The Real Custer

by James S Robbins

  28.EBC in Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 7.

  29.Judge Bacon to his sister Charity, February 11, 1864, in Merington, The Custer Story, 81.

  30.Rebecca Richmond to Mary Richmond, February 1864, in ibid., 81–82.

  31.EBC to Judge Bacon, February 1864, in ibid., 84.

  32.EBC to Judge Bacon, February 1864, in ibid.

  33.EBC in Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 35–36.

  34.EBC in ibid., 44.

  CHAPTER 10

  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), 50.

  2.Quoted in D. A. Kinsley, Favor the Bold (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967–68), 139.

  3.“From the Army of the Potomac,” New York Tribune, August 4, 1863, 1.

  4.Quoted in Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative, vol. 2, Fredericksburg to Meridian (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1986), 572.

  5.Lyman quoted in 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), 45.

  6.See Thomas Lowry, The Story the Soldiers Won’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994), 154–55; and “Our Letter from Cairo,” Daily Alta California, October 30, 1863, 1.

  7.For general background on the raid see Duane P. Schultz, The Dahlgren Affair: Terror and Conspiracy in the Civil War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998).

  8.J. B. Stalb, “The 11th Pa. Cav.: The Time That It Did Not Go into Richmond,” National Tribune, August 9, 1906.

  9.John Adolphus Bernard Dahlgren, Memoir of Ulric Dahlgren. By His Father, Rear-Admiral Dahlgren (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1872), 211. Letter dated February 26, 1864.

  10.Quoted in Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 50.

  11.The Soldier’s Journal, March 9, 1864, 28; and the New York Tribune, March 3, 1864.

  12.Memphis Daily Appeal, March 11, 1864, 1, reprinted from the New York Herald.

  13.Dubuque Daily Democratic Herald, March 3, 1864.

  14.See the account in “The Cavalry Raid by Custer, Kilpatrick and Dahlgren,” Transactions of the Southern Historical Society, 1 (1874), 155ff.

  15.The Soldier’s Journal, March 9, 1864, 28.

  16.Memphis Daily Appeal, March 11, 1864, 1, reprinted from the New York Herald.

  17.Richmond Whig, March 7, 1864, reprinted in the New York Times, March 12, 1864.

  18.Memphis Daily Appeal, March 11, 1864, 1, reprinted from the New York Herald.

  19.Staunton Spectator, March 8, 1864, 1.

  20.March 1 report from the World summarized in the Cleveland Morning Leader, March 3, 1864, 1.

  21.Memphis Daily Appeal, March 11, 1864, 1, reprinted from the New York Herald.

  22.James H. Kidd, Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman with Custer’s Michigan Cavalry (Ionia, MI: Sentinel, 1908), 247.

  23.Ibid., 249.

  24.“He Was There,” National Tribune, May 31, 1894, 3.

  25.Ibid.

  26.Staunton Spectator, March 8, 1864, 1.

  27.“He Was There,” 3.

  28.“Dahlgren’s Raid,” National Tribune, December 3, 1885, 1. J. W. Landern believed that “the hanging of that poor black man was a cruel and cowardly murder.” He believed Robinson had misunderstood what Dahlgren intended, and said his “experience with the Southern blacks during the war proved to me they were truly loyal to us, and were ever ready and willing to peril their lives to aid a Union soldier.” “He Was There,” 3.

  29.“Dahlgren’s Raid,” 1.

  30.Ibid.

  31.Staunton Spectator, March 8, 1864, 1.

  32.Ibid.

  33.Fitzhugh Lee to General S. Cooper, March 4, 1864.

  34.Kilpatrick to Newhall, March 16, 1864.

  35.EBC, March 28, 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), 88.

  36.“How Custer Went to West Point,” Hocking Sentinel (Logan, OH), August 16, 1900, 3.

  37.EBC, March 28, 1864 in Merington, The Custer Story, 89.

  38.Quoted in Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 52.

  CHAPTER 11

  1.EBC, March 28, 1864, 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), 87.

  2.GAC to EBC, April 16, 1864, in ibid., 89.

  3.David S. Stanley, Personal Memoirs of Major-General D. S. Stanley, USA (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1917), 18.

  4.Wharton J. Green, Recollections and Reflections (Raleigh, NC: Edwards and Broughton Printing Company, 1906), 92–93.

