He decided to go find his son. Many Americans did the same after battles, especially this one, which left so many wounded, missing, dead, or simply unable to respond to urgent letters. Arriving in Maryland, Holmes traveled over a strange landscape torn up by the passage of armies, “like one of those tornadoes which tear their path through our fields and villages.” Asking everywhere for news of his son, he rolled in a hired wagon down a road “filled with straggling and wounded soldiers.…It was a pitiable sight, truly pitiable, yet so vast, so far beyond the possibility of relief,” he wrote, “it was next to impossible to individualize it, and so bring it home, as one can do with a single broken limb or aching wound.”
He arrived on the field at Antietam. Corpses of officers and the affluent were being sealed in iron coffins for shipment home. Dead enlisted men had been shoveled under as fast as possible. “A long ridge of fresh gravel rose before us,” he wrote. A sign announced, “The Rebel General Anderson and 80 Rebels are buried in this hole.” He looked around. “The whole ground was strewed with fragments of clothing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets, cartridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions of bread and meat. I saw two soldiers’ caps that looked as though their owners had been shot through the head. In several places I noticed dark red patches where a pool of blood had curdled and caked.” He saw clusters of dead horses, one half buried in the ground, “and his legs stuck out stark and stiff from beneath the gravel.”
No record keeping guided him. He asked, asked, and followed leads. Finally he heard that his son was expected to arrive by train at Harrisburg, where Holmes happened to be. He waited at the station, boarded a newly arrived train, and searched. “In the first car, on the fourth seat to the right, I saw my Captain; there I saw him, even my first-born, whom I had sought through many cities. ‘How are you, Boy?’ ‘How are you, Dad?’ ”74
Holmes’s hunt for his wounded son captured the collision between civilian and military worlds in this war fought on American soil by armies of citizen soldiers. It hinted at the impact of the carnage, which caused such anxiety as well as loss. It traced the labyrinth into which soldiers disappeared. A wounded man might be lugged into a house or hospital with no record of his location; he might die and be thrown into a hole with seventy-nine others, with no more gravestone than a marker offering a rough tally of the dead below. This was the reality Custer escaped, and yet could not escape.
Custer made the second journey. On September 26, the army released a group of Confederate prisoners on parole. Custer and another young staff officer, apparently James H. Wilson, accompanied them back to rebel lines under a flag of truce. Wilson had graduated from West Point two classes ahead of Custer, and continued to call him “Cinnamon.” After reaching the enemy camp, Custer wrote that he chatted for an hour with Southerners who knew his West Point classmates, and scribbled notes for various Confederate friends, including Lea.
In a Virginia town on the route home, Custer and Wilson encountered a young woman whom Wilson knew—“formerly intimately acquainted,” in Custer’s words. “Why I know you,” she said to Wilson. He stared at her for a moment and replied, “Why of course you do. How do you do?” He stepped toward her, “offering to shake her hand, but she was too much of a rebel for this,” Custer wrote. She stepped back. “Excuse me Mr. Wilson but I cannot do it.”
