The Real Custer
Page 43
10.New York Herald, March 10, 1865.
11.Sheridan report, March 2, 1865.
12.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, 53.
13.Early, 133.
14.“The Yankees in Charlottesville,” Richmond Daily Dispatch, March 15, 1865.
15.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), 33.
16.Ibid.
17.Richmond Daily Dispatch, March 24, 1865, and the Knoxville Whig, December 20, 1865.
CHAPTER 16
1.For general reference, see Chris M. Calkins, The Appomattox Campaign, March 29–April 9, 1865 (Conshohocken, PA: Combined Books, 1997).
2.Frederick Cushman Newhall, With Sheridan in the Final Campaign against Lee, Eric J. Wittenberg, ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 36.
3.Daily Ohio Statesman (Columbus), April 04, 1865, 3.
4.Capeheart received the Medal of Honor for saving the life of a drowning soldier during the Valley campaign. His brother Major Charles E. Capehart also received the award for a separate action.
5.Henry Edwin Tremain, Last Hours of Sheridan’s Cavalry: A Reprint of War Memoranda (New York: Bonnel, Silver and Bowers, 1904), 53.
6.Ibid., 54.
7.Charles Alfred Humphreys, Field, Camp, Hospital and Prison in the Civil War, 1863–1865 (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1918), 238.
8.Ibid., 241.
9.Ibid., 242.
10.Sheridan to Warren, April 1, 1865, 4:40 a.m.
11.Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee: A Biography of Robert E. Lee (New York: D. Appleton, 1894), 376.
12.George Pickett, The Heart of a Soldier: Intimate Wartime Letters from General George E. Pickett, CSA, to His Wife, La Salle Corbell Pickett, ed. (New York: Seth Moyle, 1913), 171.
13.New York World report quoted in “The Fall of Richmond,” Supplement to the Guardian (UK), April 19, 1865, 1. The report described Five Forks as “a magnificent strategic point. Five good roads meet in the edge of a dry, high, well-watered forest, three of them radiating to the railway, and their tributaries unlocking all the country.”
14.Newhall, With Sheridan in the Final Campaign against Lee, 48–49.
15.Details on the Warren incident are in Bruce Catton, “Sheridan at Five Forks,” Journal of Southern History, August 1955, 305–15.
16.George E. Farmer to his father, April 14, 1865, Gilder Lehrman Collection: GLC00808.01
17.Quoted in Richard Wheeler, Witness to Appomattox (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 75.
18.Pickett, The Heart of a Soldier, 173–74.
19.“Sheridan’s Ride,” Indiana (PA) Democrat, March 4, 1875, 1.
20.New York World report, quoted in “The Fall of Richmond,” Supplement to the Guardian (UK), April 19, 1865, 1.
21.Pickett, The Heart of a Soldier, 173–74.
CHAPTER 17
1.Frederick Cushman Newhall, With Sheridan in the Final Campaign against Lee, Eric J. Wittenberg, ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 114.
2.Robert Stiles, Four Years under Marse Robert (Washington, D.C.: Neale Publishing, 1904), 326–27.
3.John Brown Gordon, Reminiscences of the Civil War (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904), 423–24.
4.The actual name of the stream is Sayler’s Creek, but most contemporary sources refer to it as “Sailor’s Creek,” which will be used throughout.
5.George Pickett, The Heart of a Soldier: Intimate Wartime Letters from General George E. Pickett, CSA, to His Wife, La Salle Corbell Pickett, ed. (New York: Seth Moyle, 1913), 177.
6.In Lydia Minturn Post, ed., Soldiers’ Letters, from Camps, Battle-Field and Prison (Washington: U.S. Sanitary Commission, 1865), 463–64.
7.Charles Alfred Humphreys, Field, Camp, Hospital and Prison in the Civil War, 1863–1865 (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1918), 268–70.
8.Burlington Free Press, April 21, 1865, 2.
9.Custer in The Custer Story, 150–51.
10.Capehart to EBC, quoted in Elizabeth B. Custer, “A Beau Sabreur,” in Uncle Sam’s Medal of Honor, Theophilus F. Rodenbough, ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Son, 1886), 227.
11.Quoted in Jay Monaghan, Custer: The Life of General George Armstrong Custer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1959), 238.
