On June 8, the day after receiving his new assignment, Pleasonton was poised on the banks of the Rappahannock with a strike force of eleven thousand cavalry, three thousand infantry, and six batteries of horse artillery. Custer was up late as duty officer in Pleasonton’s headquarters at the James Knox house near Beverly’s Ford, with orders to awaken the general at 2:00 a.m. He wrote to his sister that he was about to embark on a major raid. “We could see the rebels in their rifle pits on the opposite bank before dark,” he said. The Union cavalry had quietly moved into attack positions, and at four in the morning they would “ford the river and charge” the enemy emplacements. “It will be a daring undertaking,” he wrote, and the raiders expected to make it as far as Culpeper, fifteen miles west, and thence beyond. “We can ride over anything that opposes us,” he predicted.17
When the hour came for the attack, Custer and Colonel Benjamin Franklin “Grimes” Davis, Class of 1855 and a pro-Union Alabamian, rode down to the riverbank and quietly crossed the fog-enshrouded ford, pistols drawn. As they rode up the opposite bank, they were challenged and opened fire, which signaled the 8th New York Cavalry regiment to charge across the ford after them. The Union horsemen rode furiously through the Southern positions, slashing and firing as the surprised rebels attempted to mount a defense.18
Hooker devised the raid to beat Stuart’s cavalry to the punch. The plan was to cross the river in two columns, one under John Buford at Beverly’s Ford and another under David McMurtrie Gregg six miles south at Kelly’s Ford; converge near Brandy Station; and drive on to Culpeper. Pleasonton expected to face some, though light, resistance. But the Union commanders were unaware that they faced not a small raiding force but 9,500 rebel cavalrymen. And Culpeper, rather than being lightly defended, was surrounded by Ewell’s and Longstreet’s corps and was serving as Lee’s headquarters for his planned move north into Pennsylvania. So what both sides believed would be the start of a few days of raiding became the Battle of Brandy Station, the largest cavalry battle in the war.
Custer was mounted on a horse called Roanoke, an iron-gray stallion he had captured during a raid into Virginia’s Northern Neck three weeks earlier. The horse was allegedly worth nine hundred dollars, and Custer wrote his sister, “I never intend to ride him into battle, he is too valuable.” His preference was to send Roanoke home and “leave him there until the war is over.” But his other horse, Harry, was “getting very fat and pretty,” and the need for a strong mount in the planned-for raid changed his mind.19
Roanoke, however, was untested in war, and his first engagement showed him lacking in martial ardor. Custer and “Grimes” Davis, leading the 8th New York, slammed into the 6th Virginia Cavalry on the Beverly Ford road. A chaotic fracas ensued in which Davis was mortally wounded and Roanoke dashed into a roadside fence, where the horse “huddled in fright, neighing madly but budging not an inch”20 until the Federals retreated. On the retreat, Roanoke cleared a stone wall clumsily and sent Custer flying. He remounted and hurried to join the main body of Union cavalry.
The Battle of Brandy Station raged for hours but was inconclusive: on the one hand, Lee’s movement north was shielded by the costly engagement; on the other, the Union Cavalry Corps proved it could match Stuart’s famed horsemen. Custer was singled out by Pleasonton as being “conspicuous for gallantry throughout the fight.”21
About a week later, Custer was given another opportunity for battle. General Hooker ordered Pleasonton to break through the rebel cavalry screen, penetrate the Blue Ridge Mountains, and determine if Lee’s forces were moving down the Shenandoah Valley. Pleasonton ordered Brigadier General Gregg’s division west down the Little River Turnpike to the town of Aldie, a key crossroads in the Bull Run Mountains, eighteen miles east of both Ashby’s and Snickers Gaps.
Custer rode along with Gregg and his staff. David McMurtrie Gregg was a scruffy, bearded cavalryman who had served on America’s northwest frontier after graduating with honors in the West Point Class of 1855. He had a solid combat record in the Civil War, and his sturdy demeanor had earned him the nickname “Old Steady.” Gregg was not known for dressing the part of a commanding general, and that day Custer blended in with his informal style.
