The other activity that recommended itself to many was filing charges and countercharges against fellow officers, which was so much an occupation to members of the old army that it reached to the top, the most famous instance being the long-running feud in the 1850s between General-in-Chief Winfield Scott and Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, which had begun with a dispute over reimbursement of Scott’s travel expenses during the Mexican War. When all the cross-accusations were published in a Senate document, it ran to 354 pages of insult and venom.
