The New International Encyclopædia/Scott, Robert Kingston

SCOTT, Robert Kingston (1826-1900). An American soldier and politician, born in Armstrong County, Pa. In 1861 he was chosen lieutenant colonel of the Sixty-eighth Ohio Regiment, and next year was promoted colonel. He fought at Fort Donelson, Shiloh. and Corinth, was in the campaign against Vicksburg, was taken prisoner near Atlanta in 1864, but was shortly afterwards exchanged, and served during the remainder of the war with General Sherman. From 1865 until 1868 he was assistant commissioner in South Carolina of the Freedmen's Bureau. In the latter year he was elected Governor of the reconstructed State, and in 1870 was re-elected for the ensuing term of two years. His administrations were very corrupt, and during them the State debt increased about $13,000,000, although few public improvements were made. In his second administration Ku Klux disorders became so numerous in some parts of the State that President Grant. under the authority conferred by the Enforcement Act of April 20, 1871, suspended the writ of habeas corpus in some of the counties, and many of the offenders were tried by the Federal courts. In 1877 Scott settled in Napoleon, Ohio. In 1881 he was tried for shooting and killing W. G. Drury, bnt was acquitted on the plea that the shooting was accidental. For accounts of his administrations in South Carolina, consult: Pike, The Prostrate State (New York, 1874); and Why the Solid South? by Hilary A. Herbert and others (Baltimore, 1890).