at Volusia for the purpose of penetrating by the St. John's River the south part of the peninsula and selecting a site nearer to the seat of war as a depot for supplies. ”

“ His supplies of ordnance were very limited, and the greater part of those on hand were unfit for use. To penetrate a country like Florida, filled with swamps, morasses, and almost impenetrable hammocks, required much preparation and labor. There was no chain of posts or settlements through the country, and the army was compelled to carry a heavy load of provisions {112}and ordnance. To increase the difficulties, heavy rains had fallen which made the roads almost impassable. General Scott arrived at Fort Drane on March 13, 1836, with a very small force. ”

“ He crossed with his regiment to Queenstown, where the American troops were at first successful, but the British troops being reinforced, the Americans were repulsed with heavy loss and Scott was taken prisoner. In the following year he was exchanged and was then appointed adjutant-general with the rank of colonel. During the same year he was wounded by an explosion of a powder magazine after the attack on Fort George. In 1814 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. On July 5th he fought and won the battle of Chippewa, and on the 25th fought in the battle of Lundy's Lane (q.v.) ”

“ There were a great many negroes among the Indians. In the band that massacred Major Dade and his command there were sixty-three of them mounted in one company. The negroes and Indians of mixed African and Indian blood were the most cruel members of the tribe.
Re-enforcements of militia were soon added to the army. The great disadvantages under which Scott labored necessarily delayed his movements until a late period. He found the quartermaster's department very deficient, and had the greatest difficulty in transporting supplies to Fort Drane. ”

“ Scott, no doubt, was sometimes mistaken in the proper course to pursue, but he was always right from his point of view, and his point of view was bitter hostility to English misrule. Whatever he did he did with all the resistless energy of a man still in his forties. He was of distinguished ancestry. His great-great-grandfather, Sir John Scott, baronet, of Ancrum, Scotland, had been a stalwart Whig before the revolution of 1688, and his grandfather, John Scott, coming to New York in 1702, had commanded Fort Hunter, a stronghold on the Mohawk. ”

“ General Scott for a time held the general command of all the United States forces. But he was old and growing weak in body and mind, and it was evident must soon give way to a younger man. The national forces held the eastern side of the Potomac, from Harper's Ferry to Fort Monroe, and a small section of the western side opposite Washington. While enlisting and drilling troops, they strove to hold also Kentucky and Missouri, succeeding so well that their grip was never lost throughout the war. ”

“ But just as his repast was ended there were seen from the windows of the fort, at a distance of a few hundred yards, and marching with swift step towards him, the twelve hundred men who had come so far to accomplish his overthrow. The blood of Scott was upon his guilty hands. The wretched man saddled a horse and galloped for life; and the victors did not seek to interrupt his flight. The Red River rebellion was suppressed, and British authority was restored in the valley of the Winnipeg.
Until very recently the vast wheat-field of the North-West was almost worthless to man ”

“ Nature had done much for him. Directly in front of the invading army lay the large lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco. These turned, vast marshes, intersected211 by ditches and for the most part impassable, surrounded the city on the east and south—on which side Scott was advancing—for several miles. The only approaches were by causeways, and these Santa Anna had taken prodigious pains to guard. The national road to Vera Cruz—which Scott must have taken had he marched on the north side of the lakes—was commanded by a fort mounting fifty-one guns on an impregnable hill called El Peñon. ”

“ Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott concurred in that opinion, and as the provisions in the Fort would be exhausted before any such force could be raised and brought to the ground, evacuation and safe withdrawal of the Federal garrison from the Fort became a Military necessity, and was so regarded by the Administration.
"It was believed, however"—in the language of Mr. Lincoln himself, in his first Message to Congress—"that to so abandon that position, under the circumstances, would be utterly ruinous: that the necessity under which it was to be done would not be fully understood ”

