Book Read Free

The Real Custer

Page 23

by James S Robbins


  “Cheer upon cheer went up from the boys and citizens assembled there to witness the race,” a soldier wrote, “intermingled with such expressions as, ‘How are you, General Custer?’ ‘Couldn’t steal the race this time!’ ‘Why don’t you make your band blow?’ and many other expressions.”48 The mood in the general’s party turned less bright, and “the General and his staff, and the band and ambulances retreated in disorder and confusion.”49

  “Of course it was plain that we were frightfully beaten,” Libbie wrote, “and with loud and triumphant huzzas, the Texans welcomed their winning horse long before poor Jack dragged himself up to the stand.” She claimed that Jack Rucker had been drugged.50

  In November the command moved from Hempstead to Austin, where they were generally welcomed.51 The war had not touched Texas as it had other Confederate states, and many in the countryside refused to recognize Federal authority, or in some cases any authority. Custer’s cavalry was a necessary stabilization force. “The citizens are constantly coming to pay their respects to Armstrong,” Libbie wrote. “You see, we were welcomed instead of dreaded, as, Yankees or no Yankees, a man’s life is just as good, preserved by a Federal soldier as by a Confederate, and everybody seems to be in a terrified state in this lawless land.”52 They passed several months in Austin without serious incident, and the Austin Southern Intelligencer said that Custer “won the admiration and esteem of all of our citizens who have been associated with him, either socially or on business.” The paper said his conduct was marked by “uniform justice, kindness and courtesy.”53

  Elsewhere Custer was not regarded with such esteem. The Iowa state legislature, after investigating the whipping of Private Cure and the general treatment of the 1st Iowa Cavalry, passed a resolution denouncing “such ill-treatment as no other Iowa soldiers have ever been called upon to endure” and concluding that “such treatment or punishment was dishonorable to the General inflicting it, degrading to the name of American soldier, unworthy of the cause in which they were engaged, and in direct and flagrant violation of the laws of Congress and the rules and articles of war.”54

  A history of the 1st Iowa Volunteer Cavalry noted that “the hero of many a mad charge [sank] into the hero of the lash, [and] justly received the indignant condemnation of the people of Iowa.” Iowa governor William M. Stone, who had risen from the rank of private to colonel in the war and had helped carry the wounded President Lincoln from Ford’s Theatre to the house where he died, protested the “barbarous code adopted by the long-haired young general.” He requested his unit be mustered out. Iowan Major General Fitz Henry Warren, the editor of the New York Tribune who had coined the expression “On to Richmond!” in 1861, took the matter to Secretary of War Stanton personally, and the unit was allowed to disband on February 15, 1866.55

  But by then Custer had moved on. General Order 168 of December 28, 1865, mustered out 101 volunteer major generals, brevet major generals, and brigadiers, effective January 31, 1866. (In typical U.S. government fashion, the Senate finally confirmed George as a major general of volunteers three weeks later.)56 The Custers left Texas by Galveston, in an old blockade runner.

  “They hated us, I suppose,” Libbie reflected on the morale problems in George’s command. “That is the penalty the commanding officer generally pays for what still seems to me the questionable privilege of rank and power. Whatever they thought, it did not deter us from commending, among ourselves, the good material in those Western men, which so soon made them orderly and obedient soldiers.”57

  Charles Bertrand Lewis, who had served in the 6th Michigan Cavalry and accompanied the “expedish a la Custer” with the 7th Indiana, disagreed. He wrote that the men being good soldiers was never the issue and thought it appalling that they were “brought down here and drilled and worked nearly to death after they have done their duty and now they wish to go home to their families and friends.” He said it was “a disgrace that the American Government will permit a lot of Regular Army Officers to domineer it with a high hand over American citizens who, according to their enlistment papers are free.” As for his former commander, he concluded that Custer was “a Potomac officer trying to learn western men what duty is now the war is over. Potomac and Mississippi do not agree.”58

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE “SWING AROUND THE CIRCLE”

  Custer now faced a challenge he had not had to consider since he was commissioned: What does a natural-born warrior do in peacetime? For his entire professional career, George Custer had only known war. He had gone from the Military Academy to the battlefield. He had thrived in the wartime environment; it was the ideal setting to harness his abilities and proclivities in the interests of the Army and his country.