“When Custer appeared he at once attracted the attention of the entire command,” recalled Captain Henry C. Meyer of the 24th New York Cavalry. He was “dressed like an ordinary enlisted man, his trousers tucked in a pair of short-legged government boots, his horse equipments being those of an ordinary wagonmaster. He rode with a little rawhide riding whip stuck in his bootleg, and had long yellow curls down to his shoulders, his face ruddy and good-natured.”22 He also sported a broad-brimmed straw hat. After watering on the banks of Little River, Custer’s horse Harry (he had returned to his trusty mount following Roanoke’s less than ideal performance at Brandy Station) slipped coming up the bank, dumping George in the river. He emerged unharmed but soaking wet. “The dust at this time was so thick that one could not see more than a set of fours ahead,” Meyer wrote, “and in a few minutes, when it settled on his wet clothes and long wet hair, Custer was an object that one can better imagine than I can describe.”23
Kilpatrick’s brigade led the advance and made contact with rebel pickets outside Aldie on June 17, sweeping them briskly through the town. They encountered firmer resistance from the 5th Virginia Cavalry under the command of Thomas Rosser, who were firing from behind a stone wall with artillery support. The rebels “received Kilpatrick’s men with a murderous fire,” wrote First Lieutenant Henry Hall, “which literally covered the field in front with dead and dying, and sent the others flying in disorder to the rear.”24 With Kilpatrick’s offensive power spent, Confederate Colonel Thomas T. Munford sent the 3rd Virginia forward to counterattack. He hoped to seize Union guns and push the Federal cavalry back through Aldie. At that critical moment, the 1st Maine Cavalry arrived.
Kilpatrick, retreating with the remnants of his brigade and looking “a ruined man,” saw Custer hastening the Maine cavalry to the field. “Forward First Maine!” Kilpatrick shouted. “You saved the field at Brandy Station, you can do it here!” Custer, who was with the cavalry’s commander, Colonel Calvin Douty, waved his saber and charged ahead. The regiment followed.
“In an instant we were among them,” Hall wrote, “and soon all who were on the road were on the run.” They “charged up the road close at the heels of the enemy and midst such a storm of dust that it was impossible to tell the dividing point between friends and foes,” wrote private William O. Howe.25 Kilpatrick was stopped when his horse was shot through the throat. Douty rushed out far in advance of his men and was cut down. Custer, with Harry galloping uncontrollably, powered through the chaos reaching the enemy rear, fighting all the way, then circled the field and returned to the Union lines.26 George might have been run down by the rebels, but with his dust-caked clothing and unorthodox hat, it was not clear which side he was on.
Colonel Munford reported of Aldie, “I have never seen as many Yankees killed in the same space of ground in any fight I have ever seen, or any battle-field in Virginia that I have ever been over.”27 But the Virginians withdrew and the Federals held the field. Captain Henry Meyer said at Aldie that Custer attracted “the attention of every one present by his conspicuous gallantry.”28
By June 25, Lee had crossed the Potomac into Maryland with most of his army.29 President Lincoln and Union General in Chief Henry Halleck lacked confidence in Hooker’s ability to thwart Lee and relieved him of command on June 28, replacing him with General George Meade.
That day, Meade sent for Pleasonton—who had recently been promoted to major general—to discuss the growing crisis of Lee’s invasion and how they could handle it. “I told him that Lee would make for Gettysburg,” Pleasonton recalled, “and that if he seized that position before we could reach it we should have hard work to get him out, and that to prevent his doing so would depend more on the cavalry than anything else.” He asked permission to reorganize the Cavalry Corps,
and especially “to have officers I would name specially assigned to it, as I expected to have some desperate work to do.” Meade agreed, and in his first dispatch to Washington three young captains were elevated to the rank of brigadier general: Wesley Merritt, Elon Farnsworth, and George Custer.30 They were assigned to the 3rd Cavalry Division under Judson Kilpatrick.
Custer at twenty-three became the then-youngest general officer. In that respect he reflected a trend. The cavalry was an arm of experimentation and innovation on both sides of the war, and each had their twenty-something horse generals. All the members of the 3rd Division’s command group were in their twenties: in addition to Custer, Kilpatrick and Merritt were twenty-seven, and Farnswoth was just shy of twenty-six. Custer’s friend Pierce M. B. Young of Georgia became a Confederate general at twenty-six, and so did Thomas Rosser. Confederate General Stephen Dodson Ramseur had gained his promotion at age twenty-five. Former West Point Cadet John Herbert Kelly, whom Custer had saluted as he was being borne off on the shoulders of his friends to join the Confederacy, became a cavalry brigadier in November 1863, also at age twenty-three. He was killed near Franklin, Tennessee, in August 1864.
