Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

by Stiles, T. J.

  Stanton promised each a medal. “And, to show you how good Generals and good men work together, I have already appointed your commanding general (Custer) a major-general. General Custer,” he said, grasping his hand, “a gallant officer always makes gallant soldiers.” The soldiers and audience broke into cheers. Custer, looking embarrassed, “bowed his thanks,” a reporter wrote. It was a brevet promotion in the U.S. Volunteers, not an elevation in his service rank, but it was a much-desired honor.46

  The ceremony over, Libbie went to her husband’s side. Stanton remained for a moment and peered at Custer through his small round glasses, over his gray-shot fountain of a beard that sprayed down to his chest. He asked, Aren’t you Emmanuel Custer’s son? Custer said he was. “Well, he was once a client of mine.” Stanton had practiced law in Cadiz, Ohio. “If he should come here I would do anything to make it pleasant for him. I have been trying to find his son. But learning you were from Michigan I thought it could not be you. Why have you never come to see me?”

  “Because I never had any business to bring me to your office, sir.” Libbie told her parents that Armstrong knew of Emmanuel’s connection to Stanton, but did not wish to be seen to be seeking special favors. She may have been right. Custer adroitly used patronage to his advantage, and perhaps knew better than to overdo it. But Stanton, formerly a prominent Ohio Democrat and attorney general under President James Buchanan, also knew Emmanuel through politics. Custer may have thought that using his father’s partisan connections to advance himself was too risky.47

  In fact, he was safer than ever, politically speaking. Cedar Creek all but guaranteed Lincoln’s reelection. The New York Times reprinted an excerpt of Custer’s letter to Christiancy on the same page with the story of the flag-presentation ceremony. To his father’s bitter disappointment, he had done as much as any brigadier general to secure a Republican victory.48

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  THE FAMILY CAME TOGETHER AT LAST. On October 23, Cpl. Thomas W. Custer received orders to muster out of his infantry regiment and report to the 6th Michigan Cavalry to receive his commission as a lieutenant. On November 8, Tom arrived in the Valley. Though Armstrong no longer commanded the 6th Michigan, Sheridan approved Tom’s assignment to his staff. Just nineteen years old, he had darker hair than Armstrong, with a broader, more conventionally handsome face but the same narrow mouth and soft chin. Armstrong formally received him, defined his duties, then threw his arms around his brother.49

  Armstrong added Tom to a staff filled with Monroe friends, including Edwin Norvell and Fred Nims. Soon after his return from Washington he had sent for Libbie to join him, since the active campaign had come to an end. “You must make up your mind to [accept] fewer comforts than you now enjoy,” he wrote. “You will not need any nice dresses this time.”

  “I love luxury, dress, comfort. But, oh, how gladly I will give them up,” she replied. When she stepped off her train in Martinsburg, she saw that the conquered Valley remained dangerous. Mosby declared that he was hunting Custer, so 150 men escorted her to camp. Armstrong found rooms in “a fine old Virginia mansion about four miles south of Winchester,” he wrote to her parents. It was limestone with a wing constructed of logs, all heated by fireplaces (Libbie marveled at the lack of stoves). Eliza Brown and the division staff commandeered various smaller buildings.50

  “How much I wish that Mother and I could step in tomorrow morning while you are at breakfast,” Custer’s twelve-year-old sister, Maggie, wrote. “I think I hear Armstrong say, ‘Well I’ll declare,’ and Libbie, ‘Why bless me, how do you do dear?’ and ‘Old Tom from Ireland’ would not say any thing until the confusion was over.” Her letter showed how close the Custers were as a family. She asked Libbie if Armstrong and Tom pinched her, and if she was siding with Tom against the big brother.

