The mother complained to the army provost marshal in Hempstead. “He refused to meddle,” Hanson wrote two days later. “She then went to Gen. Custer. He sent to arrest the boy.”49
The case of Willis Chambers placed Custer in a dilemma. The crime itself was egregious—a nine-year-old girl brutally murdered because she wanted to be with her mother. The matter of punishment forced Custer to face the multilayered questions that defined this moment in history. How far could the military go to ensure justice? What was the role of the federal government, represented here by the army, in local affairs? Were Southern states ready to rule themselves at this basic level? What did emancipation mean?
As a soldier, Custer had been thrust into the role of an administrator of occupied territory, a role not yet fully defined in his orders. As an individual, he believed in the American tradition of separating the army from all civil matters. As a Democrat he particularly abhorred centralization and was deeply suspicious of federal power.
Race complicated the case and made it more significant. Race defined this moment in American history. The white body politic now confronted the self-assertion of other peoples in its midst and on its borders, from the hundreds of thousands who had risen up against slavery across the South to the Dakota Indians who had rebelled in Minnesota. The radicalism of the still-unfolding revolution can scarcely be exaggerated. In 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney had declared, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, that blacks were “so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” By 1865, so much had changed that Lincoln, in his last speech, called for the enfranchisement of literate and military veteran African Americans.50
Each day Eliza Brown reminded Custer that an African American could be just as resourceful, intelligent, and strong willed as any white person. On the march from Louisiana she haggled with white citizens for eggs, butter, and a feather pillow for Libbie, snapping at one offer of a barter that “we were not traveling peddlers.” She gave orders to the headquarters escort when they made camp (“Now, you make a fire, and I’ll go a-fishin”). She defied Custer’s constant attempts to prevent her from distributing food out of his mess. “Yes,” she told him, “I do take in some one once and a while, off and on.” He replied, “Yes, more on than off, I should say.” Once she hid a hungry child in the brush nearby, and came out of her cook tent to find Custer staring at the path through the weeds. “Well, what is it, Ginnel?” she asked innocently. “That’s what I say,” he countered. But he failed to stop her.
She rebuked Custer to his face. When he insisted on bringing along a mockingbird, she said it was “nonsense…toting around a bird, when ’twas all folks like us could do to get transportation for a cooking-kit.” His growing collection of dogs necessarily made a mess, particularly since he brought them to bed with him, and even he feared Brown’s reaction. Once one of his big hunting hounds actually kicked Libbie out of the bed. Brown exploded at Custer, “Now see what you’ve done. You keer more for that pesky, sassy old hound than you do for Miss Libbie. Ginnel, I’d be ’shamed if I was you. What would your mother Custer think of you now?” Libbie recalled that Brown “brought up that sainted woman in all our encounters,” invoking the matriarchal authority of Custer’s childhood to establish her own in his adulthood.
