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

by Stiles, T. J.

  Letters complaining of terror continued to arrive in Washington. White Unionist Thomas Webb wrote to President Grant that he had been threatened with a revolver because he wasn’t a “reb.” W. D. Linkins complained to Grant that “the grand wizzard” had forced him to take the Klan oath, or else “it is deth with mee.”14

  On September 24, 1873, Hiram C. Whitley, chief of the Secret Service, submitted a “Special Report to the Department of Justice on Outrages in Kentucky.” As head of the only federal detective force (the Federal Bureau of Investigation was decades in the future), he had conducted an extensive undercover investigation of the Klan in Owen, Henry, and Franklin counties. He submitted evidence for “upwards of fifty cases.” A year after promising a quick death for the Klan, Wharton concluded, “The citizens in the infested regions are entirely subjugated or are in sympathy with the Ku-Klux.”15

  By then the crusading Akerman had been pushed out of office. The conservative secretary of state Hamilton Fish had intrigued against him, seeing his campaign against the Klan as undignified and contrary to American political traditions. Jay Gould and Collis Huntington wanted him out as well, as he had resisted the lobbying of their railroad corporations. “Even such atrocities as Ku-Kluxery do not hold their attention,” Akerman wrote of the cabinet. “The Northern mind being active and full of what is called progress runs away from the past.” He had it reversed. It was Akerman who had the active, progressive mind, and his opponents who wished to delay the future.16

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  DURING THIS WAR against racist terror, Custer enjoyed the company of the very people who led or cooperated with the Klan, as he circulated among genteel horse farms and attended meetings of the equine Kentucky Association. In Turf, Field and Farm, he depicted “the true Kentuckian” as a white man or woman who raised horses in “the Blue Grass Region.” He wrote, “The women are as charmingly beautiful as the men are proverbially chivalrous, which is saying not a little.” By contrast, he described Louisville women as phonies who hid under “pencil, paint, and hair-dye.” He sided with the rural “chivalrous” South against the crass urban South. Louisville, incidentally, was home to the Klan’s most outspoken critics in the state.17

  Custer did buy and inspect horses for the army, but he mostly wandered the turf for his own pleasure and profit, at times speculating with his own purchases. At one point Tom wrote to Libbie to warn his brother to get back to his post because Gen. Alfred Terry, commander of the Department of the South, “intends to inspect all the Kentucky Posts, so you may look out.” With their characteristic ribbing of each other, Tom wondered if “Armstrong is too confounded mean to write.…Tell him to write and let me know when that sale of horses is to come off. And he must be sure and get a fine horse for me.” Armstrong often took Libbie to the elegant Galt House in Louisville, whose society she “enjoyed so much,” he wrote. He had to talk her into returning to Elizabethtown.18

  In January 1872 came his highest-profile departure from his duties, when he joined a hunting party organized for the Russian grand duke Alexis. It was a kind of bison-killing diplomacy. As historian Paul Hutton notes, President Grant wanted to steer the visiting royalty away from Washington, where he was embarassed by a “bitter feud” between the Russian minister and Secretary of State Fish. Unlike the English or the French, the Russians had unequivocally supported the Union during the Civil War, and Grant wanted to maintain close relations despite Fish’s spat. He asked Sheridan to take the visitors on a high-plains adventure among the buffalo. Sheridan called upon two of his most trusted frontiersmen: “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Custer.19

  Custer arrived late at the hunting camp on the Nebraska plains, his wagon having broken down five miles away, forcing him to walk. He joined a party of about twenty men, including the grand duke, eight other Russians, Sheridan, Cody, and a New York Herald correspondent; they were guarded by a large escort of troops.

