“You cannot imagine my anxiety regarding your whereabouts, for the reason that, if you are now at Wallace, you can join me in about six days, and we can be together all summer,” he wrote to her. He did not know that Libbie was now at Fort Riley, nor that the New York Times and other newspapers had reported rumors that the Indians had overwhelmed his column and killed him. “I have never been in a more uncertain frame of mind about you, than since I returned here,” Libbie wrote on June 27. “The road between Hays and Harker grows more and more unsafe, and the officers say we came away just in time.” Sherman, she said, had advised her to wait out the summer quietly. “Quietly! He may talk about living quietly, but I cannot.”88
As Custer marched toward Fort Wallace, he knew—or should have known—that he had failed. He had irritated his superiors, put his wife in danger, and still had not settled her anger or discontent. His own men abandoned him. White regiments in the West after the Civil War suffered staggering rates of desertion; in 1871, the overall rate would peak at 32.6 percent. Custer’s troopers faced forced marches, cholera, scurvy, arrest for buying food to prevent scurvy, head shaving, and ferocious discipline that extended even to swearing. “The soldiers are frequently heard canvassing the best method of leaving the command,” wrote one reporter with the 7th Cavalry. Between July 6 and 8, thirty-four men deserted Custer’s column.89
On July 7, in full daylight, a dozen men broke from camp with all their arms and equipment. Custer ordered Maj. Joel Elliott to take a force and stop them. As Elliott mounted his horse, Custer came up and said, “I want you to shoot them.” Elliott overtook four of the men and ordered them to halt and lay down their arms. He believed that one of them, Pvt. Charles Johnson, was starting to “present” his carbine—raising it to shoot. Elliott and his men opened fire. Bullets struck three of the deserters, including Johnson, who was wounded in the head. They loaded the casualties into a wagon and herded their unharmed prisoners back to camp. The troopers crowded around the wagon when it rolled in. Custer loudly forbade Dr. Coates to treat the deserters. Private Johnson died from his wounds.
At least one observer never forgave Custer. Capt. Robert West, a hard-drinking veteran of the plains, decided to find justice for the men Custer had ordered shot.90
Custer pushed his dwindling column over the plains. He found the trail of the missing Kidder and his escort. A day later they caught up to them: a dozen bodies splayed on the ground, including Kidder, ten soldiers, and Red Bead, a Lakota scout. “Every individual of the party had been scalped and his skull broken,” Custer later wrote. Only Red Bead kept his hair. Medicine Bill Comstock, Custer’s guide, said Indians would not take away the scalps of men of their own tribe—suggesting to him that Pawnee Killer’s Oglalas had ambushed Kidder’s force. “Even the clothes of all the party had been carried away; some of the bodies were lying in ashes,” Custer wrote. “The sinews of the arms and legs had been cut away, the nose of every man hacked off, and the features otherwise defaced.” He observed dozens of arrows sticking out of each naked corpse. Custer ordered a trench dug, and the dead were buried in silence.91
The next evening, July 13, Custer and his men finally emerged from this nightmare landscape to the haven of Fort Wallace. But Libbie was not there.
Soon after, Barnitz came to Wallace from an assignment in Colorado. “Found Genl. Custer’s command encamped near the post,” he wrote to his wife, “the General himself having gone post haste, with an escort of 75 picked men, to Harker, to see ‘Libby!’ They do say that he just squandered the cavalry along the road!” On August 5 he added, “Genl. Custer is not very popular here! The officers of the regiment do not speak of him in amiable terms!” According to rumor, Custer had been arrested. In army slang, he explained, an officer under arrest had the measles. “If he has the measles,” he wrote, “I hope he has them powerful bad!!”92
—
AT TEN O’CLOCK in the morning on September 17, 1867, in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the first witness took the stand in Custer’s court-martial. He was a twenty-three-year-old New Yorker with a neat little handlebar mustache barely wider than his mouth, heavy dark eyebrows, and an oval face. Asked to state his name, rank, and regiment, he replied, “L. M. Hamilton, Captain, 7th U.S. Cavalry.”
