The Real Custer
Page 21
After another meeting between the senior leaders, officers from both sides began congregating in the center of town. Grant recalled, “[They] came in great numbers, and seemed to enjoy the meeting as much as though they had been friends separated for a long time while fighting battles under the same flag. For the time being it looked very much as if all thought of the war had escaped their minds.”
The gathering at Appomattox Court House on April 10 was a pantheon of American heroes unlike any in history. Grant chatted with longtime rebel friends Pete Longstreet, Harry Heth, and Cadmus Wilcox, who had been a groomsman at his wedding. Lee met with his old friend George Meade, and Colonel Theodore Lyman of Meade’s staff was reunited with his Harvard classmate “Rooney” Lee. George Pickett was there, talking to his friend from their northwest frontier days Rufus Ingalls, Grant’s quartermaster general and West Point roommate. Other friends and family members, rebel and Federal, high-ranking officers and orderlies, met and renewed the bonds forged in the Old Army, in civilian life before the war, or at West Point. “Great God!” Longstreet wrote. “How my heart swells out to such magnanimous touch of humanity. Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?”5
Custer was his usual ebullient self. The previous night he had two tents pitched on a hill near the McLean House, and seven of his West Point friends from Lee’s army stole away to spend the night there. “I remember their embracings and the genuine hearty reception given them by the General,” one of Custer’s officers recalled.6 When morning came he sought out other friends and acquaintances from both sides, sharing stories and reminiscences. Gimlet Lea was there, and Custer provided a hamper of food for him and his staff. Fitz Lee came riding into town, and Custer, who had known him as a tactical officer at West Point before facing him in many battles, grabbed him; the two wrestled on the ground laughing and rolling about like boys.
The ceremonial stacking of arms and final pass in review of the Army of Northern Virginia were yet to come, but Custer was not present for it. Later on the tenth, Sheridan assembled the cavalry and moved twenty miles east to Prospect Station, then continued toward Richmond.
Libbie Custer was also heading to the former Confederate capital. The morning of April 10, she was “awakened to more joy than I believed I would ever know by the clang of bells, whistles, calliopes, firings of cannons and the shouts of the newsboys.” She jumped from bed and ran half-dressed to hear the news of Lee’s surrender. “I wanted to scream and dance with joy,” Libbie recalled.7 She was invited to accompany a delegation of members of Congress from the Committee on the Conduct of the War and their wives on a visit to Richmond. They sailed in the president’s dispatch boat Baltimore to City Point, then were guided by Admiral Porter through the Confederate mines up the river to the city.
“It was a great relief at last to see the spires and roofs of Richmond,” Libbie wrote. The once-beautiful city was a wreck: buildings were gutted, and ruins still smoldered from the fires lit during the evacuation a week earlier. Masses of cheerful, hungry, and uncertain freed slaves roamed the streets. The delegation did some sightseeing before reboarding the Baltimore to continue their voyage south to Charleston. But Libbie, upset at the prospect of being “whisked off to a city she cared nothing about” when George was so near, was allowed to stay in Richmond. She spent the night in the Confederate White House, in Jefferson Davis’s bed.
On her second morning in Richmond, Libbie was “awakened by the sound of a saber knocking against the stairs.” She leapt from bed and saw through the cracked door George “leaping up the stairs two at a time.” Sheridan had given George permission to travel to Richmond to meet Libbie and bring her back to the command.
“I cried, I laughed, and then I began to realize that war was over,” she recalled, “and with the sanguine heart of youth I was sure that we would never be separated again.”8 After their reunion they went to catch a train at City Point, where some officers good-naturedly chided George that “it was a pretty how-do-you-do that after four years of fighting, his wife had beaten him” to Richmond.9
Meanwhile, George’s former adjutant and best man, Jacob Greene, unexpectedly showed up, having spent six months in several Confederate prison camps after his capture at Trevilian Station. He was paroled and allowed to return north, and that January he had finally married “Friend Nettie” Humphrey.10 When word came that he was officially exchanged and freed for combat duty, he rushed to the front, missing the surrender by one day. The mood was light as the division rode back north through the Virginia countryside. Even Southerners flocked to the road to see the famous Custer, waving handkerchiefs and clapping.11
Weeks later, Custer’s men were encamped at Bladensburg, near Washington, D.C., preparing for the Grand Review, a two-day tribute to the victorious Union Army ordered by President Johnson. The first day, May 23, featured the troops of the Army of the Potomac, with Sherman’s Army of the West the day after. The troops marched a mile and a quarter down Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Capitol to the reviewing stand outside the White House: 160,000 soldiers over two days, with six hours of parade each day. Women also marched, wives of officers and other “Daughters of the Regiment” who had helped care for the men in camps and hospitals. Horatio Nelson Taft described it as “the most magnificent spectacle of the kind ever witnessed on the continent.”12
“It was a clear, bright morning,” Joshua Chamberlain recalled, “such as had so often ushered in quite other scenes than this.”13 Several thousand school children gathered at the north end of the Capitol singing patriotic songs and giving flowers and garlands to the troops as they passed. “A mighty spectacle this,” Chamberlain wrote, “the men from far and wide, who with heroic constancy, through toils and sufferings and sacrifices that never can be told, had broken down the Rebellion, gathered to give their arms and colors and their history to the keeping of a delivered, regenerated nation.”14
President Johnson, Generals Grant and Sherman, and many other officers and cabinet members watched from the reviewing stand outside the north porch, which was wrapped in star-spangled bunting. Grant later sketched the scene:
The National flag was flying from almost every house and store; the windows were filled with spectators; the door-steps and side-walks were crowded with colored people and poor whites who did not succeed in securing better quarters from which to get a view of the grand armies. The city was about as full of strangers who had come to see the sights as it usually is on inauguration day when a new President takes his seat.