12.In Arlene Reynolds, ed., The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer: Reconstructed from Her Diaries and Notes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 138.
13.Two sailors also were given this distinction, coxswain John Cooper, and boatswain’s mate Patrick Mullen.
14.In Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 138.
15.Cleveland Morning Leader, April 11, 1865, 1.
16.Stiles, Four Years under Marse Robert, 333.
17.Walter Harrison, Pickett’s Men: A Fragment of War History (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1870), 157.
18.Kershaw in Merington, The Custer Story, 153.
19.Burlington Free Press, April 21, 1865, 2.
20.Quoted in E. P. Alexander, “Lee at Appomattox,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 5, Peter Cozzens, ed. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 641.
21.Eppa Hunton, Autobiography of Eppa Hunton (Richmond: The William Byrd Press, 1933), 124.
22.Ibid.
23.Sheridan to Grant, April 6, 1865.
24.Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, vol. 6, The Shenandoah Campaigns of 1862 and 1864 and the Appomattox Campaign, 1865 (Boston: The Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 1907), 447.
25.Morris Schaff quoted in Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 144.
26.Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885), 551.
27.Frederick Cushman Newhall, With Sheridan in the Final Campaign against Lee, Eric J. Wittenberg, ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 107.
28.Augustus Woodbury, The Second Rhode Island Regiment: A Narrative of Military Operations in Which the Regiment Was Engaged from the Beginning to the End of the War for the Union (Providence: Valpey, Angell, 1875), 354.
29.Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary of Luman Harris Tenney, 1861–1865 (Cleveland: Evangelical Publishing House, 1914), 156.
30.Sheridan to Grant, April 8, 1865, 9:40 p.m.
31.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, 66.
32.Sheridan to Grant, April 8, 1865, 9:20 p.m. See also Philip H. Sheridan, “The Last Days of the Rebellion,” North American Review, September 1888, 275.
33.Morris Schaff, The Sunset of the Confederacy (Boston: John W. Luce, 1912), 209. They were about two hundred miles from Tennessee at the time.
34.Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 143.
35.Humphreys, Field, Camp, Hospital and Prison in the Civil War, 284.
36.Tenney, War Diary of Luman Harris Tenney, 1861–1865, 156.
37.“Captured at Appomattox,” Maine Bugle, January 1896, 274.
38.Danville Register, October 17, 1905.
39.Quoted in Schaff, The Sunset of the Confederacy, 225.
40.Charles A. Phelps, Life and Public Services of Ulysses S. Grant (Boston: Lee and Shepard Publishers, 1872), 290.
41.E. G. Marsh in Soldiers’ Letters, from Camps, Battle-Field and Prison, Lydia Minturn Post, ed. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Sanitary Commission, 1865).
42.These and many of the following details come from Lee’s artillery chief Edward Porter Alexander, in “Lee at Appomattox: Personal Recollections of the Break-Up of the Confederacy,” Century Magazine, April 1902, 921–31; Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate: A Critical Narrative (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907), chapter 23 passim; as well as other sources cited.
43.There are several versi
ons of this encounter. Some say it was Custer’s chief of staff, Colonel Edward Whitaker, who met with Longstreet, but Longstreet in his memoir says otherwise. Whitaker had met with Gordon shortly before Custer arrived and was asked to locate Sheridan, who was riding to Appomattox Court House. See also John Brown Gordon, Reminiscences of the Civil War (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904); and the letter by E. G. Marsh, 15th NY Cavalry, in Soldiers’ Letters, from Camps, Battle-Field and Prison. Alexander in his Military Memoirs of a Confederate says Longstreet rebuffed Custer “very roughly, far more so than appears in Longstreet’s account of the interview” (608). William Miller Owen, from whom some of these quotes are taken, was an eyewitness. See his In Camp and Battle with the Washington Artillery (Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1885), 384–85.
44.Tenney, War Diary of Luman Harris Tenney, 1861–1865, 159.
45.Humphreys, Field, Camp, Hospital and Prison in the Civil War, 289.
46.Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (New York: The Century Company, 1906), 486.
47.Quoted in Schaff, The Sunset of the Confederacy, 169–71. With Babcock were Captain William McKee Dunn for the Union, Confederate Lieutenant Colonel Charles Marshal as aide to Lee, and rebel Private Joshua O. Johns.