Once her cook tent caught fire. Flames roared up the canvas, nearly swallowing the structure. Brown remembered that Custer’s can of gunpowder was inside. Knowing that it could explode, she darted into the fire, grabbed one of the can’s handles, and dragged it outside. Custer marveled at “how cool and deliberate” she was during the crisis.51
Brown offered the only hope that the Custers might rise out of their racial stereotypes and condescension. She worked hard at it, guiding them into the world of slavery. She immediately connected with the black population in Hempstead. The Custers hired a teamster named Henry and a second cook, a preacher they called “Uncle Charley,” who swore all week and sermonized on Sunday. “Our yard at that time was black with the colored race,” Libbie recalled. “Each officer’s servant had his circle of friends, and they hovered round us like a dark cloud.”52
The crowds she described showed that they had penetrated the heartland of slavery in Texas. Here there were at least as many blacks as whites. That was due not only to the long history of the “peculiar institution” in the state, but because slaveholders elsewhere in the Confederacy had shipped their human “property” there for safekeeping as Union armies penetrated the South. In 1860, there had been 275,000 slaves in Texas, about a third of the state population; by 1865, the number had risen to 400,000. The rapid increase, followed by the chaotic demobilization of the Confederate army, followed by emancipation, led to rampant violence against African Americans.53
“Freedmen in every portion of the state not occupied with troops are being badly treated, in many instances, murdered,” wrote Provisional Governor Alexander J. Hamilton on September 27. “There is scarcely a day that I am not informed of a homicide committed upon a Freedman.” A white Texan himself, appointed by the deeply conservative President Johnson, Hamilton took up the plight of the freed people. He pleaded for help from Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright, the recently assigned military commander. “The manifestation of a settled purpose on the part of the Military Authorities of the Govt to promptly punish such offenses by a few examples, in proper cases would have a most happy effect,” he wrote, almost as if he had Custer’s case in mind. “It must be obvious to you, General, as it is to me, that we cannot depend upon the civil authorities of our state for some time yet to deal out justice to evil doers.” He knew, he added, that the military at all levels did not want to “interfere with the civil authority,” but until a state convention met and created a new government, the federal government was responsible. It had to act.54
Wright responded warily. As he understood it, “matters in which the freedmen were concerned were to be left to the action of the Freedmans Bureau,” the federal body created to protect and assist emancipated slaves.55 In Hempstead, though, there was no sub-assistant commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Custer had to decide: Who would try Willis Chambers? Who would punish him? As a minor, would he be executed? Sent to military prison? “He finally concluded that he had nothing to do in the matter,” wrote the surgeon of the 2nd Wisconsin, “and turned the prisoner over to a pretended civil officer who sent him home.”56
The case marked a hardening of his policy. The freed people who crowded in to see Eliza Brown and Charley now found the provost guard waiting for them. “The freedmen in this section are in a very unsatisfactory condition, and the military authorities instead of aiding them are allowing the old masters to impose upon them,” wrote Benjamin Brisbane, chaplain of the 2nd Wisconsin, from Hempstead. “Many have been shot [by their old masters] because they would not sign an agreement to work for little or nothing. They have been driven from our command & some for stealing, have been whipped by our [provost marshal] without due trial.”57
Brown could not counter the racist influences that submerged the Custers. Emmanuel joined them in Hempstead, taking a sinecure as forage agent that Armstrong had secured in a brazen piece of nepotism. “You are well aware of how father Custer feels over the ‘nigger’ question,” Libbie wrote home, referring to his “antipathy to the negro.” Armstrong and Tom played endless racist jokes on their father. Armstrong promised to make him chaplain of a brigade of black soldiers. The brothers would drop small black boys (“nigs,” as Libbie called them) over the transom into his room. On Christmas “everybody gathered round to see him [Emmanuel] open a box containing a nigger doll baby,” she wrote in a letter. He took it all in good humor, but was no less outspoken in his political views or his bigotry.58
“The negroes in Texas and Louisiana were the worst in all the South,” Libbie wrote in a memoir. She was taught this by her new social circle. For weeks, Eliza Brown had been Libbie’s only female
company; starting in Hempstead, her social life blossomed, and she left Brown behind. Libbie’s dear friend Nettie Humphrey—now Nettie Humphrey Greene, wife of Jacob Greene—arrived, as did the wives of some colonels in Custer’s division. The women formed “a reading society,” she wrote in a letter, all reading Anthony Trollope’s The Small House at Allington. She enjoyed parties again, she and her friends laughing at Emmanuel’s expense as Tom pounded on the piano, cigarette in his mouth. Most significant, wealthy whites sought out the Custers.