Spectators were hanging from windows and sitting on rooftops along the parade route, everyone cheering and throwing flowers. Many carried umbrellas to escape the hot sun and the morning rain, which helped keep the dust down. Bands played martial tunes, horses clattered on cobblestones, officers barked commands. A sign on the Capitol proclaimed in large letters, “The only national debt we never can pay is the debt we owe to the victorious Union soldiers.”15
Still, the joyous atmosphere was tempered by remnants of a recent tragedy. The Capitol was still hung with black crepe from President Lincoln’s lying in state, and the flag flew at half-staff in his honor. The flag of the Treasury Guard regiment, which had hung below the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre the night Lincoln was shot, draped the portico of the Treasury Department. A large tear at the bottom of the flag showed where John Wilkes Booth’s spur had caught as he jumped from the balcony before falling onto the stage and breaking his leg.
The Cavalry Corps began moving at 4:00 a.m. for the review. They paraded down Maryland Avenue, passing the Capitol then turning up Pennsylvania. The cavalry led the parade, fronted by Wesley Merritt and his staff, General Sheridan having been called to New Orleans to organize occupation forces. Custer’s 3rd Division followed in a column eight horsemen across, and behind them the rest of the Corps, eight thousand horses strong.16 Custer rode at the head of his division, leading the first combat unit in the parade of what at the time was the most powerful land army in the history of the world.
Others, however, saw in the war-worn horses and their weathered riders a reflection of the hard and noble service they had undergone. Walt Whitman, who marched with his brother George and the 51st New York Volunteers, having served as a nurse in Washington, described the cavalry as he had seen them two days earlier during a review for the departing Sheridan: “[A] strong, attractive sight; the men were mostly young, (a few middle-aged,) superb-looking fellows, brown, spare, keen, with well-worn clothing, many with pieces of water-proof cloth around their shoulders, hanging down. They dash’d along pretty fast, in wide close ranks, all spatter’d with mud; no holiday soldiers; brigade after brigade. I could have watch’d for a week.”
“Custer’s division, which had the advance, was the chief attraction,” one report read, “and its appearance was the signal for vociferous cheers and continued applause. Throughout the army as well as among the people, the dashing and never-failing Custer is regarded as the Murat of the war.”20 Custer’s men rode in platoon columns with drawn sabers, all wearing the crimson cravat. “His long golden locks floating in the wind,” Horace Porter recalled, “his low-cut collar, his crimson necktie, and his buckskin breeches, presented a combination which made him look half general and half scout, and gave him a daredevil appearance which singled him out for general remark and applause.”21
“General Custer, a dashing fellow with youthful look and long yellow hair, lead the cavalry,” Reverend H. M. Gallaher recalled. “The ladies near by assured us he was a very handsome officer.”22 George was at the high point of his fame as he passed up Pennsylvania Avenue to the cheers of the crowd: “Custer! Custer! Hurrah for Custer!”
The column turned up 15th Street, went around the Treasury Building, and headed for the reviewing stand. Custer doffed his hat as he passed a chorus of three hundred young ladies in white, who threw flowers as they sang “a pleasanter shower than the leaden one through which Sheridan’s squadrons had so often and so boldly rode.”23 One girl tossed up a wreath of roses and evergreens, but the thorns pricked Custer’s spirited mount, Don Juan, and the former racehorse reared up and bolted down the road to the cries of spectators.
The viewers were “enchained breathlessly by the thrilling event,” a reporter wrote, and the “perilous position of the brave officer.”24 Custer attempted to salute as he rocketed by the reviewing stand, dropping his hat and saber. But he stayed calm and steady in the saddle, and once he regained control of Don Juan, he turned his mount and trotted back to his men. “Round upon round of hearty applause greeted him,” said a report, and the officers and officials in the reviewing stand joined in the clapping.25 Custer’s final Civil War charge had stolen the show.
