Copyright © 2014 by James S. Robbins
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast.
First ebook edition ©2014
eISBN 978-1-62157-236-7
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Robbins, James S., 1962-
The real Custer : from boy general to tragic hero / James S. Robbins.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
1.Custer, George A. (George Armstrong), 1839-1876. 2.Generals--United States--
Biography. 3.United States--History--Civil War,
1861–1865--Biography. 4.United States--History--Civil War,
1861–1865--Campaigns. 5.Indians of North America--Wars--1866–1895. 6.Indians of
North America--Wars--Great Plains. 7.United States.
Army--Biography.I. Title.
E467.1.C99R67 2014
973.8'2092--dc23
[B]
2014006108
Published in the United States by
Regnery Publishing
A Salem Communications Company
300 New Jersey Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20001
www.Regnery.com
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Books are available in quantity for promotional or premium use. For information on discounts and terms, please visit our website: www.Regnery.com.
Distributed to the trade by
Perseus Distribution
250 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10107
To E. L. R.
CONTENTS
Introduction
PART 1: BEGINNINGS
1.“My Voice Is for War!”
2.Custer the Goat
3.The Brotherhood Broken
PART 2: CUSTER GOES TO WAR
4.“A Slim, Long-Haired Boy, Carelessly Dressed”
5.“I Promise That You Shall Hear of Me”
6.“Conspicuous Gallantry”
PART 3: THE BOY GENERAL
7.Gettysburg
8.The “Daring, Terrible Demon” of Battle
9.The Buckland Races
10.The Dahlgren Affair
11.Little Phil
12.Into the Valley
13.“Let the Sword Decide the Contest”
14.Custer’s Counterinsurgency
15.“Custer Is a Trump”
16.“Fighting like a Viking”
17.“Custer against the World”
18.“Like the Charge of a Sioux Chieftain”
PART 4: FALL FROM GRACE
19.The “Long-Haired Hero of the Lash”
20.The “Swing around the Circle”
21.Court-Martial
PART 5: REDEMPTION
22.Washita
23.Custer on the Plains
24.The Great Buffalo Hunt
25.Battle on the Yellowstone
PART 6: THE FINAL ACT
26.Custer’s Gulch
27.Grant’s Revenge
28.“Don’t Be Greedy”
29.A Ridge Too Far
30.“He Will Never Fight Anymore”
Conclusion
A Note on Sources
Notes
Index
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
George Armstrong Custer
The Innate Idea
Benny Havens
Custer’s Charge at Aldie
Custer at “Woodstock Races”
General Custer at His Desk in His Library
The Seventh U.S. Calvary Charging in Black Kettle’s Village at Daylight (Battle of Washita)
The Last Battle of Gen. Custer
A Suspended Equestrienne
Mathew Brady, George Armstrong Custer.
INTRODUCTION
I have so much to be thankful for in my life. God grant that I may always prove as deserving as I am grateful to Him for what He has given me. In years long numbered with the past, when I was merging upon manhood, my every thought was ambitious—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.
—GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER
When you mention the name George Custer, most people first think of his Last Stand at the Little Bighorn. His was a tragic death, some even argue a foolish or needless one. Others see him as the Civil War–era “Boy General with the Golden Locks,” at twenty-three the youngest general officer to that point in American history. From Gettysburg to Appomattox, Custer led every charge, as Abraham Lincoln said, “with a whoop and a shout.” Or maybe Custer’s fight with the Cheyenne on the Washita River comes to mind, which some called a significant battlefield victory, while others saw only a senseless massacre.
Custer is talked about, written about, debated, loved, and hated. His name has come to symbolize tragedy, recklessness, valor, and disaster. He has been lionized and demonized, admired and mocked. Much of his history has been denounced as myth, but his celebrity is rooted firmly in reality. Custer became a legend for good reason. But whether elevated to heroic perfection or denounced as a fiend, Custer the symbol has overcome Custer the man.
The real Custer is more complex and interesting than the one-dimensional caricatures he has often been reduced to in popular culture. Custer was a polarizing figure even in his day, with strong supporters and detractors. Biographers have grappled with this duality from the start. Frederick Whittaker’s influential though embellished account of Custer’s life came out the year George died, but even Whittaker felt it necessary to address the Custer legend that had grown up during his lifetime. “The popular idea of Custer as a soldier,” Whittaker wrote, “is that of a brave, reckless, dashing trooper, always ready to charge any odds, without knowing or caring what was the strength of his enemy, and trusting to luck to get out of his scrapes.” But he argued that “the real Custer” was “a remarkably quiet, thoughtful man, when any work was on hand, one who never became flurried and excited in the hottest battle.” He also claimed Custer had never been caught by surprise, which was not true, and was “equal to any emergency of whatever kind,” which may have been true until it wasn’t.1
As for trusting to luck, throughout the Army the expression “Custer’s luck” meant having the good fortune to get out of trouble—until it came to mean the opposite. “‘Custer’s luck’ will no longer be so much envied by his brother soldiers,” journalist and Civil War veteran George Edward Pound wrote four months after Little Bighorn. But Pound admired Custer and said he “would not have so praised his luck had he not confided more in his courage,” and that his fortune was not in the stars “but in his own soul—the born spirit of the cavalryman that flowered into exploits.”2
What is it about Custer that makes him one of the most talked about figures in American history?3 Even in his day, Custer was a magnet for attention. With his striking presence and unconventional uniforms, he attracted comment wherever he went. But what he did once he had that attention is what made him memorable. He was talked about, but that was because he gave people something worth talking about. He cultivated an eccentric image, but he was more than simply the nineteenth-century equivalent of tabloid fodder.