He said he recognized the accused and had served under his command during the summer. The judge advocate, Capt. Robert Chandler, asked primarily about what happened after Custer’s column reached Fort Wallace on July 13. Hamilton explained that Custer ordered six privates and a noncommissioned officer to be drawn from each company for a detail, totaling seventy-two men and three officers, commanded by Hamilton. The force left Fort Wallace on July 16, escorting Custer on the 150-mile march along the Smoky Hill River to Big Creek, near Fort Hays. They arrived on July 18. Hamilton briefly described an Indian attack at Downer’s Station during the march, but mostly answered questions about how fast they marched and wore out the horses. Custer, he said, left the men at Big Creek and drove an ambulance to Fort Harker.
Those who testify at trials tell stories, but in fragments selected by their questioners. Their tales are largely out of chronological order; they repeat some incidents again and again, and leave out others entirely. The transcripts do not reveal the emotional strain on the witnesses and the accused. Hamilton was a very young man. He admired Custer. He tried to minimize the impact of his words.93
On September 22, Lieutenant Cooke testified to many of the same points. He said that he rode in an ambulance with Custer and his brother Tom from Fort Hays to Fort Harker, driving sixty-seven miles in thirteen hours.94
That same day, Thomas B. Weir, recently promoted to captain, took the stand. A wide-faced man with narrow eyes, Weir authenticated Smith’s various orders to Custer, which he had helped to prepare as Smith’s adjutant. The last, dated July 13, 1867, directed Custer to use Fort Wallace as a base. It read, “The cavalry should be kept constantly employed.”
Captain Parsons, Custer’s counsel, cross-examined Weir. He asked, “At what hour on the night of the 18th and 19th did the accused arrive at Fort Harker?”
“About half past two.…Some person woke me up—it was my impression it was Gen. Smith, and said Gen. Custer is here. I got up and went over to Gen. Smith’s room and saw him there.”
“Was that the only place you saw him?”
“I saw him from that time till he left on the train.” Since the fall, the railroad had been constructed far beyond Fort Riley, reaching Fort Harker.
“On what train and where for?”
“Fort Riley.”
“Did you go with him to the train?”
“Yes sir.”
“For what purpose?”
“Simply socially.”95
A rumor would later circulate that Custer had left Fort Wallace for Riley because he had heard that Libbie was having an affair with Weir, and attacked him physically when he arrived at Fort Harker. Parsons asked Weir about their friendly interaction simply to establish that Custer believed that he had permission to go to Fort Riley—yet the testimony undermines the tale of jealousy as well.96
Having carried Custer through from Fort Wallace to Fort Riley, the judge advocate now began to look at key incidents on his grueling march. First came the question of orders. Did Custer know that he was supposed to remain at Fort Wallace?
Capt. Charles C. Cox of the 10th Cavalry testified that he encountered Custer about thirty miles west of Fort Harker. “I gave him a dispatch that was sent to me from Gen. Smith’s headquarters,” he said. This was the order that instructed Custer to operate from Fort Wallace.
The judge advocate turned to the attack at Downer’s Station. Cox said he asked if Custer had seen any Indians; Custer replied that two men had “loitered behind the column and were taken by the Indians.” It was an unfortunate choice of words.97
Capt. Arthur B. Carpenter testified that he commanded a company of the 37th Infantry, posted at Downer’s Station. Custer and his escort arrived a little after eleven in the mornin
g on July 17, he said. “Some time after the command arrived a detachment came in…and reported that the Indians were near and that they had lost two men. After the command went away I sent out to pick up the bodies of those killed and they brought in one dead man and one wounded man.”
“Do you know whether any action was taken by the accused to recover the dead or wounded man?” asked Chandler, the judge advocate.
“I do not.”
“Did the whole command leave Downer’s Station before the dead and wounded men were brought in?”
“Yes sir, except one man who remained there at the Station.”