“My friend was very much surprised after having her make the first advance,” Custer wrote. “He blushed deeply and I heard him mutter something…about expecting ‘to meet with Virginia hospitality on this side of the river…but must confess I was mistaken.’ ” Custer did not consider that she might have made a journey like that of Oliver Wendell Holmes—or that she might have been denied such a pilgrimage to the Union-held battlefield, and was forced to live in uncertainty. He did not ponder whether the war had simply murdered her romantic notions, suffocating them under corpses, shortages, inflation, rebellious slaves, and a ruined countryside. He did not see that many women at home in wartime could not afford gallantry.75
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LINCOLN MADE THE THIRD JOURNEY—one that determined Custer’s future, that carried the entire nation from one era to another. “I think the time has come,” he told his cabinet on September 22. “I wish it were a better time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the rebels has not been quite what I should have liked.” But Antietam still ranked as a Union victory, terminating Lee’s invasion of the North. Lincoln could finally issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
As critics noted, it affected no slaves actually within reach of his authority. Only slaves in rebel-held territory would be declared free as of January 1, 1863. Lincoln could only justify it, in constitutional terms, under his powers as a wartime commander in chief; its legal purpose was to undermine the enemy. Still, it was transformative. As James McPherson writes, “The Proclamation would turn Union forces into armies of liberation after January 1—if they could win the war. And it also invited the slaves to help them win it.”76
“The Presdt’s late Proclamation, the continuation of Stanton & Halleck in office, render it almost impossible for me to retain my commission & self respect at the same time,” McClellan wrote to his wife from Sharpsburg on September 25. “I cannot make up my mind to fight for such an accursed doctrine as that of a servile insurrection [i.e., slave rebellion]—it is too infamous.”77
His fury grew when a second executive order suspended habeas corpus throughout the North for anyone suspected of aiding the rebellion. He wrote to William Aspinwall in New York, “I am very anxious to know how you and men like you regard the recent Proclamations of the Presdt inaugurating servile war, emancipating the slaves, & at one stroke of the pen changing our free institutions into a despotism.”78
These were dangerous words. He rallied allies within the army and tried to influence the press. A New York Herald reporter wrote, “The sentiment throughout the whole army seems in favor of a change of dynasty.…There is large promise of a fearful revolution…that will startle the country and give us a military dictator.”79
On October 2, Lincoln went to see the would-be dictator. McClellan and his staff greeted him at the Harper’s Ferry train station and gave him a tour of the Antietam battlefield. Custer spent the next day in the saddle, following the general and the president as they reviewed the troops.
Here, in this place of mass death, each of these three men viewed the Civil War in starkly different ways. Lincoln considered it a race to uncompromising victory. He feared that McClellan’s reluctance to strike hard would prolong the slaughter indefinitely. McClellan, on the other hand, feared an unlimited war, thinking it far too costly in soldiers’ lives and damage done to Southern society. Despite their disagreement, they both saw the war in terms of national policy and military strategy.80
And Custer? To him, the war was an experience, more intense than any other. That very evening, he expressed his thoughts in a letter to his cousin Augusta Ward.
You ask me if I will not be glad when the last battle is fought. So far as the country is concerned I, of course, must wish for peace, and will be glad when the war is ended, but if I answer for myself alone, I must say that I shall regret to see the war end. I would be willing, yes glad, to see a battle every day of my life. Now do not misunderstand me. I only speak of my own interests and desires, perfectly regardless of all the world besides, but as I said before, when I think of the pain & misery produced to individuals as well as the miserable sorrow caused throughout the land I cannot but earnestly hope for peace, and at an early date. Do you understand me?81
Contradictions and complexities swirl through this passage. He speaks with the romanticism of youth, reflecting a nation that had entered the war as if it were a great adventure; yet already he has witnessed some of the worst of war. He is self-absorbed—addicted, perhaps, to the thrill of running risks, to the visceral pleasure of fighting, defeating, and even killing other men. Yet he is aware of his self-absorption, even if he is una
ble to move beyond it. Here we see a young man who has yet to be disillusioned, but is intelligent enough to know it. He pleads for understanding, conscious of how terrible he would sound to his cousin, but has no desire to relinquish the pleasure of combat. These feelings set him apart from the lady in Virginia, his hero McClellan, and the tall, sad man who was president. Yet they were not simple.
The next day, October 4, “Little Mac” and staff rode east with the president and his entourage to see the South Mountain battlefield. There they encountered Aspinwall, who was coming from Washington to see the general. “The coincidence was unfortunate for McClellan,” writes the historian Richard Slotkin, “because it so clearly exposed the fact that he was in close consultation with the political opposition.” Lincoln left and Aspinwall stayed. Speaking for Barlow, Belmont, and himself, Aspinwall stressed “that it is my duty to submit to the Presdt’s proclamation & quietly continue doing my duty as a soldier,” McClellan recounted to Ellen. He told her that he would “do my best to hit upon some plan of campaign that will enable me to drive the rebels entirely away from this part of the country forever.”82
The modesty of that last sentence reflected the most fatal of his many flaws: he was no killer. He was still incapable of conceiving a decisive campaign, let alone conducting one. He wrote of merely driving the rebels away, not defeating or destroying them—unenthusiastically at that.
