Greater Scott!

A while ago, we learned that TFSmith believed that General Winfield Scott was on some sort of secret espionage mission for the Union during his time convalescing in Paris. We also learned that this belief, like many others held by TFSmith, was complete nonsense.

Since the publication of that article, a significant fact has come to my attention. Not only did Scott fail to meet Napoleon III during his brief time in Paris, but when news of the Trent Affair arrived he scuttled back to the United States so hastily that it threw out all the US minister's arrangements:

'General Scott will have arrived in the United States doubtless before this despatch; will you say to him that I last evening received a note from Mr Thouvenel, naming two o'clock to-day to receive him; at which hour I attended at the foreign office and returned his thanks, &c. Mr Thouvenel was quite disappointed at not seeing him, and said that the Emperor had promptly assented to give him a private interview. I explained at the same time that his departure for his own country had been sudden and unexpected.' (William L. Dayton, US Minister to France, to William H. Seward, Secretary of State, 11 December 1861)

Can we detect a hint of thinly-veiled anger in Dayton's message? It would be entirely understandable if we did. After all, he had taken the trouble to arrange a meeting for Scott with the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, only for Scott to high-tail it back to the States at the first threat of war. This was not just a personal insult to Thouvenel, at a time when the Union needed all the friends it could find. It also made the Union's representative to Paris look like a buffoon, and the Union's most prominent military figure of the past half century look like a coward.

Either Scott had no mission in Paris, or he lost his head and threw away his only chance to complete it. Which is the more likely?