Custer received notice of his promotion June 29, and at first he thought it was a joke. When it became clear he really was being made a brigadier, he quickly penned a note to someone he felt needed to know immediately, Elizabeth Bacon. “I owe it all to Gen’l Pleasonton,” he wrote. “He has been more like a father to me than a Gen’l.”31
PART THREE
THE BOY GENERAL
Custer at “Woodstock Races,” from Frederick Whittaker, A Complete Life of Gen. George A. Custer (New York: Sheldon, 1876).
CHAPTER SEVEN
GETTYSBURG
Custer took command of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, made up of four Michigan regiments.1 Captain James H. Kidd of the 6th Michigan Cavalry first saw George on June 30, 1863, and the general made quite an impression. “An officer superbly mounted who sat his charger as if to the manor born,” Kidd wrote. “Tall, lithe, active, muscular, straight as an Indian and as quick in his movements, he had the fair complexion of a school girl.” Custer wore a black velvet jacket, trimmed in gold lace and fronted by a double row of brass buttons over a blue navy shirt, and “a necktie of brilliant crimson was tied in a graceful knot at the throat, the lower ends falling carelessly in front.” His wide-brimmed black hat with a gold cord “was worn turned down on one side, giving him a rakish air. His golden hair fell in graceful luxuriance nearly or quite to his shoulders, and his upper lip was garnished with a blonde moustache. A sword and belt, gilt spurs and top boots completed his unique outfit.”2 Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Lyman, one of Meade’s aides, said, “This officer is one of the funniest-looking beings you ever saw, and looks like a circus rider gone mad! . . . His aspect, though highly amusing, is also pleasing, as he has a very merry blue eye, and a devil-may-care style.”3 Custer explained, “I want my men to recognize me on any part of the field.”4 If any of Custer’s men had doubts about the bravery of their brigade’s eccentric-looking leader, they were dispelled later that day when Custer led a charge through the streets of Hanover, Pennsylvania, against rebel cavalry under the command of Jeb Stuart.
After several pitched cavalry battles in Virginia weeks earlier, among them Brandy Station and Aldie, Stuart moved the Confederate cavalry south, appearing to retreat back toward rebel lines on the Rappahannock. But this was a feint; Stuart swung around Manassas Junction and moved back north, crossing the Potomac at Rowser’s Ford between Leesburg and Washington, D.C., on June 28.
First creating panic by moving toward the Federal capital, Stuart drove north into Maryland, raiding Union supply trains and skirmishing with Pleasonton’s cavalry. His advance was slowed, however, by the 125 captured wagonloads of supplies he had in tow, and his route made it impossible to maintain contact with the right edge of the main body of the Army of Northern Virginia. Stuart was unable to provide General Lee with the necessary screening troops and intelligence regarding Union movements. Bereft of his “eyes and ears,” Lee moved north, seeking to avoid a decisive engagement but uncertain where his enemy was maneuvering, and in what numbers. As Confederate General Henry Heth later said, “The failure to crush the Federal army in Pennsylvania in 1863, in the opinion of almost all the officers of the Army of Northern Virginia, can be expressed in five words—the absence of our cavalry.”5
On July 1, Heth stumbled into combat against Union General John Buford’s 1st Cavalry Division at Gettysburg, and Lee consolidated his scattered forces. The next day, Kilpatrick’s division was ordered to probe the Confederate flank on the eastern reaches of Gettysburg and perhaps find a way to disrupt Lee’s lines of communication through the Cashtown Gap. Stuart had reached Gettysburg earlier that same day, having ridden as far north as Carlisle looking for the Army of Northern Virginia. Having word of the Union movement, Stuart ordered Wade Hampton’s brigade to intercept and block the Federals along the Hunterstown road.
Union cavalry reached Hunterstown that afternoon. A brisk charge through the town by the 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry put to flight a small rebel holding force. Outside Hunterstown, Farnsworth’s brigade deployed to the right on the road to Cashtown. Custer took the left, which led toward Gettysburg and Hampton’s main body.