  “General Custer appeared in his well-known frontier buckskin hunting costume, and if instead of the comical sealskin hat he wore he had only had feathers fastened in his flowing hair, he would have passed at a distance for a great Indian Chief,” the reporter wrote. “Buffalo Bill’s dress was something similar to Custer’s.” When they found a bison herd, “the Duke and Custer charged together.…Custer charged through an open space and scattered them. He kept his eye close on a big bull that was waiting ‘to go for’ the Grand Duke.” Alexis scored the first kill, as planned; many more followed. He and Custer enjoyed each other’s company; the camp fostered camaraderie. The reporter wrote, “After dinner some songs were sung and yarns spun over the blazing camp fire, and one by one the members of the party retired to their tents.”20

  The hunt proved a great diplomatic success, though it was not perfect. On the second day of the hunt, Custer rode his horse so hard it died of exhaustion. At one point he and the grand duke chased some wounded buffalo, firing away, only to meet an enraged Sheridan. They had nearly hit him with stray bullets. He cursed at both of them and “all their kinsfolk, direct and collateral,” according to a witness. “It was a liberal education in profanity.” Alexis took it well. He and Custer posed together for a portrait with rifles in hand, Alexis with his wide, full-lipped mouth and twin fins of cheek whiskers, wearing a double-breasted jacket, a beardless Custer with a walrus mustache, short hair and receding hairline covered with his brimless sealskin cap.21

  The expedition lasted only a few days. Custer returned to Elizabethtown. The grand duke stopped there in a special train as he traveled to see Mammoth Cave. Custer met him at the station with his horses and dogs, which Alexis found much more interesting than the crowd of townspeople who came to see him. Libbie joined the royal party at Memphis, where they boarded a steamboat for a trip through the South.22

  Custer also took time out for politics. President Grant stood for reelection in 1872; this time he faced the Liberal Republican Party, a splinter faction that opposed his continuing intervention in the South. It nominated the newspaper editor Horace Greeley, long considered a Radical. The Democrats saw an opportunity. They backed the Liberal Republicans, declining to run their own man. Custer supported the decision. He did not take part in the political campaign, as he had in 1866 and 1868, but he did win national attention in one incident. At the Galt House in Louisville, he encountered Blanton Duncan, who had organized a convention of “Straight-Out Democrats” who refused to support Greeley. Custer accused him of taking a Republican bribe to split the common front against Grant. They argued, and a friend of Custer’s hit Duncan in the face.23

  Despite these distractions, Custer did in fact command Post 198, as the army officially designated the garrison in Elizabethtown. He displayed his characteristic tendency to ignore regulations. At one point he ordered a private’s horse removed from the stable to make room for his personal horse, leading to a formal protest to the Department of the South from Lt. Algernon Smith. Smith complained that Custer violated War Department orders, and had ignored him as company commander. Smith belonged to the circle of subordinates who admired their lieutenant colonel; he and his wife even shared a house with Armstrong and Libbie in 1872. Yet Custer failed to respect his place in the chain of command, to recognize the authority that matters so much to a junior officer.24

  Lt. James Calhoun joined the Custers in Elizabethtown as post adjutant. Custer’s sister Maggie came as well, because she had married Calhoun in Monroe on March 7, 1872. He was twenty-six and she was twenty. She called him Jimmie. Initially they lodged at the Hill House as well, where she learned that their landlady, a “queer old soul,” was called “Aunt Beck” by all, and called the Calhouns “children” in return. She would say Calhoun quickly, through her nose, “so that it sounds like ‘Culloon.’ ” Maggie liked Elizabethtown, Mrs. Hill, and the hotel. “Our parlor is just the dearest, prettiest little place,” she wrote to Ann Reed.25

  Her husband was less happy. In June he and Custer formally complained about the cost of lodging. Mrs. Hill told Custer he had to move
out of his room at the hotel in July. He then rented the house that the Custers shared with the Smiths. Libbie tried, for once, to do the cooking herself. “The men courageously partook of the results,” she wrote. “Being in perfect health, they survived the experiments.” Custer went to a church festival and bought so much food that the church women “postponed [their next fair] until General Custer returned from duty out of town.”26

  He responded to requests from U.S. deputy marshals for assistance, dispatching two men to make an arrest here, two men to make an arrest there, again and again. “They have no original authority and no right to use force,” he ordered, “unless specially directed by [the deputy marshal] or in the last extremity of self preservation.” His troops even went to Alabama to assist the Department of Justice.27

