7.GAC to EBC, 1871, in Merington, The Custer Story, 235.
8.Toledo Commercial report reprinted as “How the Generals Kissed,” Hagerstown (MD) Mail, October 31, 1873, 1.
9. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper 37, no. 945 (November 8, 1873), 140.
10.Oral History Interview with Keith Wilson Jr., March 8, 1989, by Niel M. Johnson, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri, 20–21.
11.Custer, My Life on the Plains, 191.
12.For details, see Richard G. Hardorff, ed., Washita Memories: Eyewitness Views of Custer’s Attack on Black Kettle’s Village (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 231–32.
13.See Jeffry D. Wert, Custer (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 33–35 and 287–88.
14.GAC to EBC, February 13, 1869, Gilder Lehrman Collection #GLC06179.
15.Robert Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahma Press, 1991), 46.
16.Larned quoted in George Frederick Howe, “Expedition to the Yellowstone River in 1873: Letters of a Young Cavalry Officer,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, December 1952, 523. Larned’s description of Custer’s orders is reminiscent of the reaction of officers and civilians at the Rumsfeld-era Pentagon to the ubiquitous directives known as “snowflakes.”
17.Ibid., 524.
18.Manuscript in Godfey Papers, USMA Special Collections.
19.Interview with Sturgis, originally printed in the Chicago Tribune, reprinted in the Army and Navy Journal, July 29, 1876.
20.Benteen’s disappointed Confederate father said he wished his son would die with the war’s first bullet, and that ideally it would be fired by a family member.
21.Benteen letter to Theodore W. Goldin.
22.Comment by Robert M. Utley in Life in Custer’s Cavalry, Robert M. Utley, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 251.
23.Custer, My Life on the Plains, 21.
24.Ibid., 17.
25.Ibid.
26.Custer, My Life on the Plains. Or, Personal Experiences with Indians, 12, 16.
27.Reprinted in “General Custer on the Sioux Indian Problem,” Worthington (MN) Advance, June 4, 1875, 1.
28.Custer, My Life on the Plains, 21.
29.Reprinted in “General Custer on the Sioux Indian Problem,” 1.
30.Ibid.
31.Custer, My Life on the Plains, 17.
32.Ibid., 18.
CHAPTER 24
1.Alexis de Tocqueville had prophesied forty years earlier that the United States and Russia seemed “called by some secret desire of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, J. P. Mayer, ed., vol. 1, 413.
2.His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Alexis in the United States of America during the Winter of 1871–72 (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1872), 47. Reports such as this led to rumors in Moscow that the Grand Duke had married a Russian woman in America against the tsar’s wishes.
3.For Custer’s time in Kentucky, see Theodore J. Crackle, “Custer’s Kentucky: General George Armstrong Custer and Elizabethtown, Kentucky, 1871–1873,” Filson Club History Quarterly 49 (April 1974): 144–55.
4.Wichita Eagle, April 6, 1876.
5.“On Receiving an Eagle’s Quill from Lake Superior,” Poems of John Greenleaf Whittier (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1878), 141.
6.Randolph B. Marcy, The Prairie Traveler: A Handbook for Overland Expeditions (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1859), 234.
7.Letter of June 28, 1973, in David S. Stanley, Personal Memoirs of Major-General D.S. Stanley, USA (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1917), 239.
8.The Petroleum Centre (PA) Daily Record, August 5, 1872, 2.
9.Dodge, The Hunting Grounds of the Great West, 133.
10.Ibid., 131.
11.Ibid., 143.
12.Frank A. Root and William Elsey Connelley, The Overland Stage to California (Topeka: Crane, 1901), 33.
13.EBC to Rebecca Richmond, December 6, 1866, in “Mrs. General Custer at Fort Riley, 1866,” Minnie Dubbs Millbrook, ed., Kansas Historical Quarterly 40, no. 1, Spring 1974, 63–71.
14.Ibid., note number 35.
15.Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, December 22, 1866, 2.
16.See Minnie Dubbs Millbrook, “Big Game Hunting with the Custers, 1869–1870,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, Winter 1975, 429.
17.His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Alexis in the United States of America during the Winter of 1871-72, 161. This book is based on stories published in the New York Herald. See also the account in “A Famous Buffalo Hunt,” Omaha Sunday Bee, November 29, 1908.
18.His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Alexis in the United States of America during the Winter of 1871-72, 157.
19.Quoted in W. L. Holloway, Wild Life on the Plains and the Horrors of Indian Warfare (St. Louis: Excelsior Publishing, 1891) 342.
