Lake Winfield Scott Recreation Area Bears Distinctive Name

Lake Winfield Scott Recreation Area was a project of the Civilian Conservation Corps finished in 1942 shortly following America’s entry into World War II. It was the last of the CCC recreation development projects in Georgia and almost the last in America. Its 18 acres of mountain land lies ten miles south of Blairsville and 4.5 miles east of Suches, Georgia. The lake rests at 2,854 feet above sea level and is the highest lake in elevation in Georgia. The area provides space for camping and opportunities for fishing, boating, picnicking and hiking. Around the lake itself is the Lake Winfield Scott Trail; nearby are Slaughter Creek Trail, Jarrard Creek Trail, and not too far away is access to the famed Appalachian Trail and the Benton McKaye Trail. Nearby Sosebee Cove, a beautiful forested area, invites naturalists.

Lake Winfield Scott was named in honor of General Winfield Scott who earned distinction as a strong military leader in the War of 1812, Indian Wars, The Mexican War, and a plan for operation of Union troops in the Civil War which has come to be known as the Anaconda Plan. Among the notable assignments made to General Winfield Scott was commandeering the Cherokee Removal of 1838.

What about this man for whom a lake and recreation area in Georgia were named? He was not a native Georgian, nor did he spend much of his military career in Georgia except for a short period during the Cherokee Removal. He was born on June 13, 1786 on Laurel Branch Plantation in Dinwiddie County near Petersburg, Virginia. His parents were William Scott (1747-1789) and Anna Mason Scott (1748-1803). In 1804 the young Winfield Scott graduated from William and Mary College in Virginia. He read law in a private law firm and took the bar examination and became a lawyer in 1806. However, the military beckoned him and he first joined the Virginia militia cavalry in 1807 as a corporal. In 1808 he entered the U. S. Army in the artillery and soon achieved the rank of captain. In 1811-1812 he served under General Wade Hampton in New Orleans, becoming a Colonel in the Artillery. In March of 1813 he was made adjutant general and was deployed to the area along the US/Canadian border to fight in what we know as the War of 1812. In 1813 he was taken prisoner at the Battle of Queenstown Heights and sent to Quebec to British Army Prison. There he stood up bravely, ordering his American troops as prisoners not to speak to insure against fiercer punishment. He was released on exchange in January of 1813. He personally commanded the advance of Fort St. George, and was badly burned there when an ammunitions magazine was set ablaze by the enemy. Some of his maneuvers led at Ft. St. George were said to be the best commanded operations of the entire War of 1812.

His further maneuvers included victory over British forces at the Battle of Chippewa on November 8, 1814. At the Battle of Lundy’s Lane he was badly wounded in his left shoulder, with bones shattered. This wound left him greatly impaired in that arm and hand for the rest of his life. In 1814 he was commended by receiving the military Gold Medal.

He married Lucy Baker about 1814 and they had two children, Winniford Scott and John Scott. His wife Lucy died in 1816. They made their home at Hampton Place in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. He later married Maria DeHart about 1817 and they had seven children, Maria, John Mayo, Virginia, Edward, Cornelia, Marcella and Adeline. Maria died in 1845 in Georgia. During the years between 1814 and 1820, he made some trips to Europe, representing America in France and elsewhere. He also studied military tactics while there.

He was named Commander of the United States Armed Forces in 1832, succeeding his long-time friend, General John Wool. Then came the Seminole and Creek Wars, and General Winfield Scott was often on the scenes of these battles, giving commands and ordering maneuvers.

Then came the unrest with Cherokees and the political maneuvering to gain land held by the Native Americans. Various treaties and negotiations failed, and finally, in 1832, General Winfield Scott was made commander of Cherokee Removal to reservations in the mid-west. Scott arrived April 6, 1838 at New Echota in North Georgia at the Cherokee Capitol. He divided the Cherokee Indian Nation into three major districts and began to set up forts as gathering points. He wanted U. S. soldiers for the round-up operations, because he felt there would be less likelihood of personal gain. However, because the army moved so slowly, he had to settle for many of the round-up force being Georgia, Tennesse and Alabama militia. Two major moves of the Indians was launched, the first in August, 1838. Complaining of heat, the remainder were delayed in removal until fall of 1838. It must be noted to Scott’s advantage that he urged kindness, consideration of aged, babies and ill, and other humanitarian rules for the removal. His orders, however, were not always followed, as reports of conditions on what we now know as the Trail of Tears have been uncovered. Wanting to go on the Trail of Tears himself, he left Athens, Georgia on October 1, 1838, continuing to Nashville, Tennessee. There he received word to return immediately to Washington where he was assigned to the Aroostock or “Pig War” to settle the boundary between the state of Maine and British Columbia. The remainder of the Cherokee Removal had to go forward without the presence of General Winfield Scott.

In 1847 he was made chief of US Armies against Mexico and was successful in turning back the Mexican forces and winning victory in the western territories of the United States.

With political ambitions, he entered the race for President of the United States as a member of the Whig Party in 1852. He lost to Franklin Pierce.

In 1861 when the War Between the States erupted, he was too aged and infirm to be active in the war. His major contribution to the Union strategy in the war was to recommend what became known as the “Anaconda Plan” or “Scott’s Great Snake.” This included embargoes on the major Confederate ports and possession of the Mississippi River, thus cutting the Confederacy in two. His plan was slow to take effect, but in the end, President Lincoln was able to enact most of Scott’s strategy. General Winfield Scott retired from active military service on November 1, 1861, with President Lincoln and members of his cabinet gathered around the venerable General. He had nicknames of “Old Fuss and Feathers” (this due to his attention to details and his belief in elaborate military dress) and “Grand Old Man of the Army” due to his long years to serve in the major military role in our country, 1832-1861.