  5.James H. Kidd, Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman with Custer’s Michigan Cavalry (Ionia, MI: Sentinel, 1908), 298–300.

  6.John Hill Brinton, Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton, Major and Surgeon U.S.V., 1861–1865 (New York: Neale Publishing, 1914), 267.

  7.Ibid., 239.

  8.Grant to Halleck, May 11, 1864, 8:30 a.m.

  9.Sheridan quoted in Merington, The Custer Story, 96.

  10.“Sheridan’s Grand Raid,” Morning Leader, May 28, 1864.

  11.Supplemental report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, in two volumes. Supplemental to Senate Report No. 142, 38th Congress, 2d session, 21.

  12.Merington, The Custer Story, 98.

  13.American and Commercial Advertiser, May 18, 1864, 1.

  14.In W. C. King and W. Derby, eds., Camp-Fire Sketches and Battle-Field Echoes of 61-5, (Springfield, MA: King, Richardson, 1868), 250, 408–9.

  15.GAC to EBC, May 14, 1864, in Merington, The Custer Story, 97.

  16.See Jay Monaghan, “Custer’s ‘Last Stand’—Trevilian Station, 1864,” in Paul Andrew Hutton, ed., The Custer Reader (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 53ff.

  17.“A True Account of the Cavalry Battle at Trevillian’s” Edgefield (SC) Advertiser, (reprinted from the Richmond Sentinel), July 13, 1864.

  18.This was nearly identical to the circumstances for which Powhatan Clarke, the West Point goat of 1884, was awarded the Medal of Honor during the Geronimo Campaign.

  19.GAC to EBC, June 21, 1864.

  20.“The Last Great Cavalry Raid,” Nashville Daily Union, June 25, 1864, 1.

  21.Torbert’s report of July 4, 1864.

  22.“A True Account of the Cavalry Battle at Trevillian’s.”

  23.Supplemental report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, in two volumes. Supplemental to Senate Report No. 142, 38th Congress, 2d session, 26.

  24.Ibid.

  25.Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885), 458–59.

  26.GAC to EBC, June 21, 1864.

  27.See Merington, The Custer Story, 123.

  28.EBC to GAC in ibid., 102.

  29.EBC to her parents, May 1, 1864, in ibid., 94.

  30.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), 7.

  31.GAC to EBC, May 1, 1864 in Merington, The Custer Story, 95.

  32.Bingham in ibid., 109.

  33.EBC to her parents, June 1864, in ibid., 108–9.

  34.EBC to her parents, July 4, 1864, in ibid., 113.

  35.EBC to her parents, April 1864 in ibid., 90.

  36.Quoted in Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 98.

  37.From Caroline Dana Howe, “Young Custer’s Bride,” reprinted in ibid., 173–75.

  CHAPTER 12

  1.London Guardian, October 26, 1864, 1027.

  2.Grant to Halleck, July 14, 1864.

  3.New York Daily Tribune, August 22, 1864, 6.

  4.Ibid.

 
5.Sheridan to Halleck, August 17, 1864.

  6.New York Daily Tribune, August 22, 1864, 6.

  7.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), 115.

  8.Sunbury (PA) American, September 24, 1864, 2.

  9.Charles Alfred Humphreys, Field, Camp, Hospital and Prison in the Civil War, 1863–1865 (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1918), 160.

  10.Quoted in Roger U. Delauter and Brandon H. Beck, The Third Battle of Winchester (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1997), 64.

  11.Indianapolis Daily State Sentinel, September 23, 1864, 1.

  12.Torbert’s report, November 1864.

  13.Merritt in his report of October 5, 1864.

  14.Sunbury (PA) American, September 24, 1864, 2.

  15.Wilson became Sherman’s chief of cavalry for the Military Division of the Mississippi.

  16.GAC to EBC May 16, 1864, in Merington, The Custer Story, 97.

  17.Quoted in ibid., 121.

  18.London Guardian, October 26, 1864, 1027.

  19.Custer to Dana, September 30, 1864.

  20.London Guardian, October 26, 1864, 1027.

  21.Sheridan to Grant, October 7, 1864, 9 p.m.

  22.Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, October 12, 1864, 1.

  23.Dana letter of November 14, 1864, in John Harrison Wilson, The Life of Charles Henry Dana (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1907), 348.

  24.Diary of Captain Robert E. Park, Twelfth Alabama regiment, entry of November 4–7, 1864, in Reverend J. William Jones, ed., Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 2., 175.

