Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

by Stiles, T. J.

  His corrupt friend Rufus Ingalls, on the other hand, “is in great trouble and anxiety in regard to these investigations,” Custer wrote to Libbie. “I told him I could ascertain in five minutes all there was in the hands of the committee. I did so today and will see Rufus this PM and relieve his mind of a load that has troubled him greatly.” Confident in his strength, he left his fire-damaged hotel to stay with Ben Holladay.

  He cultivated Sherman, and described him as particularly warm. He may have seen the conservative commanding general as a new patron, a replacement for the unfashionably Radical Sheridan as the Democrats took power. He could see that Sherman had regained his authority under the new secretary of war, Alphonso Taft. Sherman introduced him to Taft with compliments. George Corkhill, editor of the Washington Chronicle, hosted a breakfast for Custer, Sherman, and Supreme Court justice Samuel Miller. And Custer received an invitation to a dinner at the Manhattan Club (“the Democratic club of N.Y.,” he stressed to Libbie), though he declined.85

  After a couple of weeks in the capital, a creeping sense that he had exposed himself overtook Custer. In mid-April he began to write about his eagerness to leave. He complained that he had too many supplicants, asking him to do too much. Each choice to help or not help exposed him further, making a potential enemy of someone. Finally he departed Washington. He stopped in Philadelphia to see the Centennial Exhibition, a grand fair given to celebrate the nation’s 100th birthday, then went on to New York, where he dined with August Belmont. There, on April 24, he was called back to Washington to testify in Belknap’s impeachment.86

  By now he realized his danger. Despite the election, the army chain of command remained in place—and he had aggravated it. Sheridan wrote to army headquarters to dispute a claim he made about a corrupt transaction involving corn at Fort Abraham Lincoln. He did not intend “to do any harm to Col. Custer,” Sheridan wrote, but he resented how Custer had impugned “army administration in this command.” Lt. Col. James “Tony” Forsyth, brother of Custer’s friend Sandy Forsyth, wrote Belknap a letter, part of which appeared in print. He said Custer repeated mere gossip. “I have yet to meet a single officer of the army who approves” of his testimony. “The fact of the matter is, both Hazen, and Custer, are now working to make capital with the Democratic party—they want stars.” The Republican press attacked him on a daily basis; it worried Custer, who mentioned it often in his letters, affecting not to care.87

  Now almost frantic to escape Washington, Custer asked Sherman for help in being released from testifying in the Belknap case. Sherman agreed. He asked Secretary of War Taft to write to Congress. Taft told Grant about it at the next cabinet meeting. No, Grant said, Taft would write no such letter. He was “not pleased with General Custer.” Sherman telegraphed Sheridan in Chicago on April 28: “The President has just sent me instructions through the Secretary of War, to send someone else than General Custer in command of that force from Fort Abe Lincoln. Detail and instruct someone else.” Sheridan replied that General Terry would go in Custer’s place.88

  Custer went to see Sherman, who saw that he was “much troubled.” Go talk to the president, Sherman advised. On May 1, Custer went to the White House. He had gone before, only to be turned away. In an ambiguous way, his letters suggest that Grant did see him previously, allowing him time to praise Bloody Knife, as he had promised the scout he would. If so, they had had no substantive conversation. From Custer’s point of view, they now had a great deal to discuss. Grant made him wait, hour after hour. Ingalls saw him in the anteroom, and promised to speak for him to the president. Grant sent out a note that he would not see Custer that day.89

  “I desired this opportunity simply as a matter of justice,” Custer wrote to the president, adding that he regretted that he would not be allowed to see him. With the start of the expedition now past due, he decided to simply leave. Sherman was out, but he believed the general had approved his departure. The House impeachment managers in the Belknap case said they did not need him. He took a train to Chicago.

  On arriving, Custer checked in with Sheridan, then boarded a train to St. Paul. Immediately after he left, Sheridan received a telegram about him from Sherman: “He was not justified in starting without seeing the President or myself. Please intercept him at Chicago or Saint Paul and order him to halt and await further orders. Meantime let the expedition from Fort Lincoln proceed without him.” Sheridan sent a man to pull Custer off the train before it left the station.

  That same day in Washington, Grant sent Sherman and Taft a clipping from the New York World. It read, “President Grant has to-day performed an act which appears to be the most high-handed abuse of his official power which he has perpetrated yet.” The article claimed that Grant removed Custer from command in retaliation for his testimony, and that Sherman and Taft protested, saying “that Custer was not only the best man, but the only man fit to lead the expedition now fitting out against the Indians. To all their entreaties Grant turned a deaf ear.” It said Custer believed he had merely done his duty by testifying, and that he had gone to see Grant only to be sent away.