When you visit Georgia’s Winfield Scott Lake and Recreation area, you will know something about the man in United States History for whom the beautiful place was named.

c2012 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published January 12, 2012 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

William Jasper Cotter and Cherokee Removal

Two weeks ago this column told of the Rev. William Jasper Cotter, Methodist Episcopal Church South minister, who was sent to a charge in 1846 at Blairsville. He and his wife Rachel resided in a cabin in Union County and from there he went out to twenty preaching stations in North Georgia, Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee.

He gave invaluable insight into his life and times in his memoirs which he entitled My Autobiography. His descriptions of places and events were clear and incisive. He was living with his parents in Murray County, Georgia when the Cherokee Indian Removal occurred in 1838. His parents were John Vance Cotter, born November 28, 1789 in Union District, South Carolina and his mother was Mary Ann Nall Cotter, born June 12, 1796 in Chatham County, North Carolina. The Cotter family lived in Hall County, Georgia where son William Jasper was born November 16, 1823. They moved to Murray County in 1832 and settled in the area of the Carter Plantation (now Carter’s Lake area) along the old Federal Road.

In his life story, the Rev. Cotter gave vivid accounts of what he saw and experienced as the Cherokee were rounded up and moved west.

When he was a teenager, he was hired as a delivery boy to haul loads of corn to some of the posts where General Winfield Scott’s soldiers were encamped. He saw first-hand much of the action of rounding up the Indians and holding them in forts awaiting the removal to Oklahoma.

From his book we read: “On a mild May morning, two men stood at our gate. Dismounted from his large, raw-boned white horse, his bridle rein on his arm, stood General Scott, with White Path, an Indian, for whom White Path Gold Mine (in Gilmer County) was named. There was neither a white man nor an Indian there, only two old soldiers who had met at the battle of Horseshoe Bend. Chief White Path exhibited a medal that General Jackson had given him for his bravery in the battle.” (p. 42)

A quartermaster in General Winfield Scott’s army, Colonel W. J. Howard, boarded at the Cotter’s house. It was from him that the young Cotter received his orders to deliver loads of corn to the soldiers. The going rate for corn at that time, under the inflated economy and the dire need for corn, was one dollar per bushel. Young Cotter returned almost every day he hauled a load with five dollars for his father. One day, he returned with thirteen dollars. He hauled the corn on an ox-drawn wagon.

He remembers: “It was a hard day’s work, starting early and getting back late, and this was the daily round.” When he was not hauling corn, he was engaged to move the household goods the Indians had been forced to leave in their cabins when they were taken to the forts. Five or six soldiers went with Cotter as guards. The soldiers forced open the cabin doors and left Cotter to load the meager goods. He recalled that he could load “the stuff of two or three families at one load.” The soldiers left him to the sorry task of loading. He wrote, “The soldiers galloped away, leaving me in worse danger than anyone else; for if there had been an Indian hiding out, I would have been the one to suffer.” (p. 40)

The situation gave Cotter great concern. Cows and their calves had been apart for days and the calves were starving. Cotter turned them together. Chickens, cats and dogs scattered at the approach of the soldiers and Cotter and his ox team. Indian ponies stood under shade trees fighting flies. Bells around necks of cows and ponies made an eerie music in the spring air. Dogs howled mournfully for their owners. As cabins were emptied, the doors were left ajar. Cotter commented, “To have seen it all would have melted to tenderness a heart of stone.” (p. 40)

Cotter saw fields of corn the Indians had planted. It had been a warm spring and they had seeded the fields early, maybe with the idea that if they proceeded with life as usual the removal would not occur.

Cotter emphasized that the Indians were not mistreated in captivity. “From General Scott down, every soldier and citizen looked upon them with an eye of pity. The Indians were neither prisoners nor captives. They were defenseless wards of the government, cared for and fed from the commissary stores.” (p. 43)

According to Cotter’s account, the Indians were not crammed inside the forts. They were encamped outside the forts awaiting the move to Ross’s Landing. Cotter saw the children and youth playing and “happy as larks.” When the move began, the ill and infirm were transported by wagons. As a first-hand observer of the action, Cotter stated that published reports of Indians having to survive on roots and berries were untrue. “They felt no fear of the soldiers, realizing at once they were their protectors. Not one of the Indians could have been tempted to leave the camp a mile. I am persuaded that more than half of them were glad and ready to go.” (p. 45)

Yet even with the humane treatment of the Cherokee that Cotter observed, he noted that a pervading sadness lingered like a pall. The vacated Indian cabins and deserted animals stood in stark contrast to the cultivated fields with crops of corn and beans growing in the spring warmth.

In addition to hauling loads of corn from his father’s farm to the army camps, young Cotter was also hired by Colonel Howard on occasion as a messenger boy to take papers from Murray County to Fort Hartzell in Ellijay. It was a journey of about seventeen miles across rugged mountains. The lad encountered a huge man with a gun and feared for his life. But the man did not fire his gun at Cotter. The lad spent the night in the mountains, cold and lost, but the next morning he determined which direction he should go and he and his horse arrived at the fort safely.

William Jasper Cotter was fourteen when he worked as a delivery and messenger boy during the Indian Removal. What he saw made such a lasting impression on him that he could write his eye-witness accounts in his autobiography when he was an old man of about ninety. He died in Newnan, Georgia on January 4, 1922.

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published June 10, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.