  But with the conflict over, Custer had to adjust to life in a very different force. Libbie said that “the stagnation of peace was being felt by those who had lived a breathless four years at the front.”1 Volunteer units disbanded, and the professional officers who led them reverted to their Regular Army ranks. Wartime “brevet” ranks also disappeared. Custer was a major general of volunteers and brevet major general of the Regular Army when the war ended. But when he mustered out of the volunteer service, he was once again a Regular Army captain, and his salary dropped from $8,000 to $2,000. “Hurrah for Peace and my little Durl,” George wrote Libbie after Lee surrendered. “Can you consent to come down and be a Captain’s wife?”2

  George Custer was at a critical decision point in his career. He could continue to serve in uniform, but as a noted war hero, he was offered many other opportunities. “The temptations to induce General Custer to leave the service and enter civil life began at once, and were many and varied,” Libbie wrote. After they returned to Monroe from Texas, “all sorts of suggestions were made. Business propositions, with enticing pictures of great wealth, came to him. He never cared for money for money’s sake. No one that does, ever lets it slip through his fingers as he did.”3

  “I think it probable that I shall leave the army,” George wrote in March, “but will not decide till assured of success.”4 At the time, he was in Washington testifying before Congress, meeting important government officials, and pondering numerous offers from artists and photographers interested in recreating his likeness. He was in great demand and could have directed his interests profitably in a number of directions, whether civilian business opportunities or a government appointment. At one point he considered seriously a post as a foreign envoy. “I would like it for many reasons,” he wrote Libbie, including the salary of $7,000 to $10,000 per year. He could have gone into politics but turned down a chance to run for Congress in Michigan in 1866—a race he certainly would have won.

  “The old soldiers, and civilians also, talked openly of General Custer for Congressman or Governor,” Libbie wrote. “It was a summer of excitement and uncertainty. How could it be otherwise to a boy who, five brief years before, was a beardless youth with no apparent future before him?”5 He might have had a career like his former subordinate Russell Alger of the 5th Michigan Cavalry, who served as governor of Michigan, secretary of war, and U.S. senator.

  George also had an opportunity to keep fighting. Expatriate Mexican president Benito Juárez offered Custer a major general’s commission in his rebel army, which would have put him in the field against the French-backed forces of self-styled Emperor Maximilian I. The U.S. Navy had established a blockade of Mexico, and Grant and Sherman liked the idea of Custer’s having a hand in defeating Maximilian’s army. The offer promised high pay and high adventure. But Libbie opposed the idea, as did Secretary of State William H. Seward. He thought the move would create further diplomatic complications with the French and prevailed upon President Johnson to block the appointment.

  Libbie was tempted to urge George to resign. But her father, who had originally opposed her being an Army wife, talked her out of it. “Why, daughter,” he said, “I would rather have the honor which grows out of the way in which the battle of Waynesboro was fought, than to h
ave the wealth of the Indies. . . . My child, put no obstacles in the way to the fulfillment of his destiny. He chose his profession. He is a born soldier. There he must abide.”6 Judge Bacon had fully accepted George and Libbie’s relationship, and lying ill in the spring of 1866 said that she had “married entirely to her own satisfaction and to mine. No man could wish for a son-in-law more highly thought of!”7 Judge Bacon passed away on May 18, casting a pall of sadness over the two families, and George rushed back to Monroe from New York to support his grieving wife. “I should be far more miserable but for Armstrong’s care,” she wrote. “I do not wear deep mourning. He is opposed to it.”8

