(1839-1876)
[Illustration: General George A. Custer.]
Daring is always popular. The dashing fighter outranks the tactician
and takes precedence over the engineer when the people's plaudits
for valor fill the air. To be the _beau sabreur_ of the army, as was
Murat, in Napoleon's day, and as Custer was in Grant's, is as
glorious as it is dramatic, as inspiring as it is picturesque. There
were, in fact, many points of resemblance between these two dashing
cavalry leaders--Murat, the Frenchman, and Custer, the American.
Both smelled powder as the aides-de-camp of their chiefs; both rose
rapidly from grade to grade, and from rank to rank, until they stood
at the top; both labored at the end under the burden of criticism
and detraction; and both met their death through a mistake, and fell
like brave and gallant soldiers.
George Armstrong Custer was born at New Rumley, in the State of
Ohio, on December 5, 1839. His father was a blacksmith and farmer,
of German stock, a descendant of a Hessian officer named Küstu--one
among many who came to conquer and remained to live and die as
citizens of the land they had failed to subjugate.
Young Custer was educated in the district school of New Rumley, and
in the academy at Monroe, in Michigan, where he went in 1849 to live
with his sister Lydia. Returning to Ohio he taught school for a year
or more in Hopedale, near New Rumley, and in 1857 was able to see
his boyish dream come true, and, as a lad of seventeen, enter the
United States Military Academy at West Point.
Cadet Custer graduated from West Point in 1861, and hurried to the
front at once, eager for service, for the war between the States had
begun. He was made bearer of despatches by General Scott; he fought
at Bull Run as lieutenant in the Second United States Cavalry, to
which he had been assigned; he conducted successfully balloon
reconnoissance along the Confederate lines, and so inspired General
McClellan by his energy, courage, and persistence that he was
appointed aide-de-camp to the general, with the rank of captain.
For his dash and daring in the Rappahannock battles he was advanced
by speedy promotions to the rank of brigadier-general of volunteers,
his commission dating from June, 1863, just one year after his
appointment as aide-de-camp to McClellan. He won his brevet as major
in the regular army for his brilliant leadership of cavalry at
Gettysburg; he had a horse shot under him while heading the charge
at Culpepper, and gained his brevet as lieutenant-colonel of
regulars for his gallantry in Sheridan's lights about Richmond, in
the spring of 1864. He won renown and glory in Sheridan's famous
raid on Richmond, by saving his brigade-colors at the battle of
Trevillion Station, and, in September, 1864, his dashing valor at
Winchester procured him his brevet as colonel of regulars and the
volunteer rank of major-general. He won the battle of Woodstock by a
wonderful cavalry engagement, routing the enemy, whom he drove for
twenty-six miles, and capturing all their guns save one. In the
bloody battle of Cedar Creek he fought at the head of the Third
Division of Cavalry from start to finish, helping to turn a rout
into a victory and recapturing all the guns and colors the Union
troops had lost early in the action, besides taking all the
Confederate flags and cannon. At Waynesboro, in the spring of 1865,
still leading the Third Division, he won the day unaided; he
captured 1,600 prisoners, with all the enemy's camp equipage, guns,
and colors, and then turning for another onset, Custer drove the
Confederate General Early from the field, destroying his command,
scattering his army, and ending the campaign, so far as Early's army
was concerned. For this brilliant engagement, and for his bravery at
the battles of Five Forks and Dinwiddie Court-House, on April 1,
1865, Custer was brevetted brigadier-general in the regular army;
and, as he had won the first colors taken by the Army of the Potomac
in 1862, so, in 1865, he received the first flag of truce from Lee's
army when the end at last came, and was present at the historic
surrender at Appomattox. Then he secured his last promotion. He was
brevetted major-general in the regular army and appointed
major-general of volunteers.
It was a brilliant and exceptional record. He had fought in all the
battles of the Army of the Potomac save one. He was Sheridan's most
trusted and favorite cavalry officer. In less than four years he had
advanced from captain of volunteers to major-general, and from
lieutenant to major-general in the regular army. He was but
twenty-six when the war closed, and all his promotions had been won
by his bravery, his dash, his daring, and his good leadership.
During the last six months of the war the Third Division of Cavalry,
led by Custer, captured in open fight over one hundred pieces of
artillery, sixty-five battle flags, and ten thousand prisoners. It
was a record of which any soldier might be proud, and it made Custer
at once the idol of his hard-riding troopers, and one of the popular
heroes of the day. At the great review in Washington he rode near
the head of the parade, leading what was popularly called "the most
gallant cavalry division of the age," greeted with cheers and
flowers along the line of march.