Carpenter discussed the incident more bluntly in a letter to his mother. “You have probably heard of that conceited upstart called Gen. Custar [sic],” he wrote on August 15. “He came through here about the middle of last month.…While at dinner his rear guard was attacked about 3 miles west of here, and those who came in reported two killed. Custar remained unconcerned—finished his dinner, and moved on without saying a word to me about the bodies, or thinking of hunting the Indians.” In prior testimony, Cooke had said Custer considered it “inexpedient” to go after the attackers, who could not be caught. Carpenter was outraged that Custer assumed that both his men were dead and abandoned them. The wounded man, Carpenter wrote, “says that he would have died before morning if I had not sent out and brought him in. That is Gen. Custer out and out.…I hope for the good of the service he will be dismissed.”98
Sgt. James Connelly took the stand. He commanded the detail attacked near Downer’s Station on July 17. He made it clear that the casualties had not been stragglers. “Gen. Custer told me to take six men and go back after a man named Young, who had his [personal] mare,” Connelly testified. “I did so, and found him.” Young’s worn-out horse was unfit to ride, so Connelly remounted him. A body of fifty to sixty Indians suddenly attacked. “They kept it up for three or four miles. One man got killed and one was wounded,” Connelly said. “That was about the hottest of the fight and we were forced to leave him on the field.” The frightened troopers fired only two shots; two galloped off to save themselves.99
Connelly’s testimony could hardly have been more damning, in the moral as well as legal sense. Custer sent Connelly and six men into danger to retrieve his personal property. Young had fallen behind because his own horse had given out due to the relentless pace of the march. The sergeant’s demoralized men had panicked when attacked. When they caught up to Custer, he chose to abandon his casualties.
The trial’s fragmented narrative now jumped to the end. On September 25, Col. Andrew J. Smith took the stand. A largely bald man with a gray mustache and beard that divided at the chin into two tufts, he answered the judge advocate’s questions without equivocation. Did Custer have permission to march from Fort Wallace to Fort Hays? “He had no orders or authority from me.” Was there important public business that might explain his movement? “None that I know of.”
The court—the judging officers—asked a question that led him to describe Custer’s arrival at Fort Harker more fully. “Gen. Custer came to my quarters between two and three o’clock at night and I don’t know that I asked the question how he came down. It was my impression he came by stage,” Smith said. The next morning Weir told him that Custer had come with a large escort, and drove an ambulance from Fort Hays. “I ordered him back the next morning [by telegraph] after I learned how he came down.” It appears that Smith, groggy at two o’clock, assumed that Custer had come on a quick visit while his men carried out their mission at Fort Wallace. Clearheaded in daylight, he was angry to learn that Custer had halted operations and diverted troops for personal reasons. Custer returned from Fort Riley on July 21 and was arrested.100
The trial now took one more jump backward in time. The judge advocate took the court back to July 7, to the lethal pursuit of the deserters from Custer’s column. To tell the story, Chandler called 1st Lt. Thomas W. Custer.
Tom answered a rapid succession of quick, pointed questions with terse sentence fragments. Bit by bit, he acknowledged that he rode under Elliott to help bring the deserters back. Tom said his brother spoke to him personally, and gave a verbal order. Chandler asked for the precise language.
“The accused spoke to me and said, ‘I want you to get on your horse and go after those deserters and shoot them down.’ That is near as I can recollect it,” Tom testified. “Maj. Elliott and Lt. Cook caught up with them before I did.…I saw the men laying down their arms and Maj. Elliott and Lt. Cooke rode toward them. One of the men, I think it was a man named Johnson, ran to get his carbine and a man named Atkins, a scout who was along with the party…[rode] up to the man and said he would blow his brains out if he attempted to touch his carbine. In the meantime I saw Maj. Elliott and Lt. Cooke firing on them.” Tom opened fire as well. He acknowledged that Johnson probably did not have his carbine when he was hit.
On cross-examination, Parsons guided Tom into providing more context. The night before, Tom had lost ten men from his own company; he was not alone. The deserters took arms, equipment, rations, and ammunition. The pursuers brought some back unhurt.
