Scott, Winfield:

$3,750 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

[AUTOGRAPH LETTER, SIGNED, FROM WINFIELD SCOTT TO PRESIDENT JOHN TYLER, ENUMERATING TWENTY COMPLAINTS ABOUT HIS "MATERIALLY DERANGED" RIVAL, GENERAL EDMUND P. ... An excellent and particularly acrid letter from Major General Winfield Scott to President John Tyler, regarding Scott's decades-long feud with (Brevet) Major General Edmund P. Gaines. Scott's feud over seniority with Gaines dated back to the War of 1812, and became particularly bitter over the question of who should succeed Major General Jacob Brown as Commanding General of the Army after Brown's death in 1828. The argument was heated and public enough that they were both passed over for the role, which was given to Alexander Macomb instead. Regardless, the animosity between the two men continued all the way until Gaines' death in 1849. In this letter, Scott enumerates his most recent complaints against his long-time rival, particularly in response to a letter sent by Gaines to Adjutant General Roger Jones less than two weeks earlier. Gaines' letter, now part of the Edmund P. and Myra C. Gaines collection at the University of Michigan, took legal issue with certain General Orders (40 and 53, specifically) and further suggested that Scott had acted outside of his authority when assigning him to a new command. Far from thinly veiled jabs or oblique criticisms, Scott makes his issues with Gaines explicitly clear in this detailed letter, consisting of twenty numbered, paragraph-length points:With regard to Gaines's over

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