59.Custer, “War Memoirs,” 455.
60.“Custer’s Failure at West Point,” Hamilton Examiner, July 30, 1874, 2.
61.Ibid.
62.Custer, “War Memoirs,” 455.
63.Ibid.
64.Ibid.
65.EBC in Arlene Reynolds, ed., The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer: Reconstructed from Her Diaries and Notes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 34.
66.Stephen Vincent Benét graduated third in the Class of 1849. He spent the Civil War at West Point as an instructor and testing experimental ordnance. In 1874 he became the chief of ordnance of the U.S. Army.
67.Custer, “War Memoirs,” 455.
68.Ibid., 456.
69.Ibid.
70.Ibid.
71.Special Orders No. 187, July 15, 1861, 8–9. It is hard to understand Hazen’s assessment of Custer’s conduct, since he had been given fifty-two demerits in the twenty-three days between the end of term and the incident in question. It may have been a case of one immortal looking out for another.
72.Memoir of George A. Woodruff, unpublished manuscript, USMA Archives, 28.
73.GAC letter to his sister, May 31, 1861.
CHAPTER 4
1.EBC in Arlene Reynolds, ed., The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer: Reconstructed from Her Diaries and Notes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 5. Of the eighty-nine graduates of the two classes of 1861, forty-three were present at Bull Run.
2.George A. Custer, “War Memoirs,” Galaxy, April 1876, 456.
3.Ibid., 457.
4.Custer, “War Memoirs,” September 1876, 19.
5.Custer, “War Memoirs,” April 1876, 624.
6.Custer, “War Memoirs,” May 1876, 629.
7.Ibid., 628.
8.Custer, “War Memoirs,” May 1876, 631; and June 1876, 811.
9.Custer, “War Memoirs,” May 1876, 624.
10.Marguerite Merington, ed., The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth (New York: Devin-Adair, 1950), 13.
11.Custer, “War Memoirs,” June 1876, 814.
12.John McClelland Bulkley, History of Monroe County Michigan: A Narrative Account of Its Historical Progress, Its People, and Its Principal Interests, vol. 1 (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1913), 234.
13.Custer, “War Memoirs,” September 1876, 299.
14.Custer, “War Memoirs,” November 1876, 685.
15.Ibid.
16.See the account in “The Fighting Begins,” chapter 5 of Tom Carhart, Sacred Ties: From West Point Brothers to Battlefield Rivals (New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2010).
17.Custer, “War Memoirs,” November 1876, 685–86.
18.Ibid., 692.
19.Ibid., 693.
20.Ibid., 694.
21.Ibid.
22.Francois Joinville to Edward Everett, Wednesday, November 9, 1864, Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress. Joinville acted as chaperon for his two nephews, who were on McClellan’s staff and later wrote a book about his experiences.
23.Reports of Brigadier General John G. Barnard, U.S. Army, chief engineer of operations from May 23, 1861, to August 15, 1862.
24.Custer, “War Memoirs,” October 1876, 455.
25.See the account by M. A. Luce, “Custer’s First Battle,” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine, vol. 21 (March 1898), 280–81. Luce participated in the engagement as a member of the 4th Michigan.
26.Report of Lieutenant Nicolas Bowen, topographical engineers, U.S. Army, May 23–24, 1862; and “Skirmishes at Ellison’s Mill, New Bridge, and Mechanicsville, Va.,” May 25, 1862.
27.Reports of Brigadier General John G. Barnard, U.S. Army, chief engineer of operations from May 23, 1861, to August 15, 1862.
28.McClellan to Stanton, May 24, 1862, 9 p.m.
29.Willard Glazier, Ocean to Ocean on Horseback (Philadelphia: Edgewood, 1899), 278.
CHAPTER 5
1.George Brinton McClellan and William Cowper Prime, McClellan’s Own Story (New York: C. L. Webster, 1887), 365.
2.George A. Custer, “War Memoirs,” Galaxy, June 1876, 813.
3.Reports of Colonel William W. Averell, Third Pennsylvania Cavalry, commanding First Cavalry Brigade, of skirmish at White Oak Swamp Bridge, August 5–6, 1862.
4.GAC in Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 27–28.
5.D. S. Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, vol. 1, Manassas to Malvern Hill (New York: Scribner’s, 1942), 233.
6.From an account by Mrs. E. B. Washington reprinted in “Amenities of War,” Louisiana Democrat, February 13, 1878.
7.EBC in Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 28.
8.E. B. Washington’s account in “Amenities of War.” Washington was sent to Fort Delaware in June 1862 and was exchanged that September for First Lieutenant James S. Blair of the First Maryland Volunteers. He went back to Johnston’s staff.
9.EBC in Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 30.
10.Custer letter of May 15, 1862, in Marguerite Merington, The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth (New York: Devin-Adair, 1950), 30.
11.Cf. Morris Schaff, The Spirit of Old West Point, 1858–1862 (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1907), 179–182. Schaff incorrectly gives the family name as Durfee. Schaff suggested that Lea should be buried next to Custer at West Point, “in memory of the love of two cadets whose West Point friendship the bitterness of war could not destroy” (183). Bassett Hall, the site of the wedding, is currently a museum at Colonial Williamsburg.
12.Merington, The Custer Story, 35.
13.Custer, “War Memoirs,” June 1876, 812–13.
14.D. H. Strother, “Personal Recollections of the War by a Virginian,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, April 1868, 581. Entry of November 9, 1862.
15.Ibid., 577. Entry of November 1, 1862.
CHAPTER 6
1.John McClelland Bulkley, History of Monroe County Michigan, vol. I (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1913), 219–20.
2.EBC in Arlene Reynolds, ed., The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer: Reconstructed from Her Diaries and Notes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 4.
3.Ibid.
4.EBC to GAC, August 14, 1864, in Marguerite Merington, ed., The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth (New York: Devin-Adair, 1950), 47.
5.EBC in Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 5.
6.Ibid.
7.Ibid., 5–6.
8.Ibid., 24.
9.George A. Custer, “War Memoirs,” Galaxy, June 1876, 809.
10.EBC in Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 7.
11.GAC, April 13, 1863.
12.GAC to Christiancy, May 31, 1863.
13.Samuel Harris, Personal Reminiscences of Samuel Harris (Chicago: The Rogerson Press, 1897), 17, 23–24.
14.Report of Brig. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton, U. S. Army, commanding Cavalry Division, of operation September 4-17 (1862).
15.GAC to Augusta, October 3, 1862.
16.GAC to Christiancy, May 31, 1863.
17.GAC, June 8, 1863.
18.See the account in Paul D. Walker, The Cavalry Battle that Saved the Union: Custer vs. Stuart at Gettysburg (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 2002), 81–82.
19.GAC to Lydia, May 27, 1863.
20.Edward G. Longacre, The Cavalry at Gettysburg (London: Associated University Presses, 1986), 108.
21.Pleasonton’s report, June 15, 1863.
22.Henry C. Meyer, Civil War Experiences under Bayard, Gregg, Kilpatrick, Custer, Raulston and Newberry (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1911), 33.
23.Ibid., 34.
24.Hall in Edward P. Tobie, History of the First Maine Cavalry, 1861–1865 (Boston: Press of Emery and Hughes, 1887), 160.
25.Howe transcript, Maine State Archives.
26.Longacre, The Cav
alry at Gettysburg, 108.
27.Munford’s official report on Aldie dated August 7, 1863.
28.Meyer, Civil War Experiences under Bayard, Gregg, Kilpatrick, Custer, Raulston and Newberry, 49.
29.For a discussion of Confederate strategic and campaign-level decisionmaking on the Gettysburg campaign, see James A. Kegel, North with Lee and Jackson: The Lost Story of Gettysburg (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1996).
30.Alfred Pleasonton, “The Campaign of Gettysburg,” in The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South, Alexander Kelly McClure, ed., 452. The promotions were in Special Orders 175, June 28, 1863. Of the three, Farnsworth was not a West Point graduate; he joined the Army after being expelled from the University of Michigan in 1857, after a student died falling out a window during campus revelry in which he had participated.
31.Quoted in D. A. Kinsley, Favor the Bold (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967–68), 134.
CHAPTER 7
1.See Edward G. Longacre, Custer and His Wolverines: The Michigan Cavalry Brigade, 1861–1865 (Conshohocken, PA: Combined Publishing, 1997).
2.Eric J. Wittenberg, ed., One of Custer’s Wolverines: The Civil War Letters of Brevet Brigadier General James H. Kidd, 6th Michigan Cavalry (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2000), 46.
3.Colonel Theodore Lyman, With Grant and Meade from the Wilderness to Appomattox, George R. Agassiz, ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 17.
4.Quoted in D. A. Kinsley, Favor the Bold (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967–68), 138.
5.Letter from Major General Henry Heth of A. P. Hill’s Corps, A. N. V., Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 4, 151–60. This statement has its critics, particularly among the cavalry. See John S. Mosby, Stuart’s Cavalry in the Gettysburg Campaign (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1908). A more balanced account is by Edward G. Longacre, The Cavalry at Gettysburg (London: Associated University Presses, 1986).
6.Henry C. Meyer, Civil War Experiences under Bayard, Gregg, Kilpatrick, Custer, Raulston and Newberry (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1911), 49–50.
7.Thompson later commanded the 6th at Brandy Station in October 1863. He was discharged June 1, 1864, because of wounds received in action. Thompson was made brevet colonel on March 13, 1865, for gallant and meritorious services during the war.
8.See Frank Moore, ed., Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events; Documents and Narratives, vol. 7, 185–86. Note that some sources place Custer leading the charge, but others do not. But it would be uncharacteristic for Custer not to have helped lead the charge; he led every one he had the chance to, previously and afterward. Also Private Churchill’s heroics were noted at the time, which could not have taken place had Custer not been in the thick of the fight.
9.John B. Bachelder, The Bachelder Papers: Gettysburg in Their Own Words, vol. 2, David L. Ladd and Audrey J. Ladd, eds. (Dayton, OH: Morningside Books, 1994), 1219.
10.McIntosh was from a long line of American soldiers going back to the Revolution. His brother, James McQueen McIntosh, was a Confederate Brigadier General who had been killed at the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, March 7, 1862.
11.Samuel Harris, Personal Reminiscences of Samuel Harris (Chicago: The Rogerson Press, 1897), 31.
12.James H. Kidd, “Address of General James Kidd at the Dedication of Michigan Monuments Upon the Battlefield at Gettysburg, June 12, 1889,” Journal of the United States Cavalry Association 4, 1891.
13.Wittenberg, 145.
14.Bachelder Papers, vol. 2, 1207.
15.Ibid., 1257.
16.Ibid., 1280.
17.Ibid.
18.Quoted in Meyer, 51.
19.Kidd, Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman with Custer’s Michigan Cavalry (Ionia, MI: Sentinel, 1908), 153.
20.Bachelder Papers, vol. 2, 1266.
21.In Longacre, Custer and His Wolverines, 238.
22.Note that a report of the battle said to be Custer’s that appears in Frederick Whittaker’s A Complete Life of General George A. Custer says that the charge of the 1st Michigan Cavalry was led by Colonel Town, not Custer.
23.Bachelder Papers, vol. 2, 1282.
24.Harris, Personal Reminiscences of Samuel Harris, 35.
25.Ibid., 1267.
26.Wittenberg, One of Custer’s Wolverines, 155.
27.Bachelder Papers, vol. 2, 1208.
28.Speech by Captain Henry C. Parsons, Company L, 1st Vermont Cavalry, July 3, 1913. Parsons had participated in the charge.
29.Kidd, in his 1889 address said, “Custer’s brigade lost one officer and twenty-eight men killed, eleven officers and 112 men wounded, sixty-seven men missing; total loss, 219. Gregg’s division lost one man killed, seven officers and nineteen men wounded, eight men missing; total, thirty-five. In other words, while Gregg’s division, two brigades, lost thirty-five, Custer’s single brigade suffered a loss of 219.”
30.Stuart’s official report, August 20, 1863.
31.Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate: A Critical Narrative (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907), 433.
32.Bachelder Papers, vol. 2, 1075.
33.Quoted in Whittaker’s A Complete Life of General George A. Custer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 149.
CHAPTER 8
1.James H. Kidd, Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman with Custer’s Michigan Cavalry (Ionia, MI: Sentinel, 1908), 200.
2.Quoted in Marguerite Merington, ed., The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth (New York: Devin-Adair, 1950), 11.
3.For a discussion of the challenges of covering the war, see Harold Holzer and Craig L. Symonds, eds., The New York Times Complete Civil War, 1861–1865 (New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, 2010), 8–19.
4.“From the Army of the Potomac,” New York Tribune, August 4, 1863, 1. Note that the piece got Custer’s age wrong.
5.Janesville Daily Gazette, September 9, 1863, 3.
6.Harris, Personal Reminiscences of Samuel Harris, 45–46.
7.“Saved from a Federal Prison,” Confederate Veteran, May 1893.
8.One account has Custer on this charge, but the report from Colonel Davies contradicts that. It was probably confused with the charge of the 1st Vermont.
9.Willard Glazier, Three Years in the Federal Cavalry (New York: R. H. Ferguson, 1870), 277.
10.Colonel Theodore Lyman, With Grant and Meade from the Wilderness to Appomattox, George R. Agassiz, ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 17; Frank Moore, ed., Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events; Documents and Narratives, vol. 7, document 169; and “The War in America,” East London Advertiser, October 3, 1863, 6.
11.Merington, The Custer Story, 62.
12.Ibid., 64.
13.EBC in Arlene Reynolds, ed., The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer: Reconstructed from Her Diaries and Notes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 6.
14.GAC to Nettie, October 7, 1863, in Merington, The Custer Story, 65.
15.GAC to Nettie, October 12, 1863, in ibid., 66.
16.Glazier, Three Years in the Federal Cavalry, 328–30.
17.Stuart’s AAR dated February 14, 1864.
18.Glazier, Three Years in the Federal Cavalry, 328–30.
19.John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War (New York: e. B. Treat, 1867), 257–58.
20.Milwaukee Semi-Weekly Wisconsin, October 24, 1863.
21.Pleasonton to Humphreys, October 11, 1863, 8:30 p.m.
CHAPTER 9
1.James H. Kidd, Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman with Custer’s Michigan Cavalry (Ionia, MI: Sentinel, 1908), 216.
2.From the Richmond Sentinel, reprinted in Frank Moore, ed., Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events; Documents and Narratives, vol. 7, 549.
3.Lee’s report of December 7, 1863.
4.Stuart’s report, February 13, 1864; also D. H. Hill Jr., Confed
erate Military History, A Library of Confederate States Military History, vol. 4, North Carolina, Clement Anselm Evans, ed. (Atlanta: Confederate Publishing Company, 1899).
5.P. M. B. Young, “The West Point Boys: Another Interesting Paper about the Men at the Military School, and Something of Their Careers; General Young Tells More of the Boys of ’61,” Atlanta Constitution, March 19, 1893, 9.
6.From the Richmond Sentinel, reprinted in Moore, ed., Rebellion Record, 549.
7.Quoted in Hill Jr., Confederate Military History, vol. 4, North Carolina.
8.From the Richmond Sentinel, in Moore, ed., Rebellion Record, 549.
9.“The Buckland Races” (to the tune of “Dearest May”), Alexandria Gazette, May 2, 1891, 4.
10.GAC to Nettie, October 20, 1863, in Marguerite Merington, ed., The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth (New York: Devin-Adair, 1950), 68.
11.GAC to Nettie, October 1863, in ibid., 69.
12.“Army of the Potomac: The Cavalry Reconnaissance on Sunday. Brisk Artillery Firing All along the Lines. The Enemy Driven Out of Their Rifle Pits. Lee Believed to Have Moved His Main Force Back from the Rapidan. Two Divisions of Gen. Hill’s Corps Gone Southward. Dispatch to the Associated Press,” New York Times, November 18, 1863.
13.Kidd, Personal Recollections, 129–30.
14.GAC to Nettie, October 9, 1863, in Merington, The Custer Story, 65.
15.GAC to Judge Bacon, October 1863, in ibid., 67.
16.GAC to Nettie, October 1863, in ibid., 70.
17.GAC to Nettie, October 27, 1863, in ibid.
18.In ibid., 72.
19.Libbie to GAC, December 27, 1863, in ibid., 75.
20.Libbie to GAC, October 1863, in ibid., 74.
21.Libbie to GAC, December 23, 1863, in ibid., 76.
22.Libbie to GAC, December 23, 1863, in ibid.
23.Libbie to GAC, December 27, 1863, in ibid., 75.
24.GAC to I. P. Christiancy, December 19, 1863.
25.Libbie to GAC, January 1864, in Merington, The Custer Story, 79.
26.GAC quoted by one of his officers in Arlene Reynolds, ed., The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer: Reconstructed from Her Diaries and Notes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 8.
27.Nettie to GAC, January 1864, in Merington, The Custer Story, 78.
The Real Custer Page 41
