Julian Scott's career as an artist owed much to the two years he spent in the Union army during the Civil War. Volunteering as a musician in Vermont's Third Regiment at age fifteen, he distinguished himself in battle, was wounded, and became the young recipient of a Congressional Medal of Honor. Scott had made drawings at the front to send to illustrated magazines, and when he was discharged in 1863, he went to New York to pursue a career in art. A Manhattan merchant and patron arranged for him to study at the National Academy, where he registered for the Life School during the seasons of 1863-5 and 1866-7 and the Antique School from 1865 to 1867. By late 1866, however, he had probably left for Europe, where he studied in Paris, Germany, and Italy. His primary teacher was Emanuel Leutze.
Returning to New York, Scott married Mary Burns in 1870 and took a studio in the Tenth Street Building. By 1876, however, he had moved to Plainfield, where he lived the rest of his life. Scott was chosen by the government in 1890 to assist in the eleventh census. With Peter Moran, Gilbert Gaul, Walter Shirlaw, and Henry R. Poore, he observed Native American tribes in Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, working three years on the Report on Indians Taxed and Indians Not Taxed. This western trip added a new subject type to his repertoire of battle pictures and the occasional portrait. The time spent on the report interrupted his exhibiting activity at Academy Annuals, for which the Council excused him on November 7, 1892. He painted little during the last years of his life.