20.His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Alexis in the United States of America during the Winter of 1871-72, 161.
21.Buffalo Bill quoted in Holloway, Wild Life on the Plains and the Horrors of Indian Warfare, 343–44.
22.“The Imperial Buffalo Hunter,” New York Herald, January 16, 1872, 7.
23.“A Rare Old Beast,” Leavenworth Weekly Times, January 18, 1872, 1.
24.Quoted in Holloway, Wild Life on the Plains and the Horrors of Indian Warfare, 342.
25.Buffalo Bill, True Tales of the Plains (New York: Cupples and Leon, 1908), 172–73.
26.New York Herald, January 16, 1872, 7.
27.Buffalo Bill, True Tales of the Plains, 174–75.
28.“A Royal Buffalo Hunt,” Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society, vol. 10, 1907-1908, George W. Martin, ed. (Topeka: State Printing Office, 1908), 576–77.
29.Ibid., 577.
30.Ibid.
31.Ibid., 578.
32.Ibid., 579.
33.EBC diary entry of February 5, 1873, in Merington, The Custer Story, 247.
34.“A Grand-Duke’s Book on America,” Appleton’s Journal, Jaunary 10, 1874, 55.
35.Buffalo Bill, True Tales of the Plains, 175–76.
CHAPTER 25
1.For the official report, see D. S. Stanley, Yellowstone Expedition of 1873 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1874).
2.“An Outrage,” Chicago Tribune, March 23, 1873.
3.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), 927.
4.Quoted in Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), 360.
5.“Custer and Rosser,” Bismarck Weekly Tribune, December 15, 1875, 3. See also Professor Phelps’s short biography of Custer in “Notes on the Yellowstone XIII,” National Teacher’s Monthly, November 1875, 16–19.
6.Larned in George Frederick Howe, “Expedition to the Yellowstone River in 1873: Letters of a Young Cavalry Officer,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, December 1952, 526.
7.Letter of June 28, 1873, in David S. Stanley, Personal Memoirs of Major-General D. S. Stanley, USA (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1917), 239.
8.GAC to EBC, June 1873, 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), 251–52.
9.Boston Daily Globe, August 19, 1873, 1. The article noted “the officers take Jamaica ginger as a substitute, while the men prefer pain killer.”
10.GAC to EBC, June 1873, in Merington, The Custer Story, 252.
11.Larned diary, June 29, 1873, USMA Archives.
12.Ibid.
13.Stanley, Personal Memoirs of Major-General D. S. Stanley, 240.
14.Dubuque Herald, August 10, 1873, 1.
15.Boston Daily Globe, August 19, 1873, 1.
16.Stanley, Personal Memoirs of Major-General D. S. Stanley, 241.
17.S
ee M. John Lubetkin, Jay Cooke’s Gamble: The Northern Pacific Railroad, the Sioux, and the Panic of 1873 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 135ff.
18.“The Yellowstone Country,” Boston Daily Globe, October 16, 1873.
19.For Custer’s account, see George A. Custer, “Battling with the Sioux on the Yellowstone,” Galaxy, July 1876, 91–102.
20.Larned in Howe, “Expedition to the Yellowstone River in 1873,” 532.
21.Custer, “Battling with the Sioux on the Yellowstone,” 102.
22.“The Yellowstone Expedition,” Ohio Democrat, August 29, 1873.
23.Manuscript in Godfrey Papers, USMA Special Collections.
24.Rosser to EBC, in Merington, The Custer Story, 261.
25.Stanley’s official report, 6. See also an account of the battle in the Janesville (WI) Gazette, August 25, 1873, 1.
26.Custer AAR August 15, 1873, reprinted in Boots and Saddles. Also see Major E. A. Garlington, “The Seventh Regiment of Cavalry: The Army of the United States” in Historical Sketches of Staff and Line with Portraits of Generals-in-Chief, Theo F. Rodenbough and William L. Haskin, eds. (New York: Maynard, Merrill, 1896), 256–57.
27.“The Yellowstone Country,” Boston Daily Globe, October 16, 1873.
28.Stanley’s dispatch in Daily New Mexican, September 11, 1873.
29.“Home Again,” Bismarck Tribune, September 24, 1873, 1.
30.Joseph Henry Taylor, Sketches of Frontier and Indian Life on the Upper Missouri and Great Plains (Bismarck: J. H. Taylor, 1897), 159.
CHAPTER 26
1.“Black Hills,” Bismarck Tribune, August 26, 1874, 1.