  “Before long I hope your duties may be changed to such as are more to your taste,” wrote a friend from England. “What you told me of the state of things in the South was very interesting,” he added, particularly since it contradicted the reporting of American newspapers, which “is, as you say, liable to be coloured by party feeling.” This echo of Custer’s views suggests that he sharply disagreed with Grant’s policies toward the South and endorsed the Democrats’ opposition to federal enforcement of civil rights laws. It appears he even sympathized with the Klan. Another British friend, Member of Parliament Samuel R. Graves, wrote, “Your explanations about the Ku Klux give a good insight into the creation and objects of this curious band and clears up what [was reported] in England.”28

  The clearest evidence of how Custer viewed Reconstruction duties came on the second to last day of 1872, when he responded to a list of questions submitted by the army’s inspector general. He reported that the Elizabethtown garrison held drills twice a day, a parade and inspection of arms once a day. The infantry had 7,600 rounds on hand, the cavalry 2,000. The new recruits spoke English. Noncommissioned officers held recitations; the articles of war were read monthly. “Officers do not wear prescribed uniform,” he wrote. Apparently he went about Kentucky in civilian clothes.

  Asked to “report upon the associations of the officers,” he wrote, “Cap. A. B. Cain is unfit for active service owing to his intemperate habits.” Unlike Custer, Cain believed the army had a duty to intervene in civil affairs to maintain order and the rule of law. It may be no coincidence that Custer singled him out for reprimand.

  Custer turned defensive, even sarcastic, when it came to his own habits. “Exactly what meaning is intended to apply to the word gambling, which is construed differently by different persons?” he asked. “I am at a loss to understand.” As always when challenged, he grew wordy and argumentative.

  If by gambling the act of betting money or risking it on games of chance or contests of speed between horses and if among games of chance are included that usually known as poker and similar games my answer is that so far as my knowledge and belief extend none of the officers of this command [have an] addiction to gambling except the Cmdg [i.e., commanding] Officer and he is addicted to it only so far as neither to interfere with his duties, violate any rule of propriety, nor meddle with other people’s business.

  This brittle reply, remarkable in an official document, speaks to the guilt he felt at his “addiction,” to use his word. It must have been pronounced if he felt compelled to admit it to his superiors. It helps explain Libbie’s dislike of the post and travels without him. Underneath his sarcasm can be heard her biting criticism, her refusal to believe he could give up gambling. He could not.

  The report seethes with discontent—at his post, his duties, and himself. He concluded with as close to a denunciation of the Ku Klux Klan Act as he could get in an official communication: “The only means and facilities for physical exercise by enlisted men are those enjoyed at drill and on fatigue duty, and in escorting Dep. U.S. Marshalls through the country, of which methods I regard the first two as highly preferable.”29

  In part through the unexpected twists of political battles, the Republicans had stumbled into a broad new vision of America. This new nation brought to fulfillment their free-labor philosophy, in which each person would work or contract for himself, regardless of race—a nation of autonomous economic agents in a free market of labor and capital. They had expanded that concept into one in which all men (and they did mean men) participated in balloting and civic responsibilities, in which all were equal before the law, with national civil rights, regardless of local prejudice. Custer rejected that vision. He refused to let go of the past.

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  TWO TRUTHS MUST BE REMEMBERED, when it comes to Custer’s hostility to Reconstruction. First, he was hardly alone in his views. The Northern public rapidly shifted back in his direction. Horace Greeley’s turn against intervention in the South showed how great a change was under way; though always erratic, Greeley had been an icon of abolitionism. Second, Custer always had a choice. He did not simply believe what everyone believed. To the contrary, he put his career at risk by opposing the views of Sheridan and campaigning against the election of Grant.

