Order Retiring Winfield Scott from Command1Jump to section
On the 1st day of November, A.D. 1861, upon his own application to the President of the United States, Brevet Lieutenant General Winfield Scott is ordered to be placed, and hereby is placed, upon the list of retired officers of the Army of the United States, without reduction in his current pay, subsistence, or allowances.
The American people will hear with sadness and deep emotion that General Scott has withdrawn from the active control of the army, while the President and a unanimous Cabinet express their own and the nation's sympathy in his personal affliction and their profound sense of the important public services rendered by him to his country during his long and brilliant career, among which will ever be gratefully distinguished his faithful devotion to the Constitution, the Union, and the Flag, when assailed by parricidal rebellion.2Jump to section ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Annotation
[1] AGO General Orders No. 94, November 1, 1861. General Scott's retirement had been delayed since August 9, by the president's request. Although Scott's physical infirmity was the reason given the public for his retirement, McClellan had long been in disagreement with his superior, and on August 8 wrote him a letter which Scott deemed an insult. Scott's letter to Cameron of August 9, indicated the nub of dissension as follows: ``McClellan has propagated, in high quarters, the idea expressed in the letter before me, that Washington was not only `insecure,' but in `imminent danger' . . . . I am confident in the opposite opinion. . . . Accordingly I must beg the President. . . to allow me to be placed on the officers' retired list. . . .'' (DLC-RTL). On August 10, Lincoln asked McClellan to withdraw his critical letter and requested Scott to withdraw his resignation. Scott wrote to Cameron, August 12, that he still wished to resign because of his conviction that McClellan intended to maintain an attitude of insubordination: ``The original offence given to me by. . . McClellan. . . seems to have been the result of deliberation between him & some of the members of the cabinet, by whom all the greater war questions are to be settled---without report to, or consultation with, me. . . .'' (DLC-RTL).
[2] A preliminary draft of this paragraph, in the handwriting of Salmon P. Chase, is as follows:
``The President avails himself of this occasion to express to Lieutenant General