Don Juan’s bolting sparked a debate. One former staff officer alleged “it was merely a little theatrical display by the gallant trooper” who afterward “pranced back to his position at the head of his column.”26 Another witness argued “the true cause of the runaway was combined in the profuse display of bunting, the sudden shouts of ten thousand people and music from several bands (on the high stands) which greeted the head of the column of the Army of the Potomac.”27 Dr. Pulaski F. Hyatt wrote Libbie that the thorny wreath had caused the problem. George himself believed the thoroughbred thought the parade was the prelude to a race, and “the moment he saw the stand the old turf days came back to his memory and the judges giving the start . . . and he was off.”28
Theatrics or not, “It was a pretty picture,” a reporter wrote.29 Another noted, “In the sunshine his locks unskeined, stream a foot behind him. . . . It is like the charge of a Sioux chieftain.”30
After passing the reviewing stand, the 3rd Division trotted back east on K Street, stopping at a field on the edge of the city. There the men lined up in their regiments “to take leave of the young and gallant General whom they had learned to follow with a perfect confidence of victory, and had learned to love as few commanders have been loved by cool-headed American soldiers.”31 George handed his hat to an aide and, along with Libbie, rode along the front of the division, followed by his colors and staff, to the cheers of each regiment as he passed.
In a voice choked with emotion and with tears in his eyes, Custer thanked his troops for their courage, loyalty, and kindness. “I shall now leave you for another field,” he said, “but before doing so I take pleasure in transferring this standard, which you have so bravely followed, to the hands of General Capehart, than whom you cannot ask a more gallant and capable commander. Farewell! God bless you!”
The band struck up “Auld Lang Syne,” and George, Libbie, and an escort rode off toward the Capitol.
PART FOUR
FALL FROM GRACE
Albert Berghaus, General Custer at His Desk in His Library, from Elizabeth B. Custer, Tenting on the Plains (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1893).
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE “LONG-HAIRED HERO OF THE LASH”
In the summer of 1865, George, Libbie, and Eliza went south to join Sheridan’s new command in the Military Division of the Southwest in Texas. The Custers traveled west by train then south by riverboat, meeting homeward-bound Confederate General John Bell Hood along the way. During a stop in New Orleans, they were warmly received by General Winfield Scott, then seventy-nine years old and nearing the end. He died the following May at West Point.
Sheridan met them in his mansion headquarters. He had left Washington before the Grand Review due to the perceived urgency of the situation in Texas, where the rebellion had lingered. Confederate units under General Edmund Kirby Smith had kept up the fight after Lee’s surrender, and the last battle of the war, at Palmito Ranch, took place a month after Appomattox. Even when Kirby Smith fled to Mexico after negotiating his army’s surrender on May 26, there were concerns that conditions in Texas would remain chaotic. Sheridan wrote that “there is not a very wholesome state of affairs in Texas. The Governor, all the soldiers, and the people generally are disposed to be ugly.”1 Grant believed that “the whole State should be scoured to pick up Kirby Smith’s men and the arms carried home by them,” but given the size of the state and the few Federal troops on hand, this was clearly impossible.2
Some also worried the French-backed government in Mexico might take advantage of the volatility in Texas to press claims to lands lost twenty years earlier in the Mexican War. Sheridan wrote Grant of the “rascality of the Rio Grande frontier,” where there was “no government and a questionable protectorate.” He believed that “this portion of the late rebellion should be crushed out in a manly way and with the power of a great nation, as a contrast to this French subterfuge to assist in the attempt to ruin our country.”3
Sheridan planned a show of force to quell any military action by unruly Texans, the French, or the Mexicans. He planned to send two columns west: 5,000 men under Wesley Merritt, riding from the Shreveport to Austin, and 4,500 under Custer, heading from Alexandria, Louisiana, to Houston. If necessary, they were to unite with Merritt in San Antonio to form a division for movement south. The troops were to carry pontoon bridges “to cross streams on the line of march, and for the additional obje
ct of being able to cross the Rio Grande.”4
When Custer arrived in Alexandria on June 23, 1865, he took command of five cavalry regiments: the 7th Indiana, 1st Iowa, 5th and 12th Illinois, and 2nd Wisconsin. He might have expected he could immediately take up with the style of command he used with his old division. But these troops had fought mostly in the West during the war, under their familiar officers. All they knew of Custer was what they read in the papers. Custer had not shared their hardships or bled with them.
There were no battles looming where Custer could prove his mettle. The war was over. President Johnson had declared an end to hostilities on May 10, 1865, when Jefferson Davis was captured, and again on June 13. But he excepted Texas, where the rebellion would continue into August 1866. This technicality, however, made no impression on the men serving in the volunteer regiments. With the rebel armies disbanded and the Confederate government dissolved, they expected to go home. “Now that the war was ended,” Philip E. Francis of Company B, 1st Iowa Cavalry wrote, “and we were to separate in a few days, never again to meet as a military body, never again to live over those experiences which had made us a band of brothers, the future of each seemed the concern of all and plan-making was mutual. We were all heartily glad the end of the bloody contest had come, yet loth to separate.”5 Troops gathered at Memphis fully expecting to board ships headed north. But when the transports heaved downriver instead of up, “then the men did yell,” one reporter wrote. “The men were mad—and pandemonium was let loose, but nevertheless down the broad bosom of the Mississippi we glided—destination unknown.”6
“Tired out with the long service,” an officer recalled, “weary with an uncomfortable journey by river from Memphis, sweltering under a Gulf-coast sun, under orders to go farther and farther from home when the war was over, the one desire was to be mustered out and released from a service that became irksome and baleful when a prospect of crushing the enemy no longer existed.”7