  But Monroe was far from Winchester. Margaret asked “Autie” to send “a good young colored girl for Mother.” Their mother considered asking for Eliza Brown, but thought she could better control a young girl, that Brown “would not stay contented.” That was as close as she came to grasping that Brown was a free woman who chose to be in this dangerous place.51

  “I am still the only lady in the army. Gen. Sheridan has allowed no one but me to be in the army,” Libbie wrote to her parents. Sheridan, a bachelor, cursed and shouted in battle, but Libbie found him to be quiet and pleasant. He politely called on her—indeed, her sitting room served as a social center for the officers of Armstrong’s division. She found them high-spirited and jovial, “with apparently no thought of the future.”52

  On November 19, a Union cavalryman from another division glimpsed Custer and his wife. “She was a Splendid young Woman. Custur has a sallow complexion,” he wrote in his diary, apparently referring to his tan. “Long curly hair. Tall And as Smart as a whip. It is said he has Some indian Blood in him.”53

  Victory and winter combined to slow army life in the Shenandoah. After weeks in the heroic role, Armstrong again attended to institutional duties. He trained Tom to be a staff officer, ordered target practice twice a week, inspected the men’s sabers, conducted inventories of wagons and supplies, and served on a court-martial. He developed procedures for repairing weapons in the field, and the Ordnance Office of the War Department disseminated them to other units. The man who had graduated from West Point last in his class ordered his subordinates to conduct recitations of the cavalry tactics handbook and the articles of war.54

  Whenever possible, Armstrong and Libbie went riding together. In the evening came card games with fellow officers and serenades from army bands. Libbie’s friend Nettie Humphrey held their traditional New Year’s Eve ceremony alone in Monroe. She wrote to Libbie that Jacob Greene had returned home after a prisoner exchange. On January 8, she wrote that “dear Jacob had become—dearer than ever before—and now I write to tell you that—God willing—I shall be married next Thursday.”

  Custer finally received twenty days’ leave to visit Monroe in mid-January.55 Back in Michigan, he participated in public receptions, visited families of his old Michigan Brigade troopers (though the unit never did join his division), delivered speeches, and enjoyed “a good deal of ceremony & display,” as Daniel Bacon wrote impatiently.

  On February 5, in the Presbyterian Church, Armstrong came to Jesus. Three days later Judge Bacon told him that he cherished his salvation more than anything else. He wrote with rare warmth. Libbie “is made so happy by marriage, I am made like happy.…You are all I could desire or wish and I am not without pride at your well earned and fully appreciated reputation.”56

  Custer’s own father forgave his political heresy. “I will say that you have no superiors and I am proud that I am the father of such a noble boy,” he wrote. Like a true Jacksonian, Emmanuel took special pride that his son was a self-made man. “You have clumb up the ladder of fame and honor your self what a great satisfaction it is to me.” He, too, wrote that what made him happiest was Armstrong’s turn to God. All he prayed for was that his son should “stick to and defend the…banner of King Jesus.”57 He did not even mind that Armstrong converted in the Bacons’ church.

  And yet, hanging over it all was the likelihood of Armstrong’s early death. Judge Bacon wrote to his sister, “The war does not end and what awaits us no one can know.…It is a miracle how Custer has escaped, yet he may be the next victim.”58

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  BACK IN VIRGINIA, CUSTER MADE elaborate plans for a party at his headquarters—now changed to another home near Winchester. He invited Senators Zachariah Chandler, Benjamin Wade, and Jacob Howard, and Representative Kellogg, among others, and all their wives. “I promise you a good time,” Custer wrote to the hard-drinking Chandler.59

  It never came off. Grant ordered Sheridan to march out of the Valley and destroy the James River Canal and the Virginia Central Railroad, prior to the start of the spring campaign. On February 27, 10,000 cavalrymen marched from Winchester. “It was a grand sight, requiring hours in the passing,” wrote a local woman. The New Yor
k Herald reported,

  The 3d division, Gen. Custar [sic]…was particularly remarked for their soldierly appearance. At its head was their gallant leader, who had won a proud name by his intrepid deeds. His appearance on this occasion was unusually striking. He looked more youthful than ever. His golden locks streamed over his shoulders, and his jaunty velvet suit of clothes, his sailor shirt, adjusted after the most approved man-of-war style, looked quite picturesque.

  On March 2, Custer attacked and destroyed nearly the entire remnant of Early’s army at Waynesboro, capturing 1,600 men, eleven guns, and the supply train. Early escaped almost alone. Reuniting his division with Sheridan’s column, Custer proceeded east, heading toward a rendezvous with the Army of the Potomac. Sheridan intended to take part in final battles against the Army of Northern Virginia.60

  On reaching White House Landing on the Virginia shore, Custer immediately wrote to Senator Chandler. He had written just prior to departing the Valley, he noted, “but fear you never read my letter.” Libbie had attended Lincoln’s second inauguration and had danced with Chandler at a ball, but he said nothing of the letter to her. “The object of writing you at that time was to ask you to interest yourself on my behalf at the War Department and to try and secure promotion for me,” he wrote. “I believe that your powerful influence exerted at the Dept. in my favor would obtain for me the full rank of Major General [of Volunteers], & I am now only Brevet Major Genl.…I believe there are vacancies in that grade now and I am confident your influence would easily secure one for me.” This direct request for patronage reveals the purpose of Custer’s party invitation. He listed the victories and trophies won by his units, and said that Sheridan had recommended him for the higher rank. He added, “I have been urged by my friends in the Army to make effort to obtain the appointment of Brigadier in the regular army.”

  That would be an astonishing leap. Few generalships existed in the Regular Army; it was a permanent institution and far smaller than the U.S. Volunteers, which would be dissolved at the end of the war. Scores of men had serious claims to be Regular Army generals, many with experience as corps or army commanders, and most with more years in the army than this twenty-five-year-old division commander. His elevation in the U.S. Volunteers under the emergency conditions of war was one thing; changing his captain’s bars for a general’s star in the Regular Army was another.

  But this was precisely what impelled Custer to reach—perhaps to overreach—now. This moment was his only chance to slip through the usually locked gate of seniority that guarded access to higher rank in the Regular Army. His wartime achievements made it just barely possible, but the war approached its end. Once the Confederacy surrendered, his opportunity would disappear.

  Not all ambition is alike. Americans admired men who sought to advance through achievement, and had mixed feelings at best about those who relied on favoritism. (Women could advance only through marriage, generally speaking.) Custer’s moral contradiction is that he combined the two. He demonstrated his merit, yet he himself practiced nepotism and named old friends to his staff. He tirelessly worked the levers and pulleys of patronage to help himself. Was this routine at the time? Yes, but so was moralizing about it. Custer himself scorned Wilson for rising through Grant’s favor.

  Custer based his argument to Chandler less on his merit than his political strength. “I have friends in both houses who would aid you in this matter,” he wrote. “I believe Secretary Stanton is well disposed towards me. Hon. John A. Bingham, an intimate friend of the Secretary, would do all in his power to effect my promotion.” (Bingham did write to Stanton on April 3.) Less-deserving officers were “laboring” for promotion, he warned. He asked Chandler to act immediately.61

  Did he act? Custer would not know until after he had fought the final battles of the war.

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  RAIN FELL ON CUSTER’S HEAD as the wagon train creaked and splashed toward him on the morning of March 30. Custer was relieved to see it. The wagons carried tents. His division had been marching through a constant downpour since the previous morning. He had spent the night in the open, lying next to the road, covered only in a rubber poncho. He awoke in a puddle of water two inches deep.

  He watched alongside Eliza Brown. When he awoke in that puddle, he told her, the first thing he thought of was Libbie. “Oh of course. You would think of Miss Libbie the first thing,” Brown said sarcastically. “And I expect you wanted her there with you. And Miss Libbie is just willing to come. If she had been there last night and found herself in the water she would have said, ‘Eliza, can’t you give me something just to keep my feet out of the water, but I am very comfortable. This is nice.’ ”62

  Eliza Brown’s brazen sarcasm with her brigadier boss gives a tiny glimpse into the way the war had empowered African Americans, and how they had transformed the war in turn. Historian Steven Hahn calls the Civil War the greatest slave rebellion in history. The Emancipation Proclamation by itself broke no shackles. The mere proximity of Union army campfires took no whips out of overseers’ hands. The enslaved moved themselves off farms and plantations and into federal lines, asserting their autonomy in a positive act of resistance. Many carried it further by enlisting as soldiers, with profound implications for the status of African Americans. “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U. S.…there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship,” Frederick Douglass declared. Brown’s assertiveness reflected a revolution in race relations.

  The slave rebellion threw the Confederacy into an existential crisis. The purpose of secession was to preserve a society based on black slavery. It was predicated upon the principle that all men are created unequal, that the African was uniquely suited to slavery and unsuited to freedom. The slaves themselves destroyed that premise.63

  Meanwhile, the military situation had grown dire for the South. Union forces had seized the length of the Mississippi, isolated Texas, captured Tennessee, controlled most of the Confederate coastline, and occupied Atlanta. Sheridan had triumphed in that graveyard of Union generals’ careers, the Shenandoah Valley. General William T. Sherman had marched his army through Georgia to the sea, cutting a swathe of devastation. Over the winter the trend had continued. On December 15 and 16, 1864, the rebel field army in the West was routed at Nashville. On January 15, 1865, Gen. Adelbert Ames—a class ahead of Custer at West Point—had led his division into Fort Fisher, shutting down ship traffic to Wilmington, North Carolina, the last operational Confederate port. In February Sherman marched north into South Carolina, destroying as he went, headed toward the Army of the Potomac.

  Despite all this, Jefferson Davis refused to accept defeat. Much of the South remained unoccupied; Sherman’s marches were raids, not true invasions or occupations. The Confederate army had some 100,000 troops—only a quarter of the military-age white males in the South, leaving a large reserve of manpower. Lee was outnumbered two to one in the siege of Petersburg, but he had worked miracles in the past with a similar numerical disadvantage. If he could break free and seize the initiative before Sherman arrived, who knew how the momentum might shift?64

  To cut off and destroy Lee’s army, the last truly formidable Confederate force, Grant ordered Sheridan to take the Cavalry Corps and capture Five Forks, a strategic crossroads beyond the siege lines. And so Custer led his division on a rain-soaked march west from Petersburg.

  As fighting broke out on the 31st, Custer’s wet and muddy division handled the inglorious task of protecting the wagon train for Sheridan’s force. Yet Custer felt good. He had received a long letter from his “little durl,” full of sexual double entendres, such as a reference to “a soft place upon Somebody’s carpet.” At midnight came a staff officer bearing a silk headquarters flag Libbie had sewn herself—a swallowtail guidon, red and blue with white crossed sabers. Even better, Governor Reuben Fenton of New York wrote to ask Custer to place a certain officer on his staff. Custer liked the officer, but what mattered most wa
s putting a key Republican in his debt.65

  A staff officer arrived with orders to come forward to stabilize the line. Custer’s 3rd Cavalry Division consisted of three brigades under Cols. William Wells, Henry Capehart, and Alexander Pennington, who had brilliantly led the artillery previously attached to the Michigan Brigade. Custer dismounted his men and put them into a curved front defending Dinwiddie Court House.

  They faced some 19,000 Confederates led by Maj. Gen. George Pickett, withdrawn from the trenches around Petersburg. Lee ordered him to hold Five Forks to block or if possible crush the Union flanking maneuver. After a day of seesaw fighting, Grant reinforced Sheridan with the V Corps of infantry. On April 1, after long delays, the Union foot soldiers stormed the rebels’ left as Custer attacked their right—his band playing “Hail Columbia!” during his charge over and around the enemy fortifications. After a vicious struggle, Confederate resistance collapsed. Pickett lost perhaps half his men, most as prisoners, a fifth of the total strength of the Army of Northern Virginia.66

  The next day, April 2, Grant sent the Army of the Potomac forward in a massive assault on Lee’s lines. He broke through. Lee evacuated Petersburg and fled to the west. Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government escaped Richmond, setting fires that destroyed large parts of the city—extinguished by black Union soldiers who occupied the rebel capital.67

  Custer kept moving as Sheridan drove on, hoping to cut off the Confederate retreat. Actually two Custers kept moving, for Tom rode with Armstrong.

  What is it about brothers, that the same relationship can be so distinct in different families? The younger can see the older as a friend, hero, or villain. The difference lies in the deep snowfall of hours spent together at an age when they are too young to be anything other than authentic. As children, siblings see each other’s true natures. Tom saw his brother as a hero, and that is to Armstrong’s credit. Confident in his own ability, vibrating with energy and ambition, Armstrong towered over Tom in many ways, all of which the younger brother admired. He was now a national celebrity, indeed all the things the teenager Tom aspired to be. And yet, Tom’s own opportunity for distinction slipped away with the escaping Confederate army. The hour of the hero ticked toward its end.