“The planters about the country began to seek out the General, and invite him to go hunting,” Libbie recalled. “Each planter brought his hounds, and I remember the General’s delight at his first sight of the different packs.” Soon their “house was always full of guests,” who made no apologies for their racist views. “They could hardly say enough about the order…preventing the negroes from joining the column as it marched into Texas,” Libbie recalled. After several weeks the command marched to Austin, and established headquarters in the Blind Asylum. “Refined, agreeable, and well-dressed women came to see us,” Libbie wrote, and she tried to impress them.59
Amid her new society, Libbie distanced herself from her servant. At one point Brown received permission to throw a party in “the lower part of the house.” Freed people from the area arrived, Libbie wrote, and “as the fiddle started the jigs, the General’s feet began to keep time…and then, extracting, as usual, a promise from me not to laugh, he dragged me down the steps, and we hid where we saw it all.” At one point she saw them form a dance line, clearing the floor so individuals could display their skill. But she laughed at their dancing, at “the fattest darkey,” at clothes that “looked as if the property-room of a third-rate theatre had been rifled.” She laughed at their hairstyles, and laughed at Eliza, as if to take revenge on her for manipulating the Custers so skillfully. Armstrong smirked, but kept silent. Libbie did not, and so Eliza found them laughing at her.60
Armstrong grew more conservative as he grew more comfortable. The long march from Louisiana had been stressful, personally as well as professionally. The worst moments came when he, Tom, and Libbie each suffered a severe bout of dengue fever, known as breakbone fever; even Emmanuel had “a slight attack,” though they all recovered. In Texas they fell into a routine of horseback riding, racing, and hunting with the aid of a half-dozen dogs. Sheridan reassured Custer that he could keep Don Juan, which seemed to put him in an acquisitive frame of mind. “I hope to make some money before I quit Texas,” he wrote to his sister. His letters frothed with ideas: buying horses, speculating in land and cotton, even importing apples. The only problem he saw was “the unsettled condition of labor.”61
“Planters are everywhere losing extensive and valuable crops owing to the fact that the negros [sic] refuse to labor and there is no means by which they can be compelled to do so,” he wrote to Libbie’s parents from Hempstead. He adopted the planters’ perspective, claiming, “A contract has no binding effect whatever upon the negro.” They didn’t care if they weren’t paid as long as they were fed, he believed. “Negro troops are also being mustered out rapidly,” he added.
And I hope will continue until the last of the race has laid down the musket and taken up his more appropriate implement the shovel & hoe. There are white men, veterans, anxious and willing to fill up the army to any limit desired. To them the preference should be given. I am in favor of elevating the negro to the extent of his capability and intelligence…but in making this advancement I am opposed to doing it by correspondingly reducing or debasing any portion of the white race. And as to entrusting the negroes of the southern states with that most sacred and responsible privilege, the right of suffrage, I should as soon think of elevating an Indian chief to the popedom of Rome. All advocates of Negro suffrage should visit the Southern States and see the class of people upon whom they desire to confer the privilege.62
This was not merely prejudice, but an expression of the theory prevailing among Democrats that African Americans were inherently inferior. Elevate the Negro, he wrote, “to the extent of his capability”—positing an upper limit below that of whites.
Custer, as we’ve seen, had silenced himself on these questions after McClellan fell and Pleasonton lifted him to the rank of brigadier general. In order to cultivate Republican politicians, he had emphasized his desire for victory and detestation of treason, with utter sincerity. He also developed an honest degree of sympathy, even respect, when in personal contact with African Americans. He made fun of Eliza Brown, yet held her in high regard. Libbie had laughed at the “grotesqueness” of an emotional church service of freed people, but Armstrong had taken off his hat and showed reverence and respect. He proved capable of great decency toward others in an intimate, personal context. But in Texas the context changed. Surrounded by planters, he felt safe and justified in reverting to old opinions. Race was central to his worldview. “I regard the solution of the negro question as involving more difficulty and requiring the exercise of more real statesmanship than any political question which has been adjudicated for years.”63
“I would like for those who say ‘The Nigger won’t work’ to come here for a day or two, and I think that they would leave with the impression that Freedmen (in this neighborhood at least) were anything but lazy,” reported a Freedmen’s Bureau agent in Texas. “I say they will work and if they work well they shall be paid well or I don’t approve the contract.” What was required, he found, was a federal officer to enforce the agreements. He exhausted himself by constantly moving about to settle disputes, but he was proving that the freed people wanted safety and fairness, not free subsistence.
