A Terrible Glory

by James Donovan

  When the Democrat-controlled House went after Belknap, Hazen, no friend of Custer’s, supplied his name on a list of possible witnesses,16 hence the telegram to Fort Lincoln. Also implicated was Orvil Grant, the President’s brother, who later admitted his malfeasance to the Clymer committee on March 9 and even complained of the money he had lost, regretting (as one newspaper reported) “not the use of his influence, but disappointment in the smallness of the amount he made out of the traderships.”17

  Custer testified before the committee on March 29 and again on April 4. Most of his testimony was hearsay, and he admitted as much to the committee,18 which was likely fishing for more information. He outlined for the committee members in both broad and specific terms how the scheme worked — how food meant for Indian agencies was resold to post traders, thus forcing the government to pay for the supplies twice and starving the Indians. He showed how the kickback scheme, in which the post traders paid a hefty part of their earnings to Secretary Belknap, worked on the post level and offered an example from his own Fort Abraham Lincoln. Custer also mentioned the already implicated Orvil Grant in a poor light and praised Hazen, with whom he had sparred in print for many years.

  Custer’s lengthy and detailed testimony caused the New York Times to editorialize, “Gen. Custer’s testimony before Clymer’s committee to-day reveals some of the bold rascalities of Indian and Army traders, and reflects severely upon the late Secretary of War. . . . No one who witnessed the earnest manner with which he gave testimony, doubts the sincerity of his convictions.”19 No less reliable an observer than Secretary of State Hamilton Fish called him “one of the most effective witnesses before Hiester Clymer’s Committee.”20 Hazen had again testified against Belknap, by letter, as had two other army officers.21 But testimony from the army’s best-known Indian fighter about widespread corruption in the War Department’s management of Indian affairs, whether hearsay or not, added significant credibility to the accusations.

  An article in the March 31 issue of the New York Herald titled “Belknap’s Anaconda” offered additional details and further entwined Belknap in the scandal. The story was uncredited, as was standard newspaper practice at the time, but rumors spread that Custer had written it, making him even more unwelcome in Republican circles.

  Custer took advantage of his time in the capital. Before another House committee, he lobbied for better pay for the army’s noncommissioned officers. He also testified twice against the Seventh Cavalry’s Major Lewis Merrill, who was accused of receiving cash rewards from a state government for the Ku Klux Klan members his command captured and of accepting a bribe while acting as judge advocate in a court-martial.22 Though Custer had earlier requested Merrill’s presence with the Seventh, he had concluded that he had little use for Merrill. Neither, apparently, did Benteen, Reno, or most of the regiment’s other duty officers, since Merrill had seen little service on the frontier in his eight years with the Seventh. Reno would later call him a “notorious coward and shirk,”23 and Benteen would brand him a “chump,”24 killing two reputations with one stone by declaring, “Poor a soldier as Reno was, he was a long way ahead of Merrill.”25 Custer’s original request for Merrill had come about because the regiment was short on field-grade officers, and Custer had no faith in Reno’s ability to lead much of anything. Merrill was an associate of Belknap’s, and probably a Republican,26 which points up Custer’s desperation.

  Merrill had been relieved of his duty at the Centennial Exhibition due to the charges, but a few days later, that order was rescinded by the President.27 Though Custer claimed in the press that he had only been investigating the charges, in the pages of the semiofficial Army and Navy Journal, Merrill accused Custer of slander instigated with “cowardly purpose,”28 and the investigation against him was soon dropped.

  Another effort would bear fruit. Terry had asked more than once that the remaining three companies of the Seventh serving in the South be transferred to Fort Lincoln. The War Department had turned him down. But General Sherman, back from his self-imposed exile in Chicago, had warmed to Custer after his committee testimony. Sherman and Hazen were old friends, and he appreciated that Custer had defended and praised Hazen. Furthermore, Sherman had been aware of the trading post corruption29 and was hostile toward Belknap, who had usurped his power ever since taking office.30 While Custer stayed in Washington, he and Sherman dined together regularly, and when Custer asked about the availability of the three companies, Sherman saw to it that they were transferred.31 He also personally requested recruits to replace seventy Seventh Cavalry troopers who were about to be discharged on May 1 — another request of Terry’s that had been ignored. In addition, Sherman introduced Custer to the new Secretary of War, Alphonso Taft, who had asked Sherman to return to Washington.

  One of Custer’s failings was his inability to anticipate or appreciate fully the reactions of others to his vocal opinions, and he ran true to form now. During his time in the capital, Custer wrote his “precious sunbeam” every two or three days. “I have done nothing rashly,” he said in one letter. “And all honest straightforward men commend my course.”32 But while Custer may have gained a political friend in Sherman, his testimony had compromised relations with the man who had been his most loyal champion since the war. His longtime mentor, Sheridan, was furious about Custer’s claim that Hazen’s banishment to remote Fort Buford had been punishment for his daring to question the Indian Ring. He wrote to the War Department contradicting some of Custer’s testimony, including the Hazen claim. So did his military secretary, James Forsyth, who kept Belknap abreast of War Department developments after his resignation and conspired with him to hurt Custer.33 Sheridan, loyal to his old commander Grant and his administration — including his friend Belknap34 — would no longer protect Custer as he had for more than a decade.

