Freshman History

Harry Truman, who often says that Bob Taft is his favorite Republican candidate for 1952, found another one that he likes even better: General Winfield Scott, hero of the War with Mexico.

With a disarming show of sympathy for General Eisenhower, Truman called the attention of his press conference last week to Scott's resounding defeat in 1852 at the hands of Democrat Franklin Pierce. Truman's reference to the Scott-Pierce campaign came in answer to a reporter's question as to what Truman thought of a military man in the presidency.

The question reflected one of the most widely voiced objections to Eisenhower. The yatter against a military man in the White House seems to include these assumptions :

1) There is an American tradition against generals in the presidency.

2) Military men are likely to be bellicose in foreign affairs, like Napoleon, and dictatorial at home, like Caesar.

The supposed American tradition is not a tradition, but an accident of 20th century U.S. history. Military men do not usually come to the fore in time of peace, and the U.S. fought no major war between 1865 and 1917. The result is that there were no generals among the nine 20th century Presidents, or among their defeated major party opponents. In fact, there are only five veterans among the nine 20th century Presidents and their eleven defeated opponents: Major William McKinley (Civil War), Colonel Theodore Roosevelt (Spanish-American War), Lieut. Alfred Landon (World War I), Captain Wendell Willkie (World War I) and Captain Harry Truman (World War I).

Of the 24 Presidents before Teddy Roosevelt, nine were generals--Washington, Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Taylor, Pierce, Grant, Hayes, Garfield and Benjamin Harrison. Five other generals were the defeated candidates of major parties. The political careers of all 14 were helped more than hurt by their military reputations.

Best of the military Presidents was George Washington, who intended to make a career of the service, but got disgusted at lack of British recognition. After six years of active service and 13 years of retirement, he went back into uniform in 1774 and stayed in it until 1783.

Andrew Jackson's pre-presidential fame was almost entirely as a general. So was William Henry ("Old Tippecanoe") Harrison's. Zachary Taylor was a professional soldier who had never voted. Franklin Pierce, who beat Winfield Scott, was a citizen-soldier like Harry Truman, but his war record was not nearly so good as Truman's. He enlisted as a private in the Mexican War, and President Polk, an old friend, promptly promoted him to brigadier-general. Pierce fell off his horse, sprained his knee and fainted at the battle of Contreras, fainted again the next day at the battle of Churubusco. No less a writer than Nathaniel Hawthorne (another old friend) said this showed how America's battles were won--by the valor and dash of citizen-soldiers rather than stuffy professionals like Scott.

Scott had a good record in the War of 1812, and his victories ended the Mexican War. Between times, he had achieved several brilliant diplomatic successes, including two occasions when he arrested war with Canada. Scott was beaten not because he was a soldier, but because he was the candidate of the Whig Party, which was splitting asunder at the time. Probably no candidate could have saved it in 1852, or thereafter.

Scott had some other defects as a candidate. In a hard-drinking country, he favored the abolition of hard liquor. He had written a tract on the subject in 1821, and in 1832 he made drunken soldiers dig graves, as a warning of where they were headed. He lost the Irish vote because he had executed some Irish deserters in Mexico, and he lost the anti-Catholic vote because one of his daughters was a nun.

Scott's defeat was never a matter of great regret, but Pierce's election was. The citizen-soldier pursued a reckless and aggressive foreign policy in an effort to wrest Cuba from Spain.

Abraham Lincoln, captain of Illinois volunteers in the Black Hawk War of 1832, supported Professional Soldier Scott in the campaign of 1852.

Grant, usually regarded as a poor President, was a professional soldier, although (like Washington), he was out of the Army between wars. His faults were not those associated with Caesarism. His troubles arose from trusting friends who turned out to be crooks--a situation which Harry Truman got himself into without benefit of professional military training.

Hayes, Garfield and Benjamin Harrison were Civil War citizen-generals whose administrations were unmarred by internal authoritarianism and foreign aggression.

The U.S. has never got into a war when one of its nine general-Presidents was in the White House. As for dictatorship, the loudest accusations on this score were raised against civilians John Adams, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

If Harry Truman ever has the leisure to extend his historical research beyond the details of history to the broad spirit and meaning of it, he might find that the U.S. has always been and is now strongly antimilitarist, in the sense that it is against a military state. This has never been taken to mean that military men are barred or tainted as candidates for political office. Americans are aware of defects in "the military mind" just as they are of "the legal mind" and "the political mind." What matters is the individual, not his profession. Nobody really holds it against Harry Truman that he used to be a haberdasher, although a few people have pointed out that he wasn't a very good haberdasher.

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