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

by Stiles, T. J.

  His career as a major general of U.S. Volunteers ended abruptly. On January 27, orders reached the headquarters of the Department of Texas mustering George Armstrong Custer out of the U.S. Volunteers effective February 1. Custer sent a flurry of final orders to Greene as Libbie and Eliza Brown packed. “Hurry up the close of business,” he wrote. And it was over. They went to Galveston, where they boarded a crowded steamship and plunged into a sea that was, yes, stormy.70

  Ten

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  THE POLITICIAN

  GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER was sick—terribly, violently sick. Caught in a storm on the short sea voyage between Galveston and New Orleans, helplessly tossed about in his cabin on an old blockade runner, he could not control the contents of his stomach.1

  His life emptied out on the return from Texas. He had identified himself as a war fighter, a boy general—all stripped away now, leaving him only a boy. He was still a soldier—a Regular Army captain—but “boy captain” did not exactly ring out in glory.

  Who was he? Who would he be? Like other men, he was defined by desire: for rank, money, adventure, control, attention, affection, and power. Along with desire came intelligence, curiosity, energy, love, loyalty, and a sense of decency; also prejudice, defensiveness, self-absorption, and a capacity for self-deception. There was something else as well. He wanted to live an extraordinary life and, more important, to be seen as extraordinary. “My every thought was ambitious,” Custer wrote to Libbie a year later, as a youth looking back on his youth, “not to be wealthy, not to be learned, but to be great. I desired to link my name with acts and men, and in such a manner as to be a mark of honor, not only to the present, but to future generations.” Born poor and provincial, he dreaded the mundane.2

  Constant striving to be seen as exceptional placed a peculiar kind of stress on his personality, as ambition for achievement alone would not. His audience ultimately directed his actions. In 1866, this sensitivity to the watchers would send him on a wildly careening course as he sought to find a place for himself—and to define that self.

  He began in Washington, where he went immediately after leaving Texas. On March 10, he was sworn in as a witness in a hearing room in the Capitol, before the Florida, Louisiana, and Texas subcommittee of Congress’s Joint Committee on Reconstruction. He faced Senator George H. Williams of Oregon, Representative A. J. Rogers of New Jersey, and Representative Elihu B. Washburne of Illinois. As he answered the first question, he stepped into a burgeoning conflict between President Johnson and the Republican-controlled Congress.3

  “When first announced, Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policy enjoyed overwhelming Northern support,” writes the historian Eric Foner. Johnson’s fierce denunciations of secession as treason made him appear, at first, to be a natural ally of the Radical faction of Republicans. Custer had believed so, quoting the president’s saying, “Treason is a crime,” in a letter to Radical senator Chandler.4

  The impression would not last long. Johnson shared the views of his closest advisers, the influential Blair family: the elderly Francis P. Blair, once close to Andrew Jackson, and sons Frank Jr., a major general in the Union Army, and Montgomery, once Lincoln’s postmaster general. As Foner writes, “The key to postwar politics, they believed, lay in changing the focus of debate from slavery to race.” The people of the North were happy to see slavery destroyed, but accepting blacks as equals was another matter entirely. “The soldiers are in great trouble to know who to vote for,” Henry Morrill wrote from Texas in October 1865. “They don’t want to vote for negro suffrage or for a nominee of the [Copperhead] party”—that is, a Democrat. Johnson would win such voters, the Blairs argued, with fierce Unionism and blatant racism.5

  Radicals believed that Reconstruction would be meaningless without black suffrage. With prejudice prevalent even among Republicans, though, moderates took the lead in Congress. They hoped to cooperate with the president.

