Custer

A while back I wrote about the film They Died With Their Boots On, a life of George Armstrong Custer that got practically every bit of historical data wrong. That got me interested in what the truth was. I have a few books on my shelf dealing with Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, but the one that satisfied my need was a complete biography of his life, simply called Custer, by Jeffrey D. Wert.

Custer, according to some accounts, is second only to Lincoln in the amount of material available on him, and the Little Big Horn is number one as far as battles go, so there's no shortage of words about him. He is also an extremely controversial figure, as he has defenders and detractors. Though Wert's book is workmanlike, it is an even-handed and thorough account of a complicated man.

Custer grew up in Ohio and Michigan, and attended West Point, where he was last in his class (he constantly flirted with expulsion in the demerit system). The outbreak of the war hastened his class's graduation, and he ended up as a cavalry officer, where he distinguished himself as a leader. He was a key part of the battle of Gettysburg, and in Philip Sheridan's campaign to take back the Shenandoah Valley. He was loved by his men because he didn't have them do anything he wouldn't do. He was also vain and glory-seeking.

After the war he was stationed to Kansas, where he battled Indians at the battle of Washita, and ended up getting court-martialed because he left his post to see his wife (evidence suggests he may have been jealous). His courtship and marriage of Libby Bacon was one of the great love stories of the period. She would outlive him by close to sixty years and maintain his legacy.

But of course all of this would have been of interest to hardly anyone without the events at Little Big Horn. What makes that battle so fascinating to people? I remember once attending a class on the Old West and the professor asked--what are the two events that most people think of when they asked about the West? The answer, inevitably, is the Little Big Horn and the Alamo, and both were massacres with no survivors. It seems that we have a macabre fascination with full-scale annihilation. Also, since there were no American survivors in Custer's companies (there were other companies of the Seventh Cavalry that did survive, but were not part of "Custer's Last Stand") his motives remain a mystery. Did he simply underestimate the size and ability of the force of Indians he was about to face? Wert tells us that scouts repeatedly told him it was the largest group of Indians they had ever seen, but Custer either disbelieved them or thought they'd scatter at a charge. Were his battle tactics clouded by an addiction to glory?

Wert closes the book quickly after Custer's death, which makes sense, but I'm further interested in how Custer has been seen through the ages. Wert does say, and I think it's correct, that Custer has a hold on us because he symbolizes the collective guilt of a nation for its treatment of native people during the Western expansion. But he was not necessarily a bad guy. He was not enlightened about Indians, but he didn't seem to have any irrational temperament toward them (not like Sheridan, his commanding officer, who said "The only good Indian is a dead one"). He has been both glorified and villainized in the media, and though extensively written about remains, finally, aloof.