That officer reported from Hempstead, just two months after Custer departed.64
—
THE END WAS COMING. With it came fresh challenges to Custer’s assumptions.
The final mustering-out had begun. The War Department started to dismiss from service the remaining volunteer regiments and volunteer officers. Custer would be among them, giving up his rank as major general of U.S. Volunteers. The army staggered the process in Texas, releasing seven regiments in September, twelve in October, twenty-four and a half in November, sixteen in December. Fifty thousand troops had marched into the state in June to crush any possible resistance; with the rebel surrender, they had fanned out to suppress disorder, garrison towns, and make a show of federal authority. Only 10,000 remained at the end of the year.
The regiments that stayed as others disbanded seethed with resentment. In San Antonio, where Jacob Greene governed the troops in Custer’s name, a mutiny erupted in the 3rd Michigan Cavalry. Custer, now chief of cavalry for the Department of Texas, sent in the 4th U.S. Cavalry to suppress it. Greene narrowly survived the revolt. “To none of your friends is that announcement of your preservation more welcome than to me,” Custer wrote. Keep the 3rd Michigan camped outside of town, he ordered. “The influence of citizens, grog shops, &c. cannot but be bad.” Also he asked Greene “to procure me a full blooded chihuahua dog.”65
Dog collecting aside, “the influence of citizens” pressed on Custer’s mind, a counterweight to his warm relations with wealthy, refined planters. On January 11, 1866, Major General Wright wrote to him, “There are many complaints coming in from the northern part of the state of lawlessness, resistance to civil authority, and oppression and ill-treatment of freedmen.…Please give this matter careful attention.” Custer deployed his dwindling manpower in sweeps of these northeastern counties, the scene of rampant, often organized violence against African Americans.66
In these chaotic closing days, Custer tried to secure the future for himself, his family, and his friends—which meant a renewed cultivation of Radical Republicans. He helped Tom prepare an application for an appointment as an officer in the Regular Army, and asked Senator Chandler to present it personally to the secretary of war. And he pushed once more for appointment as a brigadier general in the Regular Army. He told Chandler frankly, “I desire to solicit your influence
in behalf of myself.” He based his case not only on merit, but also on Michigan’s representation in the officer corps.67
Two days after asking for patronage, Custer wrote again, in a tone entirely different from the one he used in private letters and conversations. “I dread the day when the states not lately but still in rebellion are permitted to send their representatives and occupy seats in the national Congress,” he wrote. A week later he observed, “Justice to the freedman will not be granted voluntarily.” He reported at least fifty murders of African Americans who refused to obey their old masters, and “several cases…in the northern portion of the state of Freedmen having been bought and sold. Comment is unnecessary.…A system of oppression is being inaugurated throughout this state upon the part of the former owners against the Freedman.”68
He did not exaggerate. Reports of systematic terrorism fill the files of military commanders and the Freedmen’s Bureau for Texas. At the same time, he told his sister and his brother-in-law “that Texas is a first rate state to make money,” with no mention of violence.69 For the moment, he lived in a convenient cloud of cognitive dissonance. His mind simultaneously contained his bigotry, ambition, political convictions, pleasure in the society of wealthy planters—and recognition of racist violence and resistance to federal authority. The battle for his soul, both political and moral, raged on.
Now, far more than at the end of the war, Custer faced the repercussions of his work. As a soldier, he had done as much as almost any other to destroy slavery, defeat separatism, and establish federal authority. But to what end? What kind of a world did he want? His ambivalence was, in a sense, the nation’s ambivalence. A vast political struggle was beginning, a great conflict to seize control of the postwar future. Custer would struggle with contradictory impulses and convictions, resisting and riding the wave of change that he had helped make.
Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America Page 33