Charles Scott (April 1739-22 October 1813) was Governor of Kentucky from 1 September 1808 to 4 August 1812, succeeding Christopher Greenup and preceding Isaac Shelby. Scott was a general during the American Revolutionary War - in which he served as the Continental Army's head of intelligence - and a veteran of wars with the Native Americans, and counties in Kentucky and Indiana and towns in Kentucky and Virginia are named for him.
Biography []
Early life[]
Charles Scott was born in April 1739 in Cumberland County, Virginia, and he enlisted in the Virginia Regiment of the British Army during the French and Indian War while working as a carpenter's apprentice. Scott served under George Washington during the Braddock Expedition, and he was a veteran of actions on the frontier against Native Americans. After the war, he became a plantation owner back in Virginia, owning ten slaves and growing tobacco and milling flour on his farm.
American Revolutionary War[]
General Scott in 1776
In 1775, Scott formed a company of Cumberland County volunteers during the American Revolutionary War, the first militia company south of the James River to side with the patriots during the struggle. Scott's forces drove John Murray's British and loyalist forces out of Virginia in 1775, and on 13 February 1776 he joined the Continental Army with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. On 12 August 1776, the Second Continental Congress gave him command of the 5th Virginia Regiment and sent him to meet up with George Washington's army in New Jersey, where he fought in the New Jersey campaign of late 1776 against Great Britain. His regiment saw action in the Pennsylvania campaign in 1777, and after the battle of Monmouth he was given command of a new light infantry corps. Scott was captured in the Siege of Charleston in 1780, and General Charles Cornwallis agreed to grant him parole due to ill health. In July 1782, he was exchanged with Francis Rawdon-Hastings, and he was free at the end of the war.
Politics[]
In 1785, Scott visited Kentucky for the first time, and he oversaw the settlement of much of the region during the 1780s and 1790s. In April 1790, he raised a volunteer contingent to fight against the Western Confederacy in the Northwest Indian War, and it would be his Kentuckian troops that would repel the Native Americans, not federal troops. After the 1793 Battle of Fallen Timbers, Anthony Wayne had Scott's men raid the surrounding areas, and in mid-1795 the Treaty of Greenville was signed to end the war. In 1808, he defeated Green Clay to win the gubernatorial elections in Kentucky, and in 1812 Scott's term ended. William Henry Harrison promoted him to Major-General, and he died in 1813, one of the last surviving Revolutionary War generals.