  It infuriated Sherman and Taft, who could only conclude that Custer planted the story. Taft told the president, “These statements are entirely untrue.” Sherman stated “most emphatically that General Custer though relieved as a witness by the Committee was not justified in leaving Washington.” He observed that he had not protested Custer’s removal from command, that in fact “the Army possesses hundreds who are competent for such an expedition,” including General Terry. He added, “General Custer is now subject to any measure of discipline which the President may require.” He did not know if Custer was responsible for the New York World article, adding, “I surely cannot believe that he could so misrepresent the case.” But who else knew the details it related, let alone Custer’s private thoughts?90

  Custer wired Sherman twice on May 4, protesting that he had waited all day to see the president. Sherman replied to Sheridan, saying that Grant would allow Custer to return to Fort Abraham Lincoln but not to go on the expedition. Custer took the train to St. Paul. There, on May 6, he made a final appeal to President Grant, which Terry sent up the chain of command. “I respectfully but most earnestly request that while not allowed to go in command of the expedition I may be permitted to serve with my regiment in the field. I appeal to you as a soldier to spare me the humiliation of seeing my regiment march to meet the enemy & I not share in its dangers.”

  The circle closed. In the final trial of his life, Custer made the same appeal for clemency that he had made at his court-martial in 1861. After so many years, he again faced the consequences of his self-indulgence, his blindness to his obligations. His peril drained away his sense of power, his belief in his ascendance. Again he asked for pity—to be saved from the mortification of being held back as others went into battle.

  Terry endorsed Custer’s note, telling Sheridan that he did not intend to question the president’s orders but “Custer’s services would be very valuable with his regiment.” Sheridan forwarded Custer’s message to Washington with his own comments, making it clear that he had had quite enough of Custer’s misbehavior. “I am sorry Lieutenant Colonel Custer did not manifest as much interest by staying at his post to organize & get ready his regiment & the expedition as he does now to accompany it.” Sheridan pointed out that he had asked for clemency for Custer in 1868, also so he could join his regiment in a foray against the Indians; “& I sincerely hope if granted this time it will have sufficient effect to prevent him from again attempting to throw discredit on his profession and his brother officers.” Custer had alienated his last patron.91

  Sherman sent a final telegram in this flurry, directed to Terry. He said that Grant had seen his message and “Custer’s urgent request to go under your command with his regiment.” The president relented. Custer could go. Sherman added fatherly advice to pass along to the lieutenant colonel, showing that he had not given up on Custer yet.

  Advise Cust
er to be prudent, not to take along any newspaper men, who always work mischief, and to abstain from any personalities in the future. Tell him I want him to confine his whole mind to his legitimate office, and trust to time. That newspaper paragraph in the New York World of May 2nd compromised his best friends here, and almost deprived us of the ability to serve him.92

  The Democratic press and many historians find Grant guilty of “harsh, politically motivated treatment of Custer,” as Utley writes. His anger at the siege of his administration clearly affected him. He felt betrayed, first by Bristow and then Custer. But that should not distract from the sheer recklessness of Custer’s actions. He planted political stories in the press, apparently writing some himself. He testified to corruption in the administration and Grant’s own family, though he had no personal knowledge of it. He publicly impugned an officer of his own regiment on mere hearsay evidence. Worst of all, he compromised the core principle of the American military—not incidentally the first professional institution in the country—by openly intriguing with the political opposition to the civilian commander in chief. And he did it to help a party dedicated to restoring white supremacy (even as he imperiled his family’s fortunes with a secret, unsecured debt from reckless gambling on stocks). Whatever Grant’s motives, Custer deserved serious discipline, dismissal, or a court-martial.

  He should have known better. Libbie warned him not to alienate politicians. She feared that he put himself at risk by praising McClellan in his war memoirs now appearing in the Galaxy, that he might have lost the friendship of Chandler. Her comments were more apt than she perhaps realized. For fifteen years, Custer had worshipped McClellan; now he had duplicated his flaws, nearly ending his career by politically assailing the president of the United States.93

  At Fort Abraham Lincoln he jumped into the preparations for the expedition. For the first time, all twelve companies of the regiment would ride out under his command. The officers gathered—Marcus Reno, whom Custer had hardly seen in their years in the 7th Cavalry, Benteen, Yates, Moylan, Keogh, Calhoun, Tom Custer, and the rest. He hired his little brother Boston as a civilian forage master, and his nephew Autie—Harry Armstrong Reed, his sister’s son—as a herder. “You must rely on the ability of your own column for your best success,” Sheridan wired Terry on May 16. “I believe it to be fully equal to all the Sioux which can be brought against it, and only hope they will hold fast to meet it.…You know the impossibility of any large number of Indians keeping together as a hostile body for even one week.”94

  The next day Custer led the 7th Cavalry on a parade through the fort’s grid of wooden buildings, the band playing “Garry Owen.” Libbie and his sister Maggie rode with him. The band struck up “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” With Bloody Knife, 21 Arikara scouts, 3 Gatling guns, and 150 wagons, the column marched up from the river bottom to the plateau above. Libbie and