At base, Custer was a hardened warrior. In the Vietnam War film We Were Soldiers, Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore, portrayed by Mel Gibson, wonders aloud, “What was
going through Custer’s mind when he realized that he’d led his men into a slaughter?” Sergeant Major Basil Plumley, played by Sam Elliott, growls, “Sir, Custer was a pussy. You ain’t.” The expression soon appeared on bumper stickers and t-shirts. But even if Plumley said it, which is doubtful, it is far from the truth. Custer was physically brave and morally courageous. As his bugler Joseph Fought said, “He was always in the fight, no matter where it was.” As a junior officer, he went out of his way to place himself in danger. As a commanding officer, he led from the front. To paraphrase the real Hal Moore, the only thing he had in the Ia Drang Valley that Custer didn’t at Little Bighorn was air support.
Custer has been portrayed frequently in movies and television, in characters from the heroic to the absurd. He was a well-meaning fool in 2009’s Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian who lamented, “I will always be famous for my biggest failure.” Richard Mulligan played him as a volatile, arrogant clown in Little Big Man in 1970. Ronald Reagan, a self-described Custer buff, portrayed him in the historically challenged 1940 feature, Santa Fe Trail. “His image has been blurred and distorted over time,” the Gipper wrote, “but in truth he was a brilliant officer and not at all the boastful show-off his detractors would have us believe.”4 Errol Flynn’s interpretation of Custer in They Died with Their Boots On in 1941 also took some liberties with history but was a popular and critical success. Flynn best captured George’s boyish spirit and charm, and the movie shaped perceptions of Custer for decades.
The continuing fascination with Custer stems partly from his contradictions. He was a good friend who inspired loyalty, but his outsized personality could provoke bitter rivalries. He was a devoted husband whose natural flirtatiousness opened him to rumors of infidelity. He didn’t go to church, but he prayed before every battle. He was a lifelong Democrat who had to downplay his political views to placate radical Republicans. He was the scourge of the Confederacy but a close friend to many rebels. He was Sitting Bull’s foe but said that if he had been born an Indian, he also would have abandoned the reservations to ride free on the Plains.
Custer lives strongest in the American memory as an Indian fighter, and while he criticized aspects of Native American culture, he also found much to admire. He took to the field against bands the government deemed hostile, but he said there was nothing better than living side by side with tribes at peace. He studied and attempted to understand the people of the Plains and was sometimes compared to them—the officer with the “heart of an Indian” who “charged like a Sioux chieftain.” Custer was as willing to smoke the peace pipe as he was prepared to fight. But as a soldier, he followed orders, and his primary concern was achieving victory. He killed Indians in battle, just as he killed Confederates in the Civil War, and in greater numbers. He burned Native American lodges, just as he scoured the Shenandoah Valley. Whether in the West or the East, he said he preferred peace. But when the sword was drawn, he was determined to make war his way until the enemy was vanquished.
Custer did not do it all alone. His wife, Elizabeth, was his lifelong love and constant focus of his thoughts. He was very close to his family, and his brother Tom served by his side to the end. There were also the men he led into battle, his officers and staff who helped translate his orders into action, and especially his superiors, most notably Generals George McClellan, Alfred Pleasonton, and Philip Sheridan. These senior officers possessed the insight to understand how to use Custer’s talents, how much initiative to let him have, and what risks he could reasonably take. The Custer they knew was a gifted tactician who had the ability quickly to sum up the shifting situation he faced and use the forces at his disposal swiftly and effectively. They set the stage for him, and he did his part to win their battles. And when necessary, they helped keep their adventurous protégé out of trouble.
Custer had a talent for getting into scrapes. As a cadet at West Point, he believed that rules were made to be broken. He was the merry prankster of the Corps of Cadets, the lovable rogue who did things his way, witty, charismatic, and popular. And while there were others like him who courted the retribution of the authorities, Custer had an uncanny ability to get himself out of trouble as artfully as he got into it. He racked up demerits but stayed just below the line that brought expulsion. He submitted to periodic punishments as the price of playing the game. Whether it was due to his charm, good fortune, or intuition, he managed to live the life of the cadet bon vivant and still graduate, albeit at the bottom of his class, and facing a court-martial the day before graduation.