  We know the alternative. The path he rejected was the one chosen by Adelbert Ames, who graduated from West Point the same year as Custer (though one class ahead). Son of a Maine sea captain who later took up wheat milling in Minnesota, he came to the military academy as an abolitionist. Like Custer, Ames was a highly social cadet, organizing hops and parties; unlike Custer, he graduated near the top of his class. Like Custer, he fought at First Bull Run; unlike Custer, he came under fire, and refused to leave his artillery battery when badly wounded (he later received the Medal of Honor for his valor that day). Like Custer, he sought a regiment of his own; unlike Custer, he received one: the 20th Maine. Soon after he stepped down from command, the unit played a critical role in saving the Union line at Gettysburg. Afterward the men honored him with their tattered battle flag.30

  Like Custer, Ames received his general’s stars extraordinarily young, took command of a brigade, then got a division—both of infantry, though he fought with Custer at the great cavalry battle of Brandy Station. Where Custer played the gallant, dashing cavalier, Ames won respect for calm professionalism, courage without flamboyance. His division led the successful attack on Fort Fisher; he entered the bastion with the second wave, walking forward with equanimity as sharpshooters gunned down his staff all around him.

  Like Custer, he served in the South after the war, then went on an extended leave in 1866. “I…have accomplished much—but to what end?” he wrote on a tour of Europe. “Instead of having that which gives peace and contentment, I am adrift, seeking for what God only knows. I do not. Thus far my life has been with me one severe struggle and now that a time of rest is upon me, I am lost to find my position.”

  Then their lives diverged profoundly. Ames returned to duty, and on June 15, 1868, he took office as Mississippi’s provisional governor. “I found, when I was military governor there, that the negroes had no rights whatever,” he later told Congress. He acted immediately to change that, appointing the first black officeholders in state history. “General Ames’s knife cut deep,” wrote a white Republican in Mississippi, “but…Ames’s surgery was courageous and skilled.” Both white and black delegates rewrote the state constitution, opening the way to rule by the black majority. Mississippi’s Republican Party asked him to serve as a U.S. senator. (At the time the state legislature elected senators, and the party controlled both chambers in Mississippi.) He agreed. As he told the Senate, “I believed that I could render them [African Americans] great service. I felt that I had a mission to perform in their interest, and I hesitatingly consented to represent them, and unite my fortune with theirs.”

  Custer considered black suffrage an absurdity; Ames saw it as justice. He embodied everything Custer hated about the new nation. In the Senate, Ames pushed (unsuccessfully) to end the segregation of the army and force every regiment to accept black as well as white recruits. He helped lead the fight for the Ku Klux Klan Act that Custer so despised. In 1873,
he won election as Mississippi’s governor. Defying “carpetbagger” stereotypes, he led an administration that was frugal, honest, and fair. He did not condescend to his African American allies and constituents, but worked closely with black leaders, such as Representative John R. Lynch and the state senator Charles Caldwell. Ames’s governorship marked the farthest advance of Reconstruction.

  In 1875, an election year in Mississippi, the Democratic Party organized as an armed force. While Democratic representative L. Q. C. Lamar made soothing speeches about peace and reunion in Congress, his party dispatched armed gangs to attack Republican rallies, assassinate black leaders, and seize entire counties. Scores died. Caldwell defied them, leading a militia company through the countryside. It was not enough.

  Ames called for federal troops. Attorney General Edwards Pierrepont stunned him with his response: “The whole public are tired out with these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South, and the great majority are ready to condemn any further interference on the part of the government.” It had become too tedious to preserve the equal rights of every American. The swing in Northern opinion, seen in the mere fact of Greeley’s 1872 candidacy, halted the great historical movement that produced the first civil rights acts and remade the Constitution. A Democratic legislature took power and filed trumped-up impeachment charges as snipers fired at the governor’s mansion. Ames’s friend and ally Caldwell was assassinated; one white Republican said, “He was as brave a man as I ever knew.”

  Ames agreed to resign. He went to Northfield, Minnesota, to mind the family mill. On September 7, 1876, the James-Younger outlaws—most of them former Confederate guerrillas—rode in to rob a bank he had invested in because he had invested in it. Ames witnessed the gunfight on the street. The townspeople drove off the bandits; eventually all but Jesse and Frank James were killed or captured.