2.The Army also agreed to close three forts along the Powder River, abandoning the Bozeman Trail. See Charles Francis Roe, “Custer’s Last Battle,” a monograph published by the National Highways Association, New York City (1927), 1.
3.“Custer Interviewed,” Bismarck Tribune, September 2, 1874, 1.
4.Sheridan to Sherman, March 25, 1875. Reprinted in the Indianapolis Journal, March 27, 1875, 1.
5.Sherman quoted in the Anglo-American Times, June 25, 1874, 12.
6.Reprinted as “Gen. Custer’s Military Expedition to the Black Hills,” Ohio Democrat, August 21, 1874, 1.
7.Reprinted as “Custer’s Anabasis,” Troy (IL) Weekly Bulletin, July 23, 1874.
8.“Indians! Why Custer Follows the Red Man’s Track,” Bismarck Tribune, June 3, 1874, 1.
9.“Expedition Rumors,” The Bismarck Tribune, August 19, 1874, 1.
10.“El Dorado,” Bismarck Tribune, August 19, 1874, 1–2; and Forsythe’s account in “Scenes and Incidents of the Black Hills Expedition,” Ohio Democrat, September 18, 1874, 1.
11.“Custer’s Raid to the Black Hills,” Anglo-American Times, July 11, 1874, 6.
12.Ibid.
13.“Custer’s Expedition to the Black Hills,” Anglo-American Times, August 22, 1874, 10.
14.“Custer’s Gulch,” Bismarck Tribune, August 26, 1874, 2.
15.“Custer Interviewed,” Bismarck Tribune, September 2, 1874, 1.
16.“Custer’s Counsel,” Burlington Hawkeye, September 12, 1874, 1.
17.Hamilton Examiner, September 24, 1874, 2.
18.On Sioux City, see “Black Hills,” Cambridge City (IN) Tribune, March 25, 1875, 1.
19.Ibid.
20.“Black Hills,” Palo Alto (IA) Pilot, April 1, 1875, 1.
21.“The Black Hills,” Burlington Hawkeye, September 3, 1874, 3.
22.“Black Hills,” Bismarck Tribune, August 26, 1874, 1.
23.Sheridan’s letter was reprinted in “The Black Hills,” New York Times, March 27, 1875, 2.
24.“Sheridan’s Order,” Boston Daily Globe, September 7, 1874, 4.
25.“Another Raid on the Red Man,” Boston Daily Globe, October 23, 1874, 4.
26.“Black Hills,” Bismarck Tribune, 1.
27.Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel, March 13, 1875.
28.After 1908, the whole area became part of Custer National Forest.
29.“Custer’s Gulch,” Bismarck Tribune, August 26, 1874, 2.
30.Reprinted in “General Custer on the Sioux Indian Problem,” Worthington (MN) Advance, June 4, 1875, 1.
31.“The Black Hills,” Burlington Hawkeye, September 3, 1874, 3.
32.Quoted in the Anglo-American Times, June 12, 1875.
33.See John D. McDermott, “The Military Problem and the Black Hills, 1874–1875,” South Dakota History, Fall/Winter 2001, 188–210.
34.Quoted in the Anglo-American Times, June 12, 1875.
35.Shenango Valley Argus, August 14, 1875.
36.Janesville Gazette, May 22, 1875, 1.
37.See Watson Parker, Gold in the Black Hills (Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2003). Other notables on the mission were Calamity Jane Cannary and Moses Milner, a.k.a. California Joe.
38.Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, June 24, 1875.
39.Sterling Gazette, June 30, 1875.
40.Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, June 24, 1875.
41.“The Indians Protest,” Burlington Hawkeye, September 12, 1874, 1.
42.“Another Indian Talk,” Washington Evening Star, May 21, 1875, 1.
43.Ulysses S. Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: 1875, John Y. Simon, ed. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), 122.
44.Quoted in John S. Gray, Centennial Campaign: The Sioux War of 1876 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 19.
45.Reprinted in “General Custer on the Sioux Indian Problem,” Worthington (MN) Advance, June 4, 1875, 1.
46.“Senator Allison’s Party: How Near They Came to Being Scalped,” Cedar Falls Gazette, October 15, 1875, 1.
47.See Joseph Agonito, Lakota Portraits: Lives of the Legendary Plains People (Guilford, CT: Globe Pequote Press, 2011), 74; “The Indians: Heap Bad Indian Break Up Council,” Burlington (IA) Hawkeye, September 28, 1875, 1; and “The Great Indian Council,” Washington Evening Star, September 27, 1875, 1.