Custer’s West Point exploits give insights into his combat leadership. He was a creative thinker and dynamic problem-solver. The sense of adventure that led him to blow post in the middle of the night for the forbidden pleasures of Benny Havens’s saloon was the same spirit that led him to volunteer for dangerous wartime scouting missions or lead dramatic charges against difficult odds. He could have done much better at the Academy if he had followed more rules, studied more lessons, avoided demerits, and played fewer pranks; but then he would not have been Custer.
Custer made things happen. He came from a humble background and got ahead on ability and pluck. He was a risk taker who traded on his accomplishments, not his background or birth. He would rather shape events than be shaped by them. He was at his best in situations where dash and quick decisions were needed. He was comfortable on the knife-edge of reality, where will, idea, and circumstance merge in an onrushing wave. He arrived on the national scene at the right time, a natural warfighter thrust into the greatest conflict of the nineteenth century. He wound up in situations where he could give full expression to his instinctive genius for war and was rewarded with rank, fame, and influence. But when the Civil War ended, Custer had trouble adapting. There were fewer battles to be fought, less opportunity to give expression to his spirit. He had to reinvent himself while staying true to his character. It was a challenge he faced for the rest of his life.
John M. Bulkley recalled Custer as the “genial, warm-hearted friend” from his childhood, and wrote that “under the garb of the soldier, and the sometimes austere exterior, there beat the warmest of hearts, and existed the most affectionate of natures.” Bulkley believed that the Custer he knew would long be remembered. “The gallant bravery, the spirit, and the patriotism of Custer commended him to public favor,” he wrote, “and it is not in the heart of the American people soon to forget those whose blood has been shed in their name.”5 Custer has not been forgotten, but he is commonly misremembered. This book explores the real Custer.
PART ONE
BEGINNINGS
The Innate Idea, in D. H. Strother, “Personal Recollections of the War, by a Virginian,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (1868).
CHAPTER ONE
“MY VOICE IS FOR WAR!”
George Armstrong Custer was born December 5, 1839, in the east Ohio town of New Rumley in Harrison County, which his great-uncle Jacob helped found in 1812. A period guide said New Rumley was “situated on a high, healthy site” and had a population of about 150 people in thirty houses, with a meetinghouse, a school, two physicians, three stores, and three taverns.1 It was typical of the small towns found in that part of the country, where most people worked the land and community life was strong.
George—who was called Autie, for how he pronounced his middle name when learning to talk—was a charismatic child with bright blue eyes and curly red-gold hair. He was born into a growing, close-knit family. His father, Emmanuel Henry Custer, was a thirty-three-year-old blacksmith from Cresaptown in western Maryland, descended from Arnold Küster, from the northwest German town of Kaldenkirchen, who migrated to America sometime around the turn of the eighteenth century. Custer and his second wife, Maria Ward Kirkpatrick, would eventually have seven sons and one daughter, in addition to four children from his previous marriage.2
“Father was pretty strict,” George’s younger brother Nevin Custer recalled, “stricter than most fathers nowadays are, I guess. He made
us ride to church a-horseback every Sunday morning, and mother and Margaret came in the cart, and we had to sit there and never so much as smile.”3 Nevin said his father “worked the farm just the same way. Everybody had his work cut out an’ he had to do it without whimpering and do it promptly; sort of religious duty, yuh know.” When the kids worked the family farm, Emmanuel would put them fifty yards apart in the corn field “so we couldn’t loaf and talk.” They worked hard, but young George hated to get his clothes smelly, so he split and carried wood while his brothers worked in the barns.
The Custer kids attended the local public school—Ohio had established a public education system under the 1787 Northwest Ordinance—and they received a decent education for those times. George was a studious child who loved to read, and he would occasionally get a talking-to if he took a book into the fields. George was “bright as a dollar and never missed a recitation,” Nevin recalled. While the other kids were “swimmmin’ and boatin’ and all that,” Autie “always wanted to stay home and read.” But George had a fun-loving side. He was friendly, outgoing, and mischievous, the latter a quality he got from his father, who, for all his seriousness at church or in the field, said he was “always a boy with my boys.”4 George’s cousin Mary said George was “full of life and always ready to do anything which had a semblance of daring in it.”5
The children of New Rumley were taught by Mr. Foster, a strict disciplinarian who did not take misbehavior lightly. “Lawsey, how that man could whip!” Nevin recalled, decades later. He was punished for whispering in class, while Tom Custer was in frequent trouble for chewing tobacco at school. Tom “bored a hole in the school room floor with an auger to give him a place to spit,” Nevin said. “He tried to keep it covered with his foot, but of course after [a] while Foster found it and Tom got licked.” Foster would make children stand with their toes on one crack of the wooden floor and their hands on another while he lashed them with a birch rod. “No teachers like them nowadays,” Nevin mused.
The Real Custer Page 1