Custer still worshipped his general, but he understood him. Near the end of October, he wrote, “we will then go into winter quarters somewhere,” and the campaign would stop. Already he was dreaming of dances, sleighing, and good food. “After I get to Monroe I do not intend to eat ‘hard bread’ nor ‘salt pork’ nor to drink my ‘coffee without milk’ although these are the fashionable dishes in the army.”83
McClellan finally moved south, completing the crossing of the Potomac on November 2. Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck—as well as newspaper editors and Republicans in Congress—had long since reached the point of exasperation with his political skullduggery and refusal to fight. On November 7, as heavy snow blew through the headquarters camp at Rectortown, Virginia, a messenger brought orders relieving McClellan and assigning Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside to take his place.
“On Sunday, November 9, General McClellan began the painful process of bidding farewell to his army,” writes the biographer Stephen Sears. “That evening he received the officers of his staff and escort in a highly emotional scene. The side curtains of his tent were raised and the area lit by a large log fire nearby, and as each man entered he greeted him and ushered him inside.” The general ordered that each man’s glass be filled with champagne. He lifted up his own and said, “To the Army of the Potomac, and bless the day when I shall return to it.” The youngest officer present, Capt. George Armstrong Custer, yearned for that day, and believed it would come.
On November 10, McClellan reviewed the troops for the last time, with his staff and General Burnside riding behind him. Afterward Custer stopped by the tent of a young man from Monroe named Henry Clay Christiancy and said he was going home that day. It was not the triumphant return he had imagined. With his patron banished, he faced a future more uncertain than at any time since the war began.84
Four
* * *
THE PRODIGY
IF CUSTER LEARNED ANYTHING at McClellan’s side, it was that the Civil War was political. Military strategy shaped national policy, but so did ideology, constituencies, lobbying, and compromise. Partisanship influenced the appointment of Volunteer officers, as did the personal politics of patronage and nepotism. Politicians and generals alike crafted networks of favorites and supporters in the army.
The irony is that the Regular Army had pioneered the principle of professionalism in antebellum America. It had systematized procedures, set standards for technical proficiency, required competitive bidding for contracts, and virtually invented professional training at the military academy. All this continued during the war; and, as the conflict dragged on, the president and the War Department placed greater emphasis on merit. And yet, a great war for national survival, fought by a mass of citizen soldiers raised by the states, inevitably turned political.
That did not shock Custer. It was the reality he had grown up with; it was the nature of the antebellum era. The American philosophy of government was summed up by New York governor and U.S. secretary of state William L. Marcy: “To the victor belong the spoils.” Each new administration fired the postmasters, customs collectors, steamboat inspectors, and other federal employees and appointed political supporters. The economy, too, remained deeply personal, not institutional; the corporate landscape of technical experts, anonymous shareholders, and professional managers did not yet exist. Business consisted of human relationships, from the credit issued to customers by local merchants to the friendships and family ties that held together boards of railroad companies. The Union army was America under arms, functioning much as society functioned. Custer thought that valor might gain him attention, merit might gain him favor, but patronage would save him.1
Not long after he arrived at his sister’s home in Monroe, soon after McClellan’s fall, Lt. Col. Frazey M. Winans handed him a letter. Custer respected Winans, an influential man who had helped to organize the 7th Michigan Infantry Regiment at the outset of the war. The person who wrote the letter was even more important. His name was Isaac P. Christiancy, an associate justice of the Michigan Supreme Court. Christiancy’s duties often kept him in Lansing, the state capital, but he was a Monroe man, owner of the Monroe Commercial newspaper. He was also a leading Republican politician, having helped to found the party in Michigan. And he needed a favor from young Captain Custer.2
The judge’s son Henry wanted an appointment to the staff of Brig. Gen. Andrew A. Humphreys, who commanded an infantry division in the Army of the Potomac. He had made no progress. But Custer knew Humphreys, and had connections throughout the army. Could he help?3
For Custer, the letter was timely. Professionally, he was adrift at best, sinking at worst. He found himself not merely without a patron, but tainted by his association with General McClellan. He needed friends—Republican friends.