  Ultimately, Custer decided to continue his Army career. The postwar force was larger than the one Custer had expected to serve in while he was a cadet at West Point. In 1866, Congress tripled the size of the small prewar Army to undertake the military occupation of the former Confederate states, meet frontier security needs, man the coastal defense force, and deter the perceived threat from French-controlled Mexico.9 But the larger force did not necessarily mean ample opportunities, as there were many senior officers, professionals, and volunteers with distinguished war records, all jockeying for assignments. Once the key billets were filled, promotions would not take place until a slot opened. “Death, dismissal, resignation, and retiring from illness or from age are the causes that make vacancies,” Libbie wrote. Officers would look through the Army register to see who outranked them “and to estimate how many years it would take for those in the way to be removed, either by Divine Providence or by dismissal.”10

  Patronage had been important during the war and proved no less critical afterward. Connections—and skill in the slippery art of political infighting—could be more valuable for career advancement than a sterling war record. As Mrs. Custer noted, “though safe from the dangers of battle it did not mean peace, for that public life was usually a perpetual fight, and so often the foe in the dark.”11

  Custer was fortunate to have some powerful, high-level patrons. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton greeted him very cordially when he visited Washington in March 1866, gushing, “It does me good to look at you again!”12 Stanton approved many suggestions from Custer for filling junior officer vacancies. Sheridan—who had been a first lieutenant at the time of Fort Sumter and emerged from the war a full major general—argued for a generalship for his young protégé, or at the very least command of a cavalry regiment. But Sheridan’s entreaties and Custer’s other connections were not enough. On July 28, 1866, Custer was commissioned lieutenant colonel of the 7th U.S. Cavalry, a new regiment based at Fort Riley. The coveted colonelcy was given to Brevet Major General Andrew Jackson Smith, the son of a Revolutionary War veteran and member of the West Point Class of 1838. He fought in Mexico and on the frontier and served in the West under Grant during the Civil War. Grant had singled him out for heroism in the fighting during the approach to Vicksburg, and he ended the war a corps commander.

  Custer was naturally disappointed. Being made a regimental deputy seemed like a rebuff. Smith arguably lacked Custer’s exceptional record of achievement in the war, but he was typical of the generation receiving command billets in postwar regiments. The Army had a wealth of young, motivated officers like Custer, with impressive backgrounds, seeking to get ahead, but took a long-term view toward institution building. Seniority was still a guiding principle, and the Young Turks would have to wait their turn.

  The new colonels were a mixed bag. Command of the 8th Cavalry went to John Irvin Gregg, cousin of General David M. Gregg; he had fought in Mexico, pursued a career in the iron industry between the wars, and rose to the rank of brevet major general as a cavalry commander in the Civil War. The 6th Cavalry colonelcy went to James Oakes of West Point’s Class of 1846, brevetted for bravery in Mexico but with an undistinguished Civil War record. The 9th Cavalry went to Edward Hatch, a former brevet major general who had commanded a division in the West in the Civil War. And the 10th went to Benjamin Grierson, another brevet major general, division commander, and Westerner, whose raid before the siege of Vicksburg General Sherman called “the most brilliant expedition of the war.”

  Custer was not the only bright light of his generation whose career hit a slowdown. Wesley Merritt, who had been in higher command positions longer than Custer, was made lieutenant colonel of the 9th Cavalry under Hatch.13 Like Custer, Merritt’s highest Regular Army rank had been captain. But even if officers of Custer’s and Merritt’s caliber were not given regimental commands, neither were they being punished. Jumping two ranks to the regular rank of lieutenant colonel was the sort of career mobility that would have been nearly impossible in the Old Army.

  Some were not so lucky. Custer’s old corps commander General Pleasonton, who had graduated from West Point in 1844, was a Regular Army major before and during the war, and was offered the lieutenant colonelcy of the 20th Infantry, which he declined, before leaving the service in 1868. Alexander Pennington went from a volunteer cavalry brevet brigadiership to a Regular Army artillery captaincy, reaching the rank of major only in 1882; he made lieutenant colonel ten years later and returned to the rank of brigadier general in the Spanish American War, thirty-eight years after graduating from West Point.

