Scott was born on August 2, 1839 in Warrenton, Virginia, United States, the son of John Shipp and Lucy (Scott) Shipp. After the death of his father in 1849, his mother married Henry Clarkson, a physician of Boone County, Missouri, and the family removed there.
He went to Westminster College at Fulton, Missouri. He graduated from Virginia Military Institute in 1859. In 1866 he was graduated from the Lexington Law School (later the law department of Washington and Lee University). Shipp was awarded the Doctor of Letters in 1883 and Doctor of Laws in 1890 by Washington & Lee University.
After studies Shipp found employment with a railroad. Attracting the attention of one of the officials of this railroad, Robert E. Rodes, he was persuaded by Rodes to enter Virginia Military Institute. From 1859 until the outbreak of the Civil War he was an assistant professor of mathematics and tactics there. He accompanied a detail of cadets to Harpers Ferry in December 1859 to witness the execution of John Brown. He was ordered in April 1861 with the entire corps of cadets to Camp Lee near Richmond to assist in the drilling of recruits for the Confederate army.
Commissioned major in the 21th Virginia Infantry in July 1861, he participated in the West Virginia campaign in the late summer of 1861 under the command of Robert E. Lee and later served in the Romney campaign with Stonewall Jackson, his former preceptor and colleague.
Upon the reopening of the Virginia Military Institute in 1862 he was ordered to report there as commandant of the cadets with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He led the cadets into the field on five occasions, the most notable being the Valley campaign when the Federals under Hunter invaded the Valley of Virginia. In this campaign the cadets formed a part of Breckinridge's army and won fame at the battle of New Market in May 1864, where, though wounded, Shipp skilfully conducted the battalion of cadets across an open field against the Federals under the terrific fire of their batteries.
After the battle of Gettysburg, he obtained a two months' furlough, joined as a private the famous Black Horse Troop (4th Virginia Cavalry) and skirmished with it during July and August.
After the war he resumed his duties as commandant of the cadets, though he contemplated for a time the practice of law. For many years he was a vestryman of the Robert E. Lee Memorial Church in Lexington. He refused in 1880 the proffered honor of the presidency of the newly created Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (Virginia Polytechnic Institute), when he found himself restricted in the selection of his faculty. In spite of his denunciation of the Readjuster party he survived the proposed general change of the officers of the institute at the hands of a Readjuster board of visitors.
Upon the resignation of Gen. Francis H. Smith in 1889 Shipp was elevated to the superintendency of the Virginia Military Institute in January 1890 and served in this capacity until his retirement in June 1907. During this period he was a member of the board of visitors at the United States Military Academy in 1890, and at the United States Naval Academy in 1894.
He died in 1917.
Scott Shipp was the second superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute, his administration witnessed many changes, freedom from debt, increased appropriations from the state, an enlarged corps, and more buildings. He was briefly the president of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (Virginia Tech) and skilfully led the VMI Cadets at the Battle of New Market during the American Civil War, being promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
In educational matters, he was very conservative and emphasized the military feature of the institute against the wishes of a group of the alumni.
He was noted as a strict disciplinarian. He dismissed his own son for a violation of military discipline, for which a lesser penalty than dismissal had been inflicted in the past, and he opposed, though not successfully, the boy's reinstatement later by the board of visitors.
On August 19, 1869, he was married to Anne Morson of Richmond. They had three children: Elizabeth Scott, Lucy Scott, and Arthur Morson Shipp. Shipp's wife died in 1884.