Custer's active service did not close with the war. He was sent to
Texas as commander of a cavalry division, and in November, 1865, was
made chief of cavalry. In February, 1866, he was mustered out of
service as major-general of volunteers and became again captain in
the regular army, "on leave." President Johnson denied him the leave
of absence he asked for to fight under Juarez in Mexico against
Maximilian, the usurper, and in July, 1866, he received his
commission as lieutenant-colonel of the newly formed Seventh
Cavalry, United States Army--the regiment that he made into Indian
fighters and served with until the end. In November, 1866, he joined
his regiment at Fort Riley, and was soon fighting Indians on the
plains. He utterly defeated the hostile Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and
Kiowas at the battle of the Washita, in the Indian Territory, in
November, 1871; he was on post duty in Kentucky until 1873, and then
again on the plains, where, on August 4, 1873, he whipped the
hostile Sioux at the battle of Tongue River, in the Yellowstone
country, and again, on the 11th of the same month, at the battle of
the Big Horn. In the summer of 1874 he led an expedition of
exploration and discovery into the Black Hills, in the Dakota
country, and in May, 1876, led his regiment in what proved to be his
last campaign, a march against the hostile Sioux in the unexplored
region of the Little Big Horn. Here, with less than three hundred
men, he faced the confederated Sioux, numbering thousands of
warriors, and in a desperate and characteristic engagement closed
the record of a life of brilliant effort and daring by standing at
bay, against the tremendous odds of ten to one, until he and his
entire command fell to a man, fighting desperately to the end.
Custer was gallant, but sometimes indiscreet; he was daring, but
often careless of consequences; and when in positions of command he
was apt to be impatient of cowardice and of greed. So he raised up
enemies for himself, and twice these enemies sought and nearly
accomplished his downfall. His last campaign was fought under the
burden of an apparent official censure, galling to a man of Custer's
impetuous nature, all the more so as he knew it to be unmerited and
unjust. There is little doubt that this weight of wrong engendered a
spirit of recklessness, foreign even to his daring nature, and led
him to take risks he would not otherwise have accepted, simply
because he felt the necessity for action and believed that through
valor would come his speediest vindication. Had he been supported by
those he relied upon he might, even in the face of the overpowering
odds marshalled against him, have come off victorious, instead of
dying, an unnecessary sacrifice, like another Roland, and, if we
accept the legends, at just Roland's age. It is because that tragic
ending of a valiant life was, viewed from the picturesque
stand-point, its logical and dramatic conclusion, that American
tradition and popular applause will, in the years to come, remember
Custer, not so much for the dash at Winchester, the daring at
Waynesboro, or the valor at Five Forks, as for his immortal last
stand on the banks of the Little Big Horn, when he and his brave
troopers went down in death together.
General Custer was the born soldier in face and figure. Lithe,
broad-shouldered, and sinewy in frame, nearly six feet in height,
blue-eyed and golden-haired, he was the beau ideal cavalry
leader--alert, active, ready, and responsive, with an eye to all
details, a love for the picturesque in bearing and equipment, of
great endurance, abstemious, healthy, and strong, and as much at
home in the saddle and with the sabre as in his own little house in
Monroe or by his blazing camp-fire. He married, in February, 1864,
Elizabeth Bacon, a daughter of Judge Daniel S. Bacon, of Monroe. For
ten years his wife was his constant companion in camp and in
frontier service, and she has written many sketches of his active
life in the saddle and his characteristics as soldier and as man.
General Custer, at the time of his death, was engaged on a series of
"War Memoirs," and his articles on frontier life and army experiences
found ready acceptance and wide favor. He was, undoubtedly, America's
best cavalry leader, and won a place as "a perfect general of horse"
beside the world's dashing war-riders--from Hannibal's "Thunderbolt,"
Mago the Carthaginian, to Maurice of Nassau and the "Golden Eagle,"
Murat the Frenchman.
Fourteen of the thirty-seven years he lived were spent in actual
service in the camp or on the battle-field. He was a brigadier-general
at twenty-three and a major-general at twenty-five. In the height of
his popularity and his phenomenal success as a cavalry leader, he was
a picturesque and familiar figure to friend and foe alike, as in his
broad cavalier's hat, his gold-bedizened jacket, and high cavalry
boots, with his long hair streaming in the wind, he would ride like a
tornado, to the accompaniment of "Garry Owen," his favorite
battle-air, carrying all before him--a subject worthy the pencil of a
Vandyke, the very type of the dashing trooper of romance. But that
there was a method in his dash and a practical element in his daring,
even the generals he outranked and the civilians who tried to direct
him would admit, and to be the choice of McClellan and the favorite of
Sheridan gave the assurance of worth to his leadership and of value to
his valor.
In 1877 Custer's remains were removed to the graveyard at West Point
from the battle-field of the Little Big Horn, where he had first
been buried amid the fallen heroes of his own brave band. In 1879
the Government made the battle-ground where Custer met his death a
national cemetery, and raised a monument, upon which appeared the
names and rank of all those who fell in that needless and fatal, but
heroic, fight.
[Signature: Elbridge S. Brooks.]
[Illustration: Custer's Last Fight.]