48.Quoted in ibid., 169–71.
49.In Walter Clark, ed., Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War 1861–’65, vol. 2 (Goldsboro, NC: Nash Brothers), 578.
50.Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 486.
51.New York Times, April 20, 1865, 2. The entire Mclean House disappeared eventually. In 1891 M. T. Dunlap bought the house for $10,000 with a view toward putting it on display at the Chicago World’s Fair, or on the Mall in Washington. The house was disassembled and put into crates. But financing for the venture fell through, and over time the contents of the crates were taken by souvenir hunters. When the National Park Service acquired the property in 1948, only the foundations were left. See Dorothea Andrews, “‘Surrender House’ Will Stand Again,” Washington Post, January 4, 1948, M17.
52.Richard Miller Devens, The Pictorial Book of Anecdotes and Incidents of the War of the Rebellion, (Hartford: Hartford Publishing, 1967), 348.
53.Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 152–53.
54.Custer promised the flag to Libbie. “With the verdancy of youth,” she later wrote, “I really expected to see a veritable flag, though I don’t know that I went so far as to hint that gallant men carried one around ready for emergencies. When I found myself in possession of a large honey-comb towel the poetry departed out of my anticipations.” “Surrender Relics,” Washington Post, April 1, 1905, 14.
CHAPTER 18
1.Alexander in Peter Cozzens, ed., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 5 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 651.
2.GAC, April 9, 1865, Appomattox Court House.
3.Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies, 250.
4.Quoted in Richard Wheeler, Witness to Appomattox (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 233.
5.Longstreet in New York Times, July 24, 1885.
6.Quoted in Arlene Reynolds, ed., The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer: Reconstructed from Her Diaries and Notes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 143.
7.Ibid., 146.
8.Ibid., 150.
9.Ibid.
10.Nettie died in 1868 of heart disease shortly after giving birth to a son, Jacob Humphrey Greene.
11.New York Times, April 20, 1865, 2.
12.The Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861–1865, vol. 3, January 1, 1864–May 30, 1865, entry of May 24, 1865, Library of Congress, Manuscript Collection.
13.Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies: The Last Campaign of the Armies (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915), 331.
14.Ibid., 328.
15.“Review of the Armies,” New York Times, May 24, 1865, 1.
16.Whitman in Specimen Days, journal entry for May 21, 1865.
17.The Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861–1865, entry of May 24, 1865.
18.“Sherman on the Grand Review,” New York Times, July 4, 1890, 1. The competitive Sherman saw to it that his troops were well drilled and prepared for the review. The eastern and western armies contested on more than the parade route. Assistant Secretary of War Charles Henry Dana wrote, “Sherman’s troops are now all camped just outside of Washington north of the Potomac, it having been found advisable to separate them from the Army of the Potomac, whose camps are all on the south side of the river. A good many fights have occurred between the private soldiers of the two armies. I have heard of one or two men who have been killed, and one or two who have been seriously wounded. Sherman’s men are also pretty troublesome to the farmers and other quiet people where they are.” In John Harrison Wilson, The Life of Charles Henry Dana (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1907), 366.
19.H. M. Gallaher. “The Great Review,” Burlington Iowa Hawkeye, June 5, 1865.
20.Cleveland Daily Leader, June 1, 1865.
21.Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (New York: The Century Company, 1906), 507.
22.Rev. H. M. Gallaher. “The Great Review,” Burlington Iowa Hawkeye, June 5, 1865.
23.Cleveland Daily Leader, June 1, 1865.
24.Marysville (OH) Tribune, May 31, 1865, 1.
25.Ibid.; and “A Historic Promenade,” New York Times, February 7, 1881, 1. President Johnson was late to the event and did not witness Custer’s “charge.”
26.“The Nonsense of War Stories,” Washington National Republican, March 18, 1881.
27.Washington National Republican, March 21, 1881.
28.GAC quoted in Reynolds, The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 160.
29.“An Incident of the Great Review,” New York Times, July 10, 1876, 2.
30.Quoted in Jay Monaghan, Custer: The Life of General George Armstrong Custer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1959), 251.
31.Cleveland Daily Leader, June 1, 1865.
CHAPTER 19
1.Sheridan to Granger, June 10, 1865.
2.Grant to Sheridan, June 3, 1865.