Chandler returned to ask some final questions, two of them devastating. “You mentioned that as you approached you saw them laying down their arms; had they laid down their arms at the time you saw Maj. Elliott and Lt. Cook firing on them?”
“I believe they had,” Tom answered.
“Were those three men wounded by reason of carrying out the order of the accused to shoot them?”
The question cornered Tom. It forced him to affirm or deny his brother’s guilt on the most serious charge. The transcript gives no hint of his emotions. It merely records his final two words: “Yes sir.”101
Dr. Coates testified on the 26th about Custer’s denial of medical attention for the wounded deserters. “I had at that time an idea the objection was made for effect. There had been a great many desertions—some 30 or 40 the night previous—and the men were crowding around the wagon and I had an idea the General wished to make an impression on the men that they would be dealt with in the severest and harshest manner.” But Custer took him aside and said, “You can attend to them after a while.”102
The court went into recess.
—
FOR ALL THAT HAD HAPPENED during Custer’s own desertion—his flight from Fort Wallace—the only thing that mattered to him was how it ended.
Libbie was at home in Fort Riley when she heard “the clank of a sabre on our gallery, and with it the quick, springing steps of feet,” and Armstrong burst in. Eliza Brown, she wrote, began “half crying, scolding as she did when overjoyed, vibrated between kitchen and parlor, and finally fell to cooking, as a safety-valve.” What Libbie did not record was whether she forgave her husband.103
She did. “He took a leave himself, knowing none would be granted him,” she wrote to Rebecca Richmond. “When he ran the risk of a court-martial in leaving Wallace he did it expecting the consequences…and we are determined to not live apart again, even if he leaves the army otherwise so delightful to us.”
The precise sins that drove the couple apart that spring and summer remain uncertain. Her letter to Richmond—and Armstrong’s actions—suggest that she required more from him than mere words. She wanted atonement—a sacrifice. So he defied orders and deserted his men, proving that he would do anything to get her back. She accepted his gift. “There was in that summer of 1867 one long, perfect day,” she wrote in a memoir. “It was mine, and…it is still mine, for time and for eternity.”104
Now he paid for it. He was indignant, unable to believe that he was being tried. All of his life, exceptions had been made for him. This trial was not Custer luck at all—but he tried to convince himself that it was.
“Everything is working charmingly,” Custer wrote to a friend after the court recessed on September 26. Captain West, who had preferred the charges for shooting the deserters, “is drinking himself to death, has the delirium tremens to such an extent that al
though summoned as a witness by the prosecution they have determined not to allow him to appear on witness stand.” General Sheridan had written privately to offer advice, and to tell him that everyone in Washington “regarded my trial as an attempt by Hancock to cover up his failures.”105
As the trial approached, Custer drafted an article about the Hancock Expedition for Turf, Field and Farm, an outdoor sporting magazine, and mailed it to them on September 9. Under the pseudonym Nomad, he wrote self-deprecatingly about killing his wife’s horse. He wrote nothing about his trial, dwelling instead on the exotic—eating broiled rattlesnake and beaver tail, hunting buffalo. He finished another piece on September 29.
With these articles, he began to craft new identities for himself: those of writer and plainsman. He layered them onto his old persona; for example, he referred to himself as a frequent visitor to Niblo’s Garden, the Manhattan theater, which signaled that he was a cosmopolitan sophisticate as well as rugged outdoorsman. And though he described himself as a newcomer to the Great Plains, he wrote in a voice of hard-won authority, as if determined to erase the humiliations of 1867. The editor liked his work, declaring, “General Custer wields the pen almost as skillfully as he does the sword.”106
During the trial, Libbie wrote that they had had “a delightful time” at Fort Leavenworth. “The court called some of our warmest friends here from the regiment and we had company incessantly.” Davis of Harper’s, on the other hand, was “an insufferable bore. His conceit confuses me.” She spent days copying documents for the trial. The whole thing was “nothing but a plan of persecution toward Autie, but I have no alarming fears of the result.”107
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