WINFIELD SCOTT "CAUGHT WITH MY BREECHES DOWN" 1852 CARTOON POSTER.
Item Description
7x9.75" on thin paper. Image shows Scott w/his pants down w/text below reading "General Scott, As He Appeared In His Speech At Carlton, KY., Oct. 8, 52." A few tiny scattered traces of soil. One vertical fold down middle, and a horizontal fold across middle. Otherwise scattered creasing w/minor edge wear and moderate handling from use. Fine.
The opening of the next war, that with Mexico, found Scott in over-all command of the army. To his great discomfiture, he spent the early part of the war at a desk in the War Department in Washington while other generals were leading the troops. It was during this period that Scott's heated differences with the Democratic president and administration caused him to coin the clumsy type of phrase that more skilled politicians shun. After finally receiving orders to take command of the army in Mexico, Scott learned of certain other contemplated changes in the army to be made without his sanction, whereupon he wrote and had published in the press a lengthy letter to the Secretary of War stating he did not want to place himself in the perilous position of having "a fire upon my rear, from Washington, and the fire, in front, from the Mexicans." The Secretary's reply, suggesting that some other general be given the command, caused Scott to write another long reply which opened with the statement that he had received the Secretary's letter "as I sat down to take a hasty plate of soup." In song, verse and cartoon, Scott was ridiculed in the presidential campaign for the use of these and other phrases. The Demo-crats howled - "Feathers and Soup and Fuss, They cannot frighten us." And, "He grew up with epaulettes on his shoulders, a canteen on his back and a breastplate on his rear." An anonymous campaign pamphlet of sixteen pages, scarcely more than an inch square, heaped more abuse upon the General by quoting his "cherished and long remembered words" in a speech at Carrollton, Ky., on Oct. 13, 1852 - "My countrymen! I was for the first time in my life caught with my breeches down!" Mike Nichols Collection.