He might well have offered his assistance even if circumstances were different. He was emphatically loyal—to friends, to his family, to his community, even across the divide of war or politics. Henry was one of the last soldiers he had spoken to before leaving for Monroe on November 10, and they had discussed Henry’s quest for a staff position. But the value of Judge Christiancy’s friendship was obvious to Custer.
He explained to the judge the particular circumstances that had stalled Henry’s quest, adding, “I am particularly anxious that Henry should receive the appointment. I have had experience in company duty and staff duty. The opportunities for improvement are infinitely greater in the latter. Henry would be thrown [into] contact with a class of men whom it would be both an honor and a pleasure to know.” The “opportunities for improvement,” in other words, were a matter of connections. “I will write a letter tomorrow to one of Gen. [Daniel] Butterfield’s staff who is an intimate friend of mine and one to Gen. Humphreys’s staff urging that they use their influence.” If he was successful, the influential Isaac Christiancy would owe him a favor.4
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THE YOUNG LADIES’ SEMINARY and Collegiate Institute occupied three well-landscaped acres in Monroe, guarded by a handsome iron fence. It was a big building in a small town: an L-shaped, three-story structure with a peaked roof, a colonnade along the first floor, and a one-story extension. The husband-and-wife pair of joint principals, Sarah C. Boyd and the Rev. E. J. Boyd, intended “to furnish Young Ladies as good advantages for a thorough and substantial education as are provided for the other sex by the Colleges of the country,” the annual catalog stated. Though the school placed a premium on manners, music, and refinement, its faculty also taught astronomy, geology, English literature, mathematics, French, and vigorous calisthenics. And now and then its doors opened f
or a party, as they did on Thanksgiving Day, 1862.5
Captain Custer attended. He had dreamed of parties during his months in the field, and this event, filled with young women, was irresistible. It is worth repeating what his old roommate Tully McCrea said of him in a letter around this time. “He is a handsome fellow, and a very successful ladies’ man,” he wrote. “Nor does he care an iota how many of the fair ones break their hearts for him.”6 Custer came despite possible awkwardness with Nellie Van Wormer, a senior in the seminary’s collegiate division; already his passion for her had disappeared from his correspondence. It would be well worth paying his respects to junior Mary Christiancy, though the true appeal lay in the young women he may have seen about town but did not yet know. There was the fashionable and flirtatious Fannie Fifield, for example, a recent graduate, and her classmate (and valedictorian) Elizabeth Bacon.7
During the party, Custer was introduced to Elizabeth, known as Libbie to her friends and family. Petite and slender-shouldered beneath the acres of fabric and mountain of whalebone that made up a respectable woman’s dress, she had a striking face: a quick smile, gray eyes, abundant brown hair that she often parted in the middle and pulled up on the back of her head, leaving stray curls to dangle around her temples, not to mention the softness that comes from being only twenty years old.8
The “ladies’ man” knew little about her—except perhaps that her father, Judge Daniel Bacon, was a prominent Republican in town. He began to track her. He attended her church, a respectable Presbyterian congregation, whereas his family were evangelical Methodists. He stared at her during the services. He walked past her house, often many times a day, and offered to escort her when she emerged to carry out an errand. He appeared outside her singing school in time to walk her home in the evening. Day by day, they spoke. He learned that she was well educated, shrewd, and quick to laugh, that she was devoted to her sixty-four-year-old father and her stepmother, Rhoda. In mid-December he invited her to a concert; when she declined, citing her family, he said that her stepmother would enjoy it as well, and he “would be very happy of Mrs. Bacon’s company too.” She still refused, but was clearly pleased.
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