Reconstruction had replaced slavery as a dominant national political issue. The issue broke along institutional lines: Congress and the executive departments dominated by Radical Republicans appointed by Lincoln sought a punitive peace, while Johnson and the Democratic congressional minority favored a more moderate course of reconciliation.
The Radicals on Capitol Hill moved ahead with their program. On June 11, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment, authored by Republican Ohio congressman John A. Bingham, who had secured Custer’s appointment to West Point. Supporters of the amendment said it was necessary to secure the rights of freed slaves and political minorities in the South, but opponents called it a Federal power grab. Johnson agreed to a plan to hold a National Union convention in Philadelphia from August 14 to 16 to defend “states’ rights” against the “usurpation and centralization of power in Congress.”
Custer attended the convention and became an open spokesman for reconciliation. He shook hands with a delegate from South Carolina, former Confederate Brigadier General Samuel McGowan, saying, “General, we have been looking at each other often during the war through field glasses and amid the smoke of battle. If we can now shake hands, these civilians who have stayed at their homes in safety surely should.”19
Custer served as an honorary vice president of a Union conference in Michigan, which approved a resolution praising “the restoration policy of Andrew Johnson, and that the Southern States, which were not admitted to be out of the Union in time of war, are now that the rebellion is suppressed, as right-fully and should be as effectually in the Union as they were before the madness of their people attempted to carry them out.”20 In an open letter to a National Union party mass meeting in Washington, D.C., on August 23, Custer said he believed that the policies of the Radicals were so punitive they could start a second civil war. “I have had enough of civil war,” he wrote, “and believing that the great National Union party is the only one whose efforts look to a permanent and honorable peace, and by whose aid only the Union can be restored under the Constitution, I have enlisted under its banner, beneath whose broad folds I propose to battle until the victory is won.”21
Around the same time, Custer became involved with the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Union (SSU), a veterans’ organization formed in January 1866 by Northern and Southern troops seeking reconciliation. The organization was closely tied to the National Union movement. Custer, along with scores of other former general officers, signed an SSU statement that said he believed “the South is sincere in its declarations,” and that he was “unwilling that the Southern people shall be held in vassalage, and that they cannot be denied representation in Congress without a plain violation of the Constitution.”22
Custer’s vigorous show of loyalty to Johnson was a far cry from his earlier political statements. In January 1864 he wrote to Republican Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan that he would “hang every human being who possesses a drop of rebel blood in their veins whether they be men, women, or children.” And in May 1865 he had said that “extermination is the only true policy we can adopt toward the political leaders of the rebellion, and at the same time do justice to ourselves and to our posterity.”23 His abrupt change in tone, even if it reflected his true, private political views, was seen as hypocrisy and opportunism. “Gen. Custer, who flogged and shaved the heads of Iowa soldiers in Texas, is now the leader of the military wing of President Johnson’s supporters,” one newspaper observed. The Detroit Free Press charged that Custer had “deserted to the Southern ranks.”24 Custer denounced such articles as creating “false impressions regarding my past and present position,” which he said were “being so assiduously disseminated throughout the country by a subsidized, unscrupulous, and fanatical press.”25 But the attacks intensified.
In late August, President Johnson embarked on a public relations tour of the North and Midwest that became known as the “Swing around the Circle.” A pro-Johnson newspaper wrote that “the best answer to the unnumbered slanders which radical lips and radical sheets have hurled at The President will be his own presence among the American people.”26 Johnson took along a number of luminaries, including well-known cabinet officials, Admiral Farragut, and Generals Grant, Stedman, Stoneman, Crook, Rousseau, and Custer, who joined the party on its way through West Point.27 Libbie accompanied her husband, and a press report described her as “among the most sprightly ladies of the presidential party. She is about 24, but looks not over 17, and is quite girlish and charming in her manners.”28
Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, who accompanied Johnson on the tour, wrote that “the President made brief remarks at nearly every stopping-place to the crowds which assembled to meet and welcome him. . . . The authorities in some of the cities—Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh—declined to extend courtesies or participate in the reception, but the people in all these cases took the matter in hand and were almost unanimous in the expression of their favorable regard and respect for the Chief Magistrate.”29
In reality, Johnson’s public relations tour was more difficult than Welles would admit. In the East the president was well received, but the Republican governors of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, and Pennsylvania all refused to appear or meet with him. Republican House members were also notably absent. And Johnson’s public receptions were not always so positive or enthusiastic. Most people were more interested in seeing the heroic General Grant and others in the party than hearing from the accidental president.
In Indianapolis on September 10, the presidential party was given a welcome that “beggars all description,” by one report. “A few faint hurrahs were given for Johnson, while continued yells were heard on every side for Grant and Farragut.” Johnson tried to speak but the crowd would not let him. Custer, “who seemed to be running the show,” came onto the balcony and admonished the crowd. “Hush, you damned set of ignorant Hoosiers!” he shouted, and the crowd answered with even louder calls for Grant. When Grant finally appeared, he was “received with a perfect storm.” Afterward, the president tried to address the crowd again, but “the yells were terrible, and he was again forced back and the balcony closed for the night.” Later a riot broke out, and one man was shot and three others wounded. Johnson delivered his speech the next day to a more temperate crowd, but Grant had to leave the presidential tour to prevent further distractions.30
This was fine by Grant, who was uncomfortable with the president using active military officers as political props. He might also have been wary of the political drift of the Johnson backers; a letter circulating at the Philadelphia National Union convention had called for arch-Radical Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to be removed from office. Grant was invited to speak at the Pittsburgh SSU meeting in September but declined, saying he saw “with regret the actions of any officer of the Army taking a conspicuous part in the political dissensions of the day.”31
But Custer had no compunction about getting involved in politics. At the SSU convention in Cleveland on September 17, he boldly disagreed with Grant: “It has been said in certain quarters that a soldier who is in the army has no right to interfere in political questions. I think, however, that the real objection is that we do not coincide with the particular views of those people.”32
However, the SSU was not generating the response its organizers had hoped. The Cleveland meeting was sparsely attended—Custer blamed the weather—and attacks from Republican papers were relentless. The Toledo Blade lampooned the proceedings, noting that “there wuz Custer uv Michigan, with his hair freshly oiled and curled, and buzzin about ez though be hed cheated hisself into the beleef that he reely amounted to suthin.”33
Republicans concluded that Custer was finally showing his true colors. They had always suspected he was a “McClellan Man,” and they were right. Custer praised McClellan as the finest general he had ever known and had a picture of Little Mac on prominent display in his quarters (beside Libbie’s portrait of him). The previously sup
portive Detroit Tribune denounced the “crack-brained folly of General Custer’s recent performances” and referred to him sarcastically as “George Adonis Custer.”34 A cartoon by Thomas Nast entitled “Amphitheatrum Johnsonianum” portrayed Johnson as a Roman emperor at the arena surrounded by other notables in period garb, with Custer prominent in the foreground, dressed as a Roman warrior, watching the scene placidly while leaning on the fasces, the symbol of imperial power.35
Custer’s “motives are easily understood,” an Indiana paper editorialized, under the headline “The Soldier Whipper.” He “desired promotion in the regular army” and found that “active support of Mr. Johnson’s peculiar policy was a prerequisite to military as well as civilian appointments.” Rumors spread that a grateful Johnson would give Custer general officer rank by brevet.
After the Cleveland convention, Custer was part of the delegation from the SSU that visited the White House to discuss the convention’s outcome. Perhaps Custer hoped that the president would reward his good works with a higher rank or a better assignment. But Johnson was not in a mood to dole out favors. The “Swing around the Circle” had been a public relations failure, and the SSU was turning out to be something of a liability. The Chicago Tribune speculated that Johnson held Custer somehow responsible for the “ignominious failure of the Cleveland convention.”36 The day after the White House meeting, Custer received orders to report to Fort Riley.
Custer did not leave the stage without stirring some more controversy. He pulled back from his full-throated support of Johnson and went on the record opposing the congressional candidacy of Democratic state representative J. Logan Chipman “on account of his disloyal record during the war.” Chipman was the Democratic city attorney of Detroit before the war and had written commentaries opposing the conflict. Custer said he refused “to support Northern traitors and declares they are unworthy of the confidence of the people.”37 The White House noted Custer’s change of tune and considered it a veiled attack. Detroit postmaster and newspaperman Henry Barns wrote to President Johnson denouncing Custer’s “Judaslike conduct.”38 The pro-Johnson Dubuque Herald opined,
Gen. Custer, whom the radicals were so fiercely denouncing a few weeks ago, it would seem has got sick of a little pure political atmosphere, and is already wallowing around in the congenial stenches of radicalism, where he feels at home. Gen. Custer, or Custard, or whatever it is, was one of those kind of men whose only achievement before he blundered into some kind of reputation before the war closed, was to wear his hair long. He shakes his gory locks magnificently, but the chief value of his head is on the outside. While professing to be a conservative man and par excellence a Johnson man, he is writing letters to defeat the conservative candidate for congress in his district in Michigan, and to aid one of the very men who propose to impeach the President. Custer evidently understands a good deal more about the hair business than he does about politics, and he had better confine himself to his brush and his pomatum.39
David Ross Locke, writing as the satirical character Petroleum V. Nasby, a lazy former Copperhead malcontent, noted that “them wich we bought up with appintments diskivered on a sudden that an Abolition Senit hed to confirm em, and to sekoor that they hev gone back onto us. Custer is a shinin example.”40 He mused that Custer was given a promotion to “keep him in posishen,” but “now the Kernelcy wuz gone and Custer too, and wat wuz worse, there wuz no such thing to be thot uv ez dissmissin him.”41
The November 6 election for the Fortieth Congress was a field day for the Radicals. Republicans gained thirty-seven seats in the House, and states sent eighteen more to the Senate. Democrats lost nine seats in the House, and dropped from eleven seats in the Senate to nine. The Republicans enjoyed veto-proof majorities in both chambers—in fact they had the largest percentage of House and Senate seats ever for a single party—and could push ahead with their radical program. President Johnson was left a helpless onlooker, soon to be impeached over trying to remove Stanton in violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The National Union party, and the possibility of a postwar centrist political alternative, was dead. Sectionalism emerged from the war stronger than ever, and the South remained solidly Democratic for the next century.
If nothing else, the election results showed the depths of Custer’s political miscalculation. His foray into the world of high-level patronage had failed, and he was lucky to report to his new unit at Fort Riley with his lieutenant colonelcy intact.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
COURT-MARTIAL
The Custers arrived at Fort Riley in late October 1866 to join the newly formed 7th Cavalry regiment. George was disappointed at not being named regimental commander; but his superior, Colonel Andrew Jackson Smith, also served as the chief of the District of the Upper Arkansas and was often on detached duty, leaving Custer in de facto command. And though he had lost his old rank, Custer and other wartime brevet officers were given the courtesy of their former titles, so Lieutenant Colonel Custer was still referred to informally as “General.”
Fort Riley, established in the 1850s, was an important Plains post after the war, particularly after the Union Pacific Railroad reached nearby Junction City. Supplies and amenities were plentiful compared to conditions in Texas or at the front during the war. In a letter written that December, Libbie said they were “living almost in luxury” at the fort. She said that the well-organized, relatively new buildings, including barracks, stables, officers’ and other houses, sutler’s store, post office, mess hall, chapel, and billiard house, “give the post the appearance of a little city.” They had “five dogs, cow & chickens—and such a nice new cow house & chicken coops. So, you see, we are comfortable. I have a carpet on my bedroom also and expect to have one on the dressing room. Eliza never did better than now. . . . I have scarcely a care.”1 There were also regular social events and periodic visits by friends and dignitaries seeking a taste of the “Wild West.”
Still, the postwar Army faced considerable challenges. The glory and sense of mission of the Civil War days was gone. Frontier duty was very much what it had been for decades—long stretches of routine activity in an unchanging landscape, with periodic outings against the elusive natives, who usually gave battle on their own terms. “There were but two kinds of Indian battles,” Major Martin Maginnis said, “one where the troops surprised and killed the Indians, and the other where the Indians surprised and killed the troops. If an Army officer failed in an expedition he was ridiculed and sneered at, and if he succeeded he was vilified as a barbarian and murderer.”2 There were few medals or incentives for the enlisted men, and no brevet promotions for the officers. John Gibbon noted dryly that glory was “a term which, upon the frontier, has long since been defined to signify being ‘shot by an Indian from behind a rock, and having your name wrongly spelled in the newspapers.’”3
In the more remote areas, amenities were few and rations substandard. At one point on campaign in 1867, Custer’s regiment was issued tack baked in 1861, “probably in honor of the year I graduated,” he quipped.4 The troops supplemented their provender by hunting, fishing, and gardening. Sickness was a constant problem, especially venereal disease, for which there was no convenient cure.5
The soldiers could not count on much sympathy from the American people. The postwar frontier force was not held in high regard. “The rank and file of the army is the most debased in the world,” the Burlington Hawkeye opined. “The refuse and scum of our great cities is raked into it. No amount of information or competence—no length of service—no merit of the private, can avail him anything in any respect. There is no emulation or pride to appeal to. He is a dog of the basest kind.”6
The enlisted force was a mixed group. Military service attracted immigrants (32 percent of the 7th Cavalry were Irish), criminals, and people who wanted free passage west. Low morale and rebelliousness were constant challenges, and the relative lack of major combat actions offered little inspiration or motivation. “Insubordination among the men wa
s the certain consequence of the half-starved, discouraged state they were in,” Libbie Custer observed. “One good fight would have put heart into them to some extent, for the hopelessness of following such a will-o’-the-wisp as the Indians were that year, made them think their scouting did no good and might as well be discontinued.”7
There was up to 40 percent turnover every year due to death, desertion, and end of enlistment.8 Desertion alone took around a third of the enlisted force annually, as men sought better opportunities in the mines, goldfields, or railroads. The 7th Cavalry lost nearly eight hundred men to desertion in under a year.9 Secretary of War Stanton joked that “the best way to populate the west was to keep sending recruits out there.”10
Of course, desertion was no joking matter. Besides the obvious damage to the force, deserters sometimes turned to banditry. In August 1865, John Pope, then commander of the Department of the Missouri, noted that “overland routes are new and will for some time be infested by wandering parties of lawless white men, lately bushwhackers and deserters from the army, and men from the disbanded rebel armies. These men prowl through that whole region of country and are more dangerous to travelers than the Indians themselves.”11 In 1866 the New York Times reported that deserters “turn murderers and robbers and horse thieves and are a terror to the travelling community. Scarcely a night passes but that some poor fellow is waylaid and killed.”12 And deserters did not always slip off quietly in the night. Albert Barnitz noted several cases where well-armed fugitives from the 7th Cavalry exchanged brisk fire with the sentries as they departed.13 Custer’s classmate Captain David H. Buel, commander of the arsenal at Fort Leavenworth, was murdered by a deserter named John M. Malone, whom Buel had reprimanded for drunkenness on duty.14
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