On submitting President Hayes’s letter to General Rosecrans, he made the following statement:  “I heard that story about General Scott from General Charles P. Stone.  General Stone was on the staff of General Scott.  At the beginning of the war, in the spring of 1861, he was directed to organize the militia of the District of Columbia, and was present when the following occurred, as he told me personally.  Shortly after the fall of Sumter and the President’s call for troops, Secretaries Seward, Chase, and Cameron came to General Scott’s residence in Washington one evening and found him at the dinner table.  One of them said:  ’General, our duties as members of the Cabinet make it very desirable for us to have some idea of what the probable range and course of the war will be, that we may guide ourselves accordingly.  We have therefore come to you to get your judgment on the situation.’  On the general’s invitation, they sat down at his dinner table, and he went on to explain his idea of how the war would progress from year to year.  While he was talking, Mr. Seward seemed to be somewhat impatient, and put in several little interruptions, but finally subsided and allowed General Scott to proceed.  The general gave an outline of a war probably lasting from three and one half to four years, but resulting in favor of the Union.

“On the general’s announcement of his opinion that the Union would triumph, Mr. Seward, rubbing his hands, inquired, ’Well, general, then the troubles of the Federal Government will be at an end.’  To which General Scott replied, ’No, gentlemen, for a long time thereafter it will require the exercise of the full powers of the Federal Government to restrain the fury of the noncombatants.’”

To a young army officer he gave the following advice:  “You are now beginning life; you are ignorant of society and of yourself.  You appear to be industrious and studious enough to fit yourself for high exploits in your profession, and your next object should be to make yourself a perfect man of the world.  To do that you must carefully observe well-bred men.  You must also learn to converse and to express your thoughts in proper language.  You must make acquaintances among the best people, and take care always to be respectful to old persons and to ladies.”  General Scott was always extremely gallant and courteous to ladies and greatly enjoyed the society of intelligent and refined women.  As stated in the early part of this work, General Scott had been an industrious student of the law, and the knowledge thus acquired was of great service to him throughout his eventful career.  He was well read in the standard English authors—­Shakespeare, Milton, Addison, Pope, Johnson, Goldsmith, Dryden, Hume, Gibbon, and the early English novelists.  He was a constant reader of the best foreign and American periodicals and the leading newspapers of the day.  He was of the opinion that wars would never cease, and therefore took little interest in peace societies.