  But the political dynamic was changing. Starting in May 1865, Johnson pardoned all but the wealthiest secessionists, and issued proclamations allowing white voters in the South to elect conventions to reorganize their own state governments. New legislatures convened and passed the punitive black codes, mentioned earlier. Civil authorities at all levels in the South condoned violence against both freed slaves and white Unionists. Former Confederates tried to “restore all of slavery but its name,” one Yankee wrote. Rather than punish treason, the president’s proclamations seemed to reward it. As the new Congress met in December 1865, more and more Northerners asked, What was the war for?6

  At first neither congressional leaders nor President Johnson wished to fight. Johnson delivered a temperate annual message, acknowledging Congress’s right to reject newly elected representatives and senators from the Southern states. In Congress, moderates John A. Bingham in the House and Lyman Trumbull in the Senate pushed a program of partial civil equality and personal safety for African Americans, not suffrage. They believed the president agreed with them.

  In February 1866 Congress passed an extension of the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau. To everyone’s surprise, Johnson vetoed it on February 19. He did so in part on traditional Democratic principles, condemning the bureau as an “immense patronage” that the nation could not afford. And he attacked it for leading African Americans into a “life of indolence,” saying the nation had never offered such benefits to “our own people.” He also delivered a fierce Washington’s Birthday speech that implied congressional Radicals were planning his assassination.

  Alarmed by Johnson’s unexpected opposition, Republicans prepared a piece of legislation that reached much further: the first federal civil rights bill in American history. As it moved toward passage in early March, anticipations rose of a much more serious confrontation with the White House.7

  This was the moment when Custer testified before the subcommittee of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. Judging by his recent letters to Senator Chandler, he did not grasp the extent of the conflict brewing on Capitol Hill. Cultivating Radicals had long been his strategy for advancement; he saw no reason to change it.

  And so, as Senator Williams posed questions, Custer answered truthfully. Unrepentant rebels dominated Texas. “I have within my possession letters from prominent Union men in the state, saying that if the troops were to be withdrawn they wished to be informed of it, for the purpose of making arrangements to leave when the troops did,” he said. “It would be unsafe and unwise for them to remain.” The rebels had expected punishment. Leniency “has led the people of the South to forget the enormity of the crime they committed by engaging in the rebellion.” They wanted to be allowed to elect their old secessionist leaders to public office.

  “There is a very strong feeling of hostility towards the freedmen as a general thing,” he declared, abandoning his own criticisms of former slaves. If old slaveholders had their way, “a system of laws regulating labor would be passed which would virtually place the freedmen under the entire control of their former owners.”

  “I have paid considerable attention to the action of the Freedmen’s Bureau,” he added. “I am firmly of the opinion that unless the present bureau or some substitute is maintained for an indefinite period, great wrongs and an immense amount of oppression would be entailed upon the freedmen.” He said he had heard of secret terrorist organizations, and reported murders of blacks by whites “merely from this feeling of hostility to them as a class.” African Americans, he declared, were universally loyal, eager to educate themselves, and willing to work. He even offered evidence in support of black suffrage, saying, “I believe the freedmen would consult their own interest in casting their votes, and, judging from their conduct during the past war, their votes would always be cast in favor of loyalty and union.”

  Historians agree that Custer spoke honestly and accurately about the state of affairs. But he contradicted his own private statements, as well as his long-held political convictions. To some degree he was pragmatic. When he talked
about the acquiescence of former rebels to the Union victory, it sounded as if he were describing himself, seated in a Republican Congress: “To use their own words, they ‘accept the situation,’ but I think their motives are entirely selfish…it is from a desire to obtain the benefits of the government, rather than to give the government any support.” He wanted to be a general, and he needed Republican backing for confirmation. One critic of his testimony wrote that it “goes to show that a Major General’s is better than a Captain’s pay.” He also needed to shore up his reputation after the uproar over his treatment of his troops, and he wanted to counter a report that he had given a disloyal speech.

