General Winfield Scott, the General in Chief of the U.S. Army, is an often overlooked but important figure of the late antebellum period. He played a critical role in the American government for two decades before the Civil War. This raises the question of how his views on slavery, abolition, and unionism affected his decisions during the years 1860 and 1861. To discuss his personal loyalty, we will look at his relationship with notable figures such as James Buchanan, John B. Floyd, Abraham Lincoln, and Robert E. Lee, among others, during the sectional crisis. Join us for a discussion with Dr. Barton A. Myers, Washington, and Lee University.
Barton A. Myers is Professor of History at Washington and Lee University and the author of the awarding winning Executing Daniel Bright: Race, Loyalty, and Guerrilla Violence in a Coastal Carolina Community, 1861-1865 (LSU Press, 2009), Rebels Against the Confederacy: North Carolina’s Unionists (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014), and co-editor with Brian D. McKnight of The Guerrilla Hunters: Irregular Conflicts during the Civil War (LSU Press, 2017). Dr. Myers is a recipient of prestigious grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Marine Corps Historical Center, the Filson Historical Society, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History. He speaks widely to Civil War groups and roundtables around the United States. Dr. Myers’ work has been featured in the national media, including Time, Los Angeles Times, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Smerconish.com, Sirius XM’s “The Michael Smerconish Program”, CSPAN’s “American History TV”, National Public Radio’s Virginia Insight, and the Civil War Monitor. He was featured in the acclaimed HISTORY Channel documentary series GRANT, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and historian Ron Chernow, as well as the HISTORY Channel miniseries event ABRAHAM LINCOLN, featuring President Barack Obama and produced by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Most recently, he served as an expert in the HISTORY series “DARK MARVELS” on the world history of diabolical military technology.