3.Sheridan to Grant, July 1, 1865.
4.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, 73.
5.“Custer’s Cruelty,” special to the Chicago Times, February 3, 1886, reprinted in Charles H. Lothrop, History of the First Regiment Iowa Cavalry (Iowa: Beers & Eaton, 1890), 277.
6.M. Quad. [Charles Bertrand Lewis], “Army Letter,” Indiana True Republican, July 13, 1865, 1.
7.Quoted in Elizabeth B. Custer, Tenting on the Plains or General Custer in Kansas and Texas (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1887), 62–63.
8.Custer statement to Major George Lee, AAG, Military Division of the Gulf, October 26, 1865
9.E. Custer, Tenting on the Plains, 69.
10.Sheridan to M. G. Rawlins, June 29, 1865. Sheridan had appointed Merritt chief of cavalry in the southwest, and technically commanded both columns.
11.Forsyth endorsement to Custer statement of October 26, 1865.
12.Custer statement to Major George Lee, AAG, Military Division of the Gulf, October 26, 1865.
13.Forsyth endorsement to Custer statement of October 26, 1865.
14.Custer statement to Major George Lee, AAG, Military Division of the Gulf, October 26, 1865.
15.Forsyth endorsement to Custer statement of October 26, 1865.
16.E. Custer, Tenting on the Plains, 66.
17.For an extremely biased account of the Lancaster case, see Antoinette Barnum Ferris and Michael Griffin, A Soldier’s Souvenir, or, the Terrible Experiences of Lieutenant L. L. Lancaster, of the Second Wisconsin Cavalry: A Martyr to the Cause of Truth and Justice, Compromising Short Biographical Sketches (Eau Claire, WI: Pauly Bros., 1896).
18.“Custer’s Cruelty,” 278–79. See also the more credible account of the surgeon of the Second Wisconsin, 280.
19.Lothrop, History
of the First Regiment Iowa Cavalry, 227–28.
20.Ibid., 218.
21.E. Custer, Tenting on the Plains, 75.
22.“Custer’s Cruelty,” 278.
23.Lothrop, History of the First Regiment Iowa Cavalry, 229
24.Ibid., 223.
25.E. Custer, Tenting on the Plains, 83.
26.Ibid., 86.
27.Army and Navy Journal, April 8, 1880, 708. Sheridan later explained to a group of Texans that he made the remark after returning from an expedition to the Rio Grande “sick, tired, dusty, and mad,” and was annoyed at a journalist who asked him how he liked Texas.
28.E. Custer, Tenting on the Plains, 79–80.
29.Lothrop, History of the First Regiment Iowa Cavalry, 280.
30.Ibid., 290.
31.Ibid., 271.
32.“A Soldier’s Opinion of Gen. Custer,” White Cloud Kansas Chief, October 18, 1866, 1.
33.“Custer’s Cruelty,” 279.
34.Quoted in History of the First Regiment Iowa Cavalry, 219.
35.Custer statement to Major George Lee, AAG, Military Division of the Gulf, October 26, 1865.
36.Army of the Ohio, General Field Orders #11, August 31, 1863.
37.Quoted in History of the First Regiment Iowa Cavalry, 232.
38.Ibid., 290.
39.“Condition of Texas,” New York Times, March 5, 1866.
40.Forsyth endorsement to Custer statement of October 26, 1865.
41.E. Custer, Tenting on the Plains, 122–23.
42.Quoted in History of the First Regiment Iowa Cavalry, 272. “Bohoy” was a slang term implying a certain rascality.
43.E. Custer, Tenting on the Plains, 154.
44.Ibid.
45.Lothrop, History of the First Regiment Iowa Cavalry, 238.
46.Ibid., 240.
47.E. Custer, Tenting on the Plains, 157.
48.Lothrop, History of the First Regiment Iowa Cavalry, 241.
49.Ibid., 241.
50.E. Custer, Tenting on the Plains, 157.
51.Among others, they met former Monroe resident Colonel Groome, a hero of the disastrous 1813 Battle of Frenchtown, who had resettled in Texas.
52.E. Custer, Tenting on the Plains, 153.
53.Southern Intelligencer (Austin), February 8, 1866, 3.
54.Lothrop, History of the First Regiment Iowa Cavalry, 233.