Spotting the enemy cavalry, Custer briefly surveyed their defenses and planned his attack. The 6th Michigan regiment was in the lead. Captain Henry E. Thompson of Company A prepared to charge up the road, with two companies dismounted in an adjacent wheat field to provide support should the assault force fail. Battery M, commanded by Custer’s friend and now brevet Captain Alexander Pennington, was deployed to the rear.
When the attack force had readied, Custer rode to the front and took his place beside Captain Thompson. He was conspicuous in his black velvet jacket and gold-trimmed trousers, “the gilt stripes of a brigadier-general on his arm,” Henry C. Meyer recalled. “He wore a man-o-war’s man’s shirt with the wide collar out on his shoulders, on each point of which was worked a silver star indicating his rank of brigadier-general. The neck was open, just as a man-o’-war’s man has his, and he wore a sailor’s tie.”6 Company A faced superior forces in a good defensive posture, but this did not deter Custer. He sounded the charge and led the men thundering down the road toward the Confederates.
“The charge was most gallantly made,” Hampton later wrote. But the attack was doomed. The Rebels opened up as the Union cavalry closed. The Federals pressed on, passing the first line of dismounted Confederates and taking heavy fire in the flanks. Captain Thompson was felled, severely wounded.7 His aide Lieutenant Stephen H. Ballard had his horse shot from beneath him and was taken prisoner. Custer’s horse took a bullet in the head and fell, throwing him. Rebel troops rushed to capture or kill the general as he regained his footing. Private Norval Churchill rode to the rescue, shooting a Confederate who was closing on Custer before hoisting the general onto his horse and dashing back up the road.8 Company A pulled back, with twenty-five wounded, leaving two dead.
Hampton’s men counterattacked as the Michiganders withdrew, but they met heavy fire from Union skirmishers and artillery and were repulsed. An artillery duel then commenced that lasted a few hours. The fight died down, and the contending forces held their positions as night fell. Around midnight, Kilpatrick’s division was ordered to retire south to the area around Two Taverns on the Baltimore Pike.
Custer’s brigade arrived four hours later. They had been on the move and fighting continuously since June 29 and needed some rest. The men bedded down to the sound of cannon fire coming from the direction of Culp’s Hill, about five miles northwest. It was “rather serious music to be lulled to sleep by,” Major Luther S. Trowbridge remarked to his friend Major Noah Ferry, both of the 5th Michigan.9 But after only three hours’ rest, Custer and his men were readying again for action. Kilpatrick’s division had been ordered to the southern end of the battlefield to strike at the Confederate right flank. Merritt’s and Farns
worth’s brigades moved out, and Custer was preparing to as well, when fate intervened.
That morning, General Gregg was in a position about five miles east of Gettysburg. General Pleasonton ordered Gregg to pull in closer to the right flank of the army dug in at Culp’s Hill, which was then under attack and had seen bitter fighting. But Gregg hesitated, sensing that it was more important he hold the area to his front. He also knew that the part of his command on hand, a single brigade under the command of Colonel John B. McIntosh, would be insufficient to take on the full force of Stuart’s cavalry should they attempt an end-run around the Union position.10 Gregg’s other brigade, commanded by his cousin Colonel J. Irvin Gregg, was further back on the Baltimore Pike. Gregg needed support, and Custer was available. On Gregg’s order, Custer turned the Michigan Brigade north.
Gregg’s instincts were good; Stuart was plotting another of his daring flanking maneuvers. He planned to sweep into the Union rear between the Hanover Road and the Baltimore Pike, creating confusion, raiding supply trains and encampments, disrupting Meade’s stream of reinforcements, and supporting the massive infantry assault on the Union center that was about to be launched by General George Pickett. At mid-day, Stuart began moving south to the attack, and Gregg, more by design than chance, stood directly in his path.
Stuart paused on Cress Ridge, overlooking the Union lines. The ground between them, near the Rummel and Trostle farms, was not ideal for a cavalry engagement. There were trees to either side of the fields, which were crossed by stone and wood fences. Stuart’s mobility would be limited, but he had the advantage of numbers. He ordered the Louisiana Guard Artillery battery to fire a round in each of the four directions of the compass, perhaps to flush out any other Union troops in the area, or to signal the Confederate main body that he was commencing the critical phase of his movement.
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