48.The Chicago Inter Ocean report was noted in “Winter Campaign Against Sitting Bull,” Bismarck Tribune, November 20, 1875, 1.
49.Bismarck Tribune, November 20, 1875, 4.
50.“The Black Hills Country,” New York Times, January 25, 1876, 1.
51.“Sitting Bull,” Bismarck Tribune, January 19, 1876, 2.
52.New York Sun, June 4, 1876, 5.
53.Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel, March 13, 1875.
CHAPTER 27
1.Senate Executive Document no. 81, volume 1664, July 13, 1876.
2.F. W. Benteen, “An Account of the Little Big Horn Campaign,” typescript copy, USMA Archives, 11.
3.“Prospective Trouble on the Frontier,” Burlington Daily Hawkeye, December 23, 1875, 3. The article incorrectly reported that the two prongs would launch from Fort Lincoln and Fort Bufort.
4.“An Indian War Anticipated,” New York Times, February 21, 1876, 1.
5.Burlington Hawkeye, March 1, 1876, 1.
6.Janesville (WI) Gazette, March 2, 1876, 1.
7.John F. McBlain, “With Gibbon on the Sioux Campaign of 1876,” Journal of the United States Cavalry Association, June 1896, 139–48.
8.In an interview with the St. Paul Dispatch, General Terry was very open about this military movement. “Gen. Custer, with another strong and well provided force, will set out from Ft. Lincoln, for a co-operative movement, but it would be impossible for him to leave at the date fixed,” he said. Reprinted in the Palo Alto (IA) Reporter, March 11, 1876, 1.
9.“The Position at Washington,” Anglo-American Times, March 10, 1876, 9.
10.See Timothy Rives, “Grant, Babcock and the Whiskey Ring,” Prologue, Fall 2000.
11.Reprinted in the Anglo-American Times, September 19, 1868, 11. The pro-Grant Philadelphia Evening Telegraph remarked that Custer and other Democratic-leaning former generals were found “in close company with . . . Lee, and Beauregard, and Hampton, and Forrest, and almost every man of high or low repute who wore the uniform of grey.” Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, Sep
tember 11, 1868, 4.
12.The Senate voted 35 to 25 to convict, failing to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority.
13.“Custer on the Stand,” Indiana Democrat, April 4, 1876, 1.
14.Congressional Series of United States Public Documents, volume 1715 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1876), 570.
15.“General Hedrick,” Burlington Daily Hawkeye, April 20, 1876, 2.
16.Ibid.
17.Congressional Series of United States Public Documents, 12.
18.“What General Custer Knows of Affairs on the Frontier,” Burlington Hawk-eye, April 5, 1876, 1.
19.“General Custer’s Testimony,” Burlington Daily Hawkeye, April 18, 1876, 4.
20.Ibid. Alexander McDowell McCook, USMA 1852, was a wartime volunteer and brevet major general who after the war served mainly in Texas, and at the time of the Belknap impeachment was a staff colonel and aide-de-camp to General Sherman.
21.“Notes from the Capital,” New York Times, April 7, 1876, 1.
22.“Custer Contradicted by Merrill,” New York Times, April 5, 1876, 1; and “A Slander Refuted,” Washington National Republican, April 5, 1876, 1.
23.GAC to EBC, April 8, 1876, 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), 283.
24.Ibid., 284.
25.See The Campaign Text Book: Why the People Want a Change; The Republican Party Reviewed, Its Sins of Commission and Omission (New York: Democratic Party National Committee, 1876), 316–19. In the 1884 race, the Democrats presented Custer’s father to a massive pre-election rally in Michigan to invoke the spirit and memory of the state’s favorite son. New York Times, October 30, 1884, 2.
26.“Lively Interview with Gen. Custer,” Bismarck Tribune, March 8, 1876, 4.
27.Orin G. Libby, ed., The Arikara Narrative of Custer’s Campaign and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 58–59.
28.A more detailed analysis of the question of Custer running for president is presented in the author’s Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett, and the Goats of West Point (New York: Encounter Books, 2006).
29.For information and data on the elections cited, see Robert A. Diamond, ed., Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to US Elections (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1975). In 1872 the Democrats endorsed Horace Greeley, the candidate of the liberal faction of the divided Republican party. But even with his party split, Grant won reelection with 55.6 percent of the vote, a 3 percent increase over his 1868 total.
The Real Custer Page 45