“ They would scorn to take the forts. They must not be Irritated." But the President evinced restlessness; he may have suspected the motive of his cabinet officer. Floyd, too, grew restless; the obstinacy of the executive [238] alarmed him. He was only too glad to consent to the suggestion that General Scott should be consulted.
General Scott rose from his sick-bed in New York, and hastened to Washington, on the 12th of December. On the 13th he had an interview with the President, in which he urged that three hundred men be sent to reinforce Major Anderson at Fort Moultrie. ”

“ The trek to Oregon in 1845 dwarfed all that had gone before. An informal count at Fort Laramie revealed that 5,000 people and 500 ox-drawn wagons were on the march. The charms of Scotts Bluff, and the tragic tale of its namesake, were not lost on the many diarists, among them Joel Palmer, who credits “Scott’s Bluffs” with a good spring and an abundance of wood and grass. Below the bluffs, says Palmer,
We met a company of mountaineers from Fort Laramie, who had started for the settlements early in the season, with flat-boats loaded with buffalo robes, and other articles of Indian traffic. ”

“ Fort McHenry, Fort Columbus, Fort Niagara, Fort Gratiot, Fort Brady, and other places infantry and artillery to the number of one thousand men were started for Chicago, and General Winfield Scott was ordered from the seaboard to take charge of the operations against Black Hawk. [821] Three weeks after the arrival of Major Whistler's detachment General Scott arrived. With him, too, came a peril before which the menace of the hostile Indians paled into insignificance. ”

“ It was part of General Scott's plan of campaign for the "Army of the West" to rendezvous at Fort Leavenworth, invade New Mexico and co-operate with a fleet which was to sweep around Cape Horn and attack the enemy on the Pacific coast of his territory. It was to assist in carrying out this part of the campaign that the exiled Saints were called upon to furnish five hundred men.
In that moment of supreme trial the leaders of the Church did not permit the memory of their wrongs to outweigh their patriotism. They resolved to raise the number of men required. ”

“ About sunrise next morning Scott received orders from Sturgis to march to join him at Kansas City, and, at eight o'clock, the column took up the march southward toward Liberty. Murmurs again rose in the ranks. To the enlisted men, who knew nothing of the orders under which Colonel Scott acted, it looked as though he was vacillating or pursuing unsteady counsels. The sun shone clear, and the roads grew dusty; but the march was not slackened. When men became too lame or foot-sore to march, wagons were impressed to haul them. ”

“ The year 1834 was a lively one along the trappers’ trail up the North Platte. This was the year that Robert Campbell and William Sublette halted their caravan at the mouth of Laramie’s Fork, some 60 miles above Scotts Bluff, to establish log-palisaded Fort William, the first of a succession of trading posts, and later a military post, which became the great way-station on the Oregon Trail, called Fort Laramie. A few days behind Sublette, Nathaniel Wyeth led a caravan upriver to establish rival Fort Hall in Idaho. ”

“ Scott, who was at this moment engaged in unspiking a gun, rushed to the front, and, rallying his men, sent the {17}dusky warriors rapidly in retreat. The British general Sheaffe, who held the command at Fort George, having heard the firing, at once put his troops in motion and marched for the scene of the conflict. Sheaffe's command consisted of eight hundred and fifty men. These, added to the garrison which the Americans were attacking, was a formidable force to be met by three hundred men. In the meantime the American troops had refused to cross the river and were in a state of mutiny. ”

“ Scott as to the determination and strength of the Confederate force at Charleston. Mr. White thought it would require a force of ten thousand men to relieve Fort Sumter, and said so. Gen. Scott laughed heartily, and told him that two thousand men would be ample for the purpose. In common with the most of the leading men at the capital, Gen. Scott underestimated the pluck and strength of the rebels. Soon after, when Jay Cooke was appointed government agent to negotiate the war loans, Mr. White received the appointment of agent for Nashua and vicinity. ”

“ This augmentation would not more than furnish the reinforcements now greatly needed in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, California, Oregon, Washington Territory, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota, leaving not a company for Utah.”
Again, General Scott, in his report of November 13, 1858, says: [71] “This want of troops to give reasonable security to our citizens in distant settlements, including emigrants on the plains, can scarcely be too strongly stated ”