and the strength of armies.’  A brief anecdote will illustrate the strictness of his discipline.  While on duty he always required officers to be dressed according to their rank in the minutest particular.  The general’s headquarters in Mexico comprised two rooms, one opening into the other.  In the rear room General Scott slept.  One night after the general had retired a member of his staff wanted some water.  The evening was warm and the hour late, being past midnight.  The officer rose to go in his shirt sleeves.  He was cautioned against the experiment as a dangerous one, for if Scott caught him in his quarters with his coat off he would punish him.  The officer said he would risk it—­that the general was asleep, and he would make no noise.  He opened the door softly and went on tiptoe to the water pitcher.  He had no time to drink before he heard the tinkle of the bell, and the sentinel outside the door entered.  ’Take this man to the guardhouse,’ was the brief order, and the coatless captain spent the night on a hard plank under guard."[E] He did not conceal his opinions of men or measures, and hence he very often gave offense.  It should be borne in mind that the public men of the age when General Scott came on the stage, both military and civil, were as a rule dignified, formal, and to some extent dogmatic.  They held themselves with great dignity, and their magnetism was the result of their commanding abilities and high character, and they did not rely for popularity upon the methods of modern times.

[Footnote E:  Wilson’s Sketches of Illustrious Soldiers:  New York, 1874.]

General Grant, in mentioning General Scott’s Mexican campaign, says:  “Both the strategy and tactics displayed by General Scott in the various engagements of August 20, 1847, were faultless, as I look upon them now after the lapse of so many years.”  And further:  “General Scott enjoys the rare distinction of having held high and successful command in two wars, which were a full generation apart.  In 1847 he commanded, in Mexico, the sons of those officers who aided in his brilliantly successful campaign against the British on the borders of Canada in 1814.”  Daniel Webster, in a speech delivered in the United States Senate February 20, 1848, said:  “I understand, sir, that, there is a report from General Scott, a man who has performed the most brilliant campaign on recent military record, a man who has warred against the enemy, warred against the climate, warred against a thousand unpropitious circumstances, and has carried the flag of his country to the capital of the enemy—­honorably, proudly, humanely—­to his own permanent honor and the great military credit of his country.  And where is he?  At Pueblo—­at Pueblo, undergoing an inquiry before his inferiors in rank, and other persons without military rank, while the high powers he has exercised and executed with so much distinction are transferred to another—­I do not say to one unworthy of them, but to one inferior