attended the schools in his
neighborhood, and graduated at the then famous college of William and
Mary; and upon graduation began his career as a lawyer. All his tastes
were military, however, and in 1807 he joined a volunteer organization
to watch the coasts, which were menaced by the British frigates; there
being then great excitement over the Leopard and Chesapeake affair.
When this flurry subsided he went down to practice in South Carolina.
Soon after his arrival there was another alarm of war, and back went
Scott post-haste for Washington, again abandoning his law, with the
hope of getting a commission in the army. Yet again, in 1808, the
chances of war once more retiring to the background, he tried his
fortune at the bar, this time in Virginia. Alarms of war were frequent
during the next four years, however, and Scott rigidly confined his
practice as a lawyer to the intervals when it was not deemed possible
that there could be danger from abroad.

In 1808 he was made a captain of light artillery, and was sent with
his company to New Orleans. Scott was always frank in announcing his
utter contempt for Jefferson's foreign policy as President, and his
abhorrence of the men whom Jefferson got into the army at this period.
West Point had only just started. Its few graduates did well in the
war of 1812, but most of the other officers of the army were men
appointed by political influence at the time, or else old officers who
in their youth had had some experience in the Revolutionary War, but
who were disabled by age, drunkenness, and long lack of acquaintance
with military matters. Among the officers themselves there were savage
factions, and Scott got into one or two scrapes in consequence of his
advocacy of one of the parties. In May, 1812, the long-delayed
hostilities were evidently close at hand, and Scott left New Orleans
for Washington.

In September, Scott, now made a lieutenant-colonel, reached Niagara,
only to share in the humiliating though petty defeats with which the
land war opened on our northern frontier. His first serious affair was
at the abortive effort to storm the Heights of Queenstown. When Van
Rensselaer, who had led the attack, was wounded so as to be unable to
take further part, Scott himself assumed the command. At this time
about a fourth of the American militia had crossed and were attacked
by slightly superior numbers of British regulars and Indians. Their
remaining companions, utterly und