  Custer may have been given some hope by the treatment of 1855 West Point graduate William W. Averell, whose removal after the Battle of Fisher’s Hill in August 1864 had opened the way for Custer’s first division command. Averell resigned from the military in March 1865, but on July 17, 1866, President Johnson recommended Averell be promoted from the regular rank of captain all the way up to major general. The U.S. Senate confirmed the elevation on July 23. Averell did not return to the colors, accepting instead the post of consul general to the British North American Provinces, and afterward earning fame as the inventor of asphalt paving.14 But he proved such promotions were possible.

  Custer had supporters, but questions persisted. Rumors that he was politically unsound continued to dog him. He had achieved celebrity in part through the patronage of Radical Republicans, particularly Secretary of War Stanton, but was still of a Democratic bent. In March 1866 he was forced publicly to address a claim that while in Texas he had made pro-secession speeches. “I have made no speeches since coming to Texas,” he wrote in an open letter, “and if I had, my voice would not have been raised in support of and in sympathy with the statement and the doctrine of whose hostility to the Government is now as strong and openly manifested as at any time during the rebellion. I hope my course during the war will be accepted as bearing me out in this statement.”15 Custer was called to testify before Congress on conditions in Texas, and he toed the Radical Republican line, warning strongly against removing occupation troops, due to lingering hostility against the Union.16 However, after his Republican patrons failed to deliver the rank Custer wanted, he decided to hitch his fortunes to Democrat Andrew Johnson.

  In early August, Custer met with President Johnson to discuss getting another assignment, perhaps command of one of the more numerous new infantry regiments. “But in whatever branch of the service I may be assigned,” he wrote afterward to Johnson, “I most respectfully request to be attached to an organization composed of White troops, as I have served and wish to serve with no other class.”17 (Custer had earlier been looked at for the lieutenant colonelcy of the 9th Cavalry, one of the new black regiments, later famed as the Buffalo Soldiers, but Grant had shifted him to the 7th Cavalry, and Merritt went to the 9th.) Johnson was not immediately forthcoming, but he did ask Custer’s assistance in shoring up his shaky political fortunes going into the 1866 midterm congressional elections.

  Johnson was in a difficult position. The most destructive conflict in the nation’s history had fundamentally reshaped the political landscape. “A new political era is being inaugurated,” Custer wrote, “an era which is destined to remodel and develop the character of our political structure.”18 But exactly what that era would look like was a matter of speculation. Some believed that ante bellu
m sectionalism was a thing of the past and that with the end of slavery, both the Southern Democratic faction and Republican party had lost their reasons for being. By this calculation the future belonged to centrist Democrats like Johnson. He had run with Lincoln in 1864 under the National Union banner, cutting into McClellan’s moderate-Democratic support. Johnson believed that he could keep the movement alive and build a new centrist party composed of disaffected Democrats, former Confederates, Northern Copperheads, and moderate Republicans alienated by the party’s dominant Radical wing.

  The plan seemed to make sense. The Republican party had made its name as an anti-slavery party. Lacking the cohesion and fervor supplied by abolitionism, it was feasible that the decade-old party would fracture, and Johnson’s Union movement, championing moderate reconstruction policies, could pick up the pieces.

  But the Republicans had several important factors working in their favor. They were the party of the martyred Lincoln, who was revered in death far more than he was while in the White House. Johnson by contrast struggled against the perception that he was never supposed to be president. Republicans also established networks of friendship and influence through war service that would prove to be long lasting and politically beneficial. Republican governors gave key volunteer regimental commands to trustworthy political allies, a factor that had worked against Custer earlier in the war, and these relationships remained solid for decades.

  This was the dawn of an era of Republican preeminence at the national level. During the period in which the generations that fought the war dominated American national politics, from the 1860s to 1910, only one Democrat, Grover Cleveland, was elected president. There was also a sense among many Republicans, particularly among the Radicals, that the mission of the war was not yet complete. The South had to be punished, or at least the sacrifices made by the North had to be recognized. The 1866 election was the first peacetime opportunity to “wave the bloody shirt.” It was not yet time to forgive and forget.

 

‹ Prev