  Custer’s letters to Libbie told of how he socialized day and night with several prominent Democrats, including Clymer, who was apparently happy with his testimony. Though not strong enough to indict anyone, it had been corroborated by others. Clymer told him that Belknap might still be impeached despite his resignation, and if so Custer would likely be needed for more testimony. Belknap was indeed indicted for trial before the Senate, but Custer’s mostly hearsay testimony would not be needed. He was released by the committee and left Washington on April 20.

  Terry had originally planned for the Dakota column to depart while the Indians were still isolated in their winter camps and before the snow began to thaw enough to open supply routes, but he had been forced to delay the departure of the expedition until April 15, and then early May. Now time was of the essence, but instead of rushing to return to Fort Lincoln and his command, Custer went to New York, stopping on the way in Philadelphia to visit the Centennial Exhibition. In New York, he discussed business with his publisher, arranged with the New York Herald to submit unsigned dispatches from the field, and found time to attend the theater and dine with prominent Democrats. At one luncheon, when asked about the upcoming expedition, he boldly told a group that the Seventh could whip all the Indians on the plains. General G. M. Dodge, who had fought the Lakotas a decade earlier, was among the group. The next day in his office, he cautioned Custer against such hubris, but Custer shrugged off the warning.35

  CUSTER HAD PLANNED on leaving New York for Fort Lincoln by train on the evening of April 24, but before he could depart, he received a summons from the Senate ordering him back to Washington for the possibility of further testimony in the Belknap trial. The summons had probably been engineered by the disgraced ex-Secretary himself, who still had close ties to the administration and was obsessed with revenge against those, such as Custer, whom he perceived to be responsible for his fall from grace.36 A Chicago newspaper reported, “Belknap and his friends are collecting material to make out a case against Gen. Custer with a view to having him tried by court-martial before Gen. Terry at St. Paul.” Although Belknap was studying Custer’s various testimonies, the story claimed, “the General
does not seem to be alarmed. He says he is willing to have his record examined with the closest scrutiny.”37

  A trip that Custer originally expected to last a week or ten days — including the quick jaunt to New York to tend to business matters — now had no end in sight. Stunned, he returned to Washington on April 27. The next day, he met with Secretary Taft and asked him to request his release by the impeachment committee. Taft promised to do so,38 but he never wrote the letter.

  “Do not be anxious,” Custer wrote Libbie after seeing Taft. “I seek to follow a moderate and prudent course, avoiding prominence. Nevertheless, everything I do, however simple and unimportant, is noticed and commented on. This only makes me more careful.”39 It was far too late for prudence, however. Besieged Republicans were doing their best to smear Custer, accusing him of perjury with a view toward a court-martial and even providing the press with defamatory material.40 Though not politically naive, Custer was out of his element in Washington. He clearly had no idea of the hornet’s nest his testimony and actions had stirred up — or of Belknap’s power or vindictiveness.

  Custer was also about to encounter the wrath of Belknap’s good friend the President. Grant had been cool toward Custer at least since his court-martial in the fall of 1867, and Custer knew it, but this new provocation was more than the President could take. Grant was furious over Custer’s implication of his brother, his hurtful but unimpeachable testimony, and his general antiadministration comportment. (Custer had also once placed the President’s son Captain Fred Grant under arrest for drunkenness.)41 In Grant’s eyes, he had only one recourse — total humiliation. At a cabinet meeting later that day, the President directed Taft to relieve Custer of command of the Dakota column and assign another officer in his place. The order went through the chain of command to Sherman, then Sheridan, and finally Terry.

  When Custer was told, he quickly obtained permission from the Senate to leave for his post. (Belknap’s impeachment trial was held, but the Senate fell short of the number of votes required to convict, with most senators considering the case outside their jurisdiction.) Per the demands of military protocol, he also received permission to leave from Sherman, who advised him to wait two days, until Monday, May 1, to depart, and to attempt to see the President and explain himself in order to regain command of the expedition.

  Custer had called at the White House twice during the previous month, but Grant had refused to see him both times. Now Custer appeared at 10:00 a.m. Monday and presented his card. He sat in the anteroom for five hours and watched as others were ushered into Grant’s presence. At 3:00 p.m., the President sent word that he would not see Custer. A desperate Custer then sent Grant a letter begging a brief hearing, to no avail. His options exhausted, he left.