  25.On Rosser’s brigade, see William N. McDonald, A History of the Laurel Brigade (Baltimore: Kate S. McDonald, 1907).

  26.Philip Henry Sheridan, Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan, vol. 1 (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1888), 56.

  27.Ibid.

  28.Custer report of October 13, 1864. See also the New York Herald report reprinted in Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, October 12, 1864, 1.

  29.James H. Kidd, Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman with Custer’s Michigan Cavalry (Ionia, MI: Sentinel, 1908), 316–17.

  30.Frederick Whittaker, A Complete Life of General George A. Custer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 258. Some say Whittaker invented this event, but there is a sketch of it by Alfred R. Waud in the collection of the Library of Congress, mislabeled as a salute to Ramseur, not Rosser.

  31.Custer report of October 13, 1864.

  32.Daily Ohio Statesman, October 15, 1864, 3.

  33.General T. T. Munford, “Reminiscences of Cavalry Operations,” Southern Historical Society Papers, Reverend J. William Jones, ed., vol. 13, 134.

  34.Custer report of October 13, 1864.

  35.Early to R. E. Lee, October 9, 1864.

  36.New York Times, July 9, 1876, 1.

  CHAPTER 13

  1.New York Herald report, reprinted in Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, October 12, 1864, 1.

  2.William N. McDonald, A History of the Laurel Brigade (Baltimore: Kate S. McDonald, 1907), 308–9.

  3.George Perkins, Three Years a Soldier: The Diary and Newspaper Correspondence of Private George Perkins, Sixth New York Independent Battery, 1861–1864, Richard N. Griffin, ed. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), 293.

  4.New York Herald report, quoted in the Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 24, 1864.

  5.Custer report of October 22, 1864.

  6.Supplemental report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, in two volumes. Supplemental to Senate Report No. 142, 38th Congress, 2d session, 44.

  7.Colonel Whitaker quoted by Chaplain Humphreys, 176.

  8.Report by Lieutenant Colonel John W. Bennett, 1st Vermont Cavalry, November 14, 1864.

  9.Washington DC Evening Star, October 22, 1864, 1.

  10.Report by Lieutenant Colonel John W. Bennett,.

  11.George Quintus Peyton, Stonewall Jackson’s Foot Cavalry: Company A, 13th Virginia Infantry (Shippensburg, PA: Burd Street Press, 2001), 130.

  12.Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, The Shenandoah Campaigns of 1862 and 1864 and the Appomattox Campaign, 1865, vol. 6 (Boston: The Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 1907), 139.

  13.Washington DC Evening Star, October 24, 1864, 2.

  14.See Gary W. Gallagher, Stephen Dodson Ramseur: Lee’s Gallant General (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985).

  15.Morris Schaff, The Spirit of Old West Point, 1858–1862 (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1907), 56.

  16.Ibid., 56–57. See also Gallagher, Stephen Dodson Ramseur, 26–27.

  17.John Truesdale, The Blue Coats, How They Lived, Fought and Died for the Union (Philadelphia: Jones Brothers, 1867), 180–81.

  18.Lincoln to Sheridan, October 22, 1864.

  19.Custer General Order of October 21, 1864.

  20.Arlene Reynolds, ed., The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer: Reconstructed from Her Diaries and Notes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 105.

  21.News report 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), 126.

  22.Washington DC Evening Star, October 24, 1864, 2.

  23.“Sheridan’s Victory,” New York Times, October 27, 1864, 2.

  24.GAC to EBC in Merington, The Custer Story, 119.

  25.The Raftsman’s Journal, October 19, 1864, 1.

  26.Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 74.

  27.G. A. Custer, “War Memoirs,” Galaxy, June 1876, 813.

  28.GAC to Judge Bacon, January 1864, in Merington, The Custer Story, 80.

  29.“Sheridan’s Victory,” New York Times, October 27, 1864, 2.

  30.George A. Custer to Emanuel Custer, October 16, 1864.

  CHAPTER 14

  1.John W. Munson, Reminiscences of a Mosby Guerrilla (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1906), 146. For a general discussion of this issue, see Robert Russell Mackey, The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861–1865 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004); and James Joseph Williamson, Mosby’s Rangers: A Record of the Operations of the Forty-Third Battalion of Virginia Cavalry from Its Organization to the Surrender, 2nd ed. (New York: Sturgis and Walton, 1909).