  Yet his testimony was too expansive to be purely mercenary. When cornered he hedged with wordy obfuscation—but not this time. His answers were clear, direct, and true. Calculating or not, Custer did the right thing, and at some level he knew it.8

  The evidence from Custer and other officers, Foner writes, “altered the mood in Congress by eroding the plausibility of Johnson’s central assumption—that the Southern states could be trusted to manage their own affairs without federal oversight.” The Radicals singled Custer out for praise, and their enemies attacked him in personal terms. A reporter for the conservative Republican New York Times criticized not only his testimony but “his glaring eccentricities,” and added, “Officers upon Gen. Sheridan’s staff, and others, asked me to say a kind word for the erratic General.…Notwithstanding this his brother officers had informed me that he had upon several occasions made some injudicious and offensive remarks, and abused his men.”9

  Soon after Custer’s appearance, Congress sent the civil rights bill to the White House for Johnson’s signature. It did not confer the vote on African Americans, but it did a great deal. It defined the “fundamental rights” of citizens, regardless of race: the right to make contracts, be paid for work, own property, enjoy personal security, and have equal access to the courts and equal penalties for crimes. It gave federal authorities the power to enforce these rights.

  Congress hesitated at some of the implications of its own work. It adopted wording intended to exclude American Indians living in their own autonomous communities (“Indians not taxed”) and Chinese residents (“persons…subject to any foreign power”), in large part out of bigotry.10 But even in those cases it settled on grounds other than race or ethnicity. Almost in spite of itself, Congress moved toward a truly universal definition of individual rights. And it made the central government the protector of freedom, extending federal power to the local level as never before. (The exception was the Fugitive Slave Act, which had precisely the opposite purpose.)

  Revolutionary or not, it was uncontroversial among Republicans. Protecting the freed people, a Republican newspaper declared, “follows from the suppression of the rebellion.…The nation is dishonored if it hesitates in this.” If Johnson rejected it, he would reject the party that had elected him vice president. An Ohio politician wrote to Senator John Sherman, “If the President vetoes the Civil Rights bill, I believe we shall be obliged to draw our swords for a fight and throw away the scabbards.”

  On March 27, Johnson vetoed it. Again he objected in traditional Democratic terms, calling it a “stride toward centralization.” But he went further. He opposed any attempt to legislate “a perfect equality of the white and colored race,” and rejected African American citizenship. He tried to terrify the public with the possibility that blacks might vote, sit on juries, or marry whites. To use an anachronism, he argued that the bill would inflict reverse racism: “The distinction of race and color is, by the bill, made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race.”

  The veto’s political impact was immediate and overwhelming. As one newspaper declared, “The Separation Complete.” A war between the president and congressional Republicans had begun.11

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  AS THIS NATIONAL CRISIS ERUPTED, Custer remained on Capitol Hill. He socialized with Senator Chandler and attended church with his wife. He went to Secretary of War Stanton’s office, where Stanton—now emerging as a Radical stalwart—saw him waiting. “Custer, stand up. I want to see you all over once more. It does me good to look at you again!” Custer mentioned the reports that he had made treasonous comments in Texas, but Stanton said he never believed it. “He seemed so glad to see me,” Custer wrote to Libbie, at home in Monroe. He learned that Tom’s application for a Regular Army commission had been accepted. Stanton said, “I tell you, Custer, there is nothing in my power to grant I would not do, if you would ask me.” Custer said he was offering quite a lot. “Well, I mean it,” he replied.

  Custer worked his connections to Chandler, Stanton, and other Radicals to help himself and his friends. “You would be surprised…for how many I have procured appointments” in the army, he wrote to Libbie. The controversies in Texas, it seems, left his celebrity intact. Senators and representatives left their cards for him. Photographers and sculptors asked him to sit for them. Only Eliza Brown had seen enough of him for the moment. He wrote that she left to see her “old Missus,” the wife of the couple that had held her in slavery; more likely she sought friends and family.12

  As the separation between the president and Congress widened, though, Custer’s conservative political convictions reemerged. He was troubled by the Copperhead taint of the Democratic Party, but his antebellum Jacksonian politics had changed little. He believed in a limited and economical federal government, and held that America was a white man’s country. He considered the Republican bills to be unconstitutional and dangerous, and was cheered by President Johnson’s firm stand.

  “I think if I stay here much longer and Andy Johnson remains firm, the Constitution will be able to stand alone,” he wrote to Libbie on March 12—a hint that he personally spoke against the civil rights bill. “A grand political meeting is to be held next Wednesday evening to endorse President Johnson. I should like to attend, but business will prevent.” On March 18, he revealed the depth of his political engagement. “Am awaiting the acting of Congress on an important bill (not the Army Bill which passed the Senate last week) in which I am interested in as to my future,” he wrote. “My confidence in the strength of the Constitution is increasing daily while Andy is as firm and upright as a tombstone.…He has grown.…He is a very strong Union man.”13

  Custer reinforced his conservatism with a visit to New York. He lodged at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, a vast edifice opposite Madison Square with a staff of 400—“a larger and handsomer building than Buckingham Palace,” as the London Times called it in 1860. It pioneered such innovations as private bathrooms and the passenger elevator. He told Libbie that he socialized with the Chandlers, visited the actress Maggie Mitchell, looked at paintings, attended the theater, shopped at A. T. Stewart’s famous department store, “and enjoyed a drive on the Harlem Lane and the famous Bloomingdale Road,” the broad thoroughfares of rural upper Manhattan where Cornelius Vanderbilt and other wealthy men raced their expensive trotting horses.

  The politically influential men of Wall Street cultivated Custer. They took him to eat at the Manhattan Club, for example. Located in a palatial building on Fifth Avenue at 15th Street, its rooms decorated with marble and hardwood paneling, the club was organized in 1865 by a group of Democratic financiers, including August Belmont and Samuel L. M. Barlow (both General McClellan’s political mentors), Augustus Schell, and Schell’s partner Horace Clark—Vanderbilt’s son-in-law and a former congressman who had opposed the expansion of slavery into Kansas before the war. The Manhattan Club served as headquarters for this faction of wealthy “silk-stocking” Democrats, who battled William Tweed for control of Tammany Hall, the organization that dominated the city. They provided national leadership for a party struggling with its reputation for disloyalty. And they strongly supported Andrew Johnson.14

  “Oh, these New York people are so kind to me,” Custer wrote to Libbie. The influential Barlow invited Custer to a reception at his house one Sunday evening, where he mingled wi
th Paul Morphy, the great chess prodigy of the era, along with rich and famous men. “I would like to become wealthy in order to make a permanent home here. They say I must not leave the army until I am ready to settle here.”

  Custer’s words contradict the image of him as a man of the frontier. He had that peculiar susceptibility of the rural, midwestern, ambitious boy for the cosmopolitan center, for the culture and intensity of New York—especially when it welcomed him. He saw himself depicted in a painting of Union war heroes. Escorted to Wall Street, he attended a session of the stock exchange. The brokers gave him six cheers, and he made a few remarks from the president’s chair. His new friends hosted a breakfast for him that included the lawyer and Democratic leader Charles O’Conor, the poet William Cullen Bryant, and the historian and diplomat George Bancroft. He socialized with Pleasonton at the home of John Jacob Astor III, and he almost certainly visited McClellan.

  Custer’s friends invited him to take part in the new craze for masked balls at the Academy of Music, “New York’s sanctum sanctorum of high culture,” as two historians of the city write. “Nouveau riche Wall Street brokers in fancy dress rubbed elbows and much else with the city’s assembled demimondaines, attired in costumes that exposed much, if not all, of their persons. As the champagne flowed, modesty was abandoned and the parties escalated to Mardi Gras levels.” Custer attended one such “bal masqué” at the Academy of Music on April 14. He dressed as the devil, with red silk tights, black velvet cape trimmed with gold lace, and a black silk mask. Thomas Nast included Custer in a drawing of the ball for Harper’s Weekly, surrounding it with political caricatures, including one of Johnson vetoing the Freedmen’s Bureau bill.15