  He stopped by the War Department and received a letter from the Inspector General granting him permission to leave the city — “understanding that the general of the army desires you to proceed directly to your station”42 — then boarded a train headed west that evening. He stopped in Monroe on the way back to Dakota Territory and spent most of a day there, “from the morning train until the evening only,” remembered his father, Emmanuel Custer. “I remember he told me that Bloody Knife [an Arikara scout Custer had taken a liking to] had sent him word that he was going to take his scalp, and he laughed as he said it.”43 After bidding good-bye to his parents, he visited the home of his old friend attorney John Bulkley, his former seatmate at the Stebbins Academy. Several friends stopped by to wish him luck, and then the two retired to the library to sit and talk. When the subject of Grant’s actions came up, Custer became philosophical. “Never mind,” Custer said. “It is a long lane that has no turning. I don’t believe that a man ever perpetrated a rank injustice, knowingly, upon his fellow man but that he suffered for it, before he died.”44

  When he left Monroe for St. Paul, he was not alone. With him was his favorite nephew, Autie Reed. Custer had arranged for Autie, who had just turned eighteen, to accompany the column as a beef herder. Autie was joined by Emma Reed, his teenage sister, who came along to stay with Libbie for the summer. Another young man, Dick Roberts (who was the brother of Annie Roberts Yates, one of Libbie’s closest friends), would also be hired as a herder, with extra duties. While in New York, Custer had arranged with Whitelaw Reid for young Roberts to file dispatches for the New York Tribune, since Reid had declined to send one of his own reporters — a sign, perhaps, of how unimportant this latest Indian-hunting expedition was considered in the East. Both young men were excited about witnessing what promised to be the last great Indian battle.

  The train pulled into Chicago on the morning of May 4. At the railroad station, an officer from Sheridan’s headquarters, Custer’s good friend Colonel Tony Forsyth, found Custer on the St. Paul train and handed him a message. By order of Sherman, but clearly the work of Grant, Custer was commanded to remain in Chicago until receiving further orders. His transgression? “He was not justified in leaving without seeing the President or myself,” Sherman had telegraphed to Sheridan. “Let the Expedition from Fort Lincoln proceed without him.”45 Invoking a twisted, petty rationale, Grant had latched on to Custer’s breach of protocol in leaving the capital without paying his respects to the President, despite his several attempts to do so.

  A desperate Custer sent several telegrams to Sherman asking for justice and explaining in great detail how he had tried to see the president. He also pointed out that he had indeed procured permission to leave from Sherman. When that did not produce an answer, he asked that his detention be transferred to Fort Lincoln. The next day, his request was allowed, though he was still barred from the expedition. Custer’s humiliation at the hands of Grant would now be even more exquisite: he would have no choice but to watch helplessly as his beloved Seventh Cavalry rode off to the last great confrontation with the Indians under another’s command — Major Marcus Reno’s, perhaps. As all of this was going on, the eastern papers were, for the most part, condemning the President’s actions as tyrannical and partisan. “It seems strange a man should lose his position for emulating the boy ‘who could not tell a lie,’ ” wrote one. “He was struck down for telling the truth,” railed another. Some of the Republican papers supported Grant, though their defense consisted of ad hominem attacks on Custer that were usually riddled with errors.

  Custer reached St. Paul on May 6 and found General Terry sympathetic to his plight. After Custer had been relieved of his command, Terry had suggested a few infantry Colonels in his stead, but Sheridan had decided that the best candidate to lead the expedition was the departmental commander himself. Apparently ignored was the regiment’s official commander, fifty-four-year-old Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis, West Point class of 1846, who had been on recruiting duty in St. Louis for several years (and who had recently testified to the good character of Orville Babcock, who would soon be implicated — and again cleared of any wrongdoing — in another scandal, the Safe Burglary Conspiracy).46 Sturgis had fought in the Mexican War along with most of his classmates, such as Grant, McClellan, Stonewall Jackson, and John Gibbon, and had spent several years fighting Indians before the Civil War. But he hadn’t been in the field in years and was clearly on the downside of his career. Reno, who had little Indian-fighting experience, had wired Terry in early April asking for the command. When Terry had responded negatively, the Seventh’s junior Major had gone over his head to Sheridan, who in a July 1864 endorsement of a brigadiership for Reno had lauded him as “one of the most promising young cavalry officers of this army” and opined that “the cavalry service has no better officer than Capt. Reno.”47 “Why not give me a chance,” suggested Reno, “sending instructions what to do with Sitting Bull if I catch him.” But “Fighting Phil” declined to interfere, shifting all responsibility back to Terry, who refused to reconsider his original decision.48

  The last thing Terry wanted was to lead a military command hundreds of miles on horseback in the unrelenting summer heat against the fiercest Indians on the plains. Not
only was he content to be a desk officer living with his sisters in St. Paul, but he had never campaigned against Indians. He desperately desired, and needed, Custer’s experience. So did Sheridan and Sherman, who had received a tongue-lashing from Grant when a newspaper had quoted Sherman as saying that Custer “was not only the best man but the only man fit to lead the expedition now fitting out against the Indians.”49

  With tears in his eyes, Custer begged Terry for help.50 The sagacious Terry and his humbled subordinate crafted a telegram to the President that wisely avoided mention of any transgressions and instead appealed to the old soldier’s sense of duty.

  To His Excellency the President, through Military Channels.

  I have seen your order, transmitted through the General of the army, directing that I be not permitted to accompany the expedition about to move against hostile Indians. As my entire regiment forms a part of the proposed expedition, and as I am the senior officer of the regiment on duty in this Department, I respectfully but most earnestly request that while not allowed to go in command of the expedition, I may be permitted to serve with my regiment in the field.