  2.“An Hour With Mosby,” Richmond Daily Dispatch, December 1, 1864, 1.

  3.EBC to her parents, May 1, 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), 94.

  4.Custer to Pleasonton, July 18, 1863.

  5.Pleasonton to Humphreys, August 2, 1863.

  6.Sheridan to Halleck, October 27, 1864.

  7.E. A. Paul, “Operations of Our Cavalry: The Michigan Cavalry Brigade,” New York Times, August 6, 1863.

  8.J. H. Taylor to Major John M. Waite, August 28, 1864.

  9.Staunton Spectator, August 25, 1863, 1.

  10.Philip Henry Sheridan, Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan, vol. 2 (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1888), 51.

  11.Sheridan to Grant, October 7, 1864, 9:00 p.m.; and Sheridan, Personal Memoirs.

  12.Sheridan, Personal Memoirs, vol. 2, 52.

  13.Report in the New York Times, August 25, 1864.

  14.Williamson, Mosby’s Rangers, 215.

  15.Ibid., 214–15.

  16.Munson, Reminiscences of a Mosby Guerrilla, 147. In addition to the passion of the moment, there was a general order among Confederate troops that no quarter was to be given to soldiers found burning homes.

  17.Grant to Sheridan, August 16, 1864.

  18.Sheridan to Grant, August 17, 1864.

  19.Mosby to Robert E. Lee, October 29, 1864.

  20.“Hanging of Mosby’s Men in 1864,” ‘B.’ in Warrenton Virginia, February, 1896, Southern Historical Society Papers 24, J. William Jones, ed., 108–9. See also Jay W. Simson, Custer and the Front Royal Executions Of 1
864 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009). Jay Simson argues that Custer was not involved in the actual executions but was in the vicinity and stood out because of his distinctive appearance, so newspaper accounts placed the blame on him. Simson makes the case that Brigadier General Alfred Torbert ordered the hangings and was most responsible for them. The Confederates, however, still blamed Custer.

  21.“Hanging of Mosby’s Men in 1864,” 108–9.

  22.John H. Alexander, Mosby’s Men (New York: The Neale Publishing Company, 1907), 141.

  23.“Hanging of Mosby’s Men in 1864,” 108–9.

  24.Ibid.

  25.John W. Munson, Reminiscences of a Mosby Guerrilla (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1906), 149.

  26.Mosby to Robert E. Lee, October 29, 1864.

  27.Robert E. Lee to Office of the Secretary of War, November 3, 1864; H. L. Clay to Robert E. Lee, November 19, 1864.

  28.This account follows Williamson, Mosby’s Rangers, 288ff, and “An Hour with Mosby,” Richmond Daily Dispatch, December 1, 1864.

  29.Alexander, Mosby’s Men, 143–44

  30.Quoted in Williamson, Mosby’s Rangers, 452ff.

  31.Report of finding the bodies by O. Edwards to Lieutenant Colonel C. Kingsbury, November 7, 1864.

  32.Ibid.

  33.Mosby to Sheridan, November 11, 1864.

  34.Williamson, Mosby’s Rangers, 317.

  35.Sheridan to Halleck, November 26, 1864.

  36.Forsyth to Merritt, November 27, 1864.

  37.Walt Whitman, “A Glimpse of War’s Hell Scenes,” Specimen Days, in The Portable Walt Whitman, 550.

  CHAPTER 15

  1.George Perkins, Three Years a Soldier: The Diary and Newspaper Correspondence of Private George Perkins, Sixth New York Independent Battery, 1861–1864, Richard N. Griffin, ed. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), 300.

  2.Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, November 25, 1864, 1.

  3.Sheridan to Grant, December 20, 1864, 10:30 a.m.

  4.New York Tribune report, reprinted as “Cavalry Fight in the Valley—Amusing Scenes,” in the Richmond Daily Dispatch, December 30, 1864.

  5.Ibid.

  6.Sheridan to Rawlins, December 24, 1864; R. E. Lee to Seddon, December 23, 1864.

  7.Grant to Sheridan, February 20, 1865, 1:00 p.m.

  8.Sheridan report, March 2, 1865.

  9.Jubal A. Early, A Memoir of the Last Year of the War of Independence, in the Confederate States of America (Toronto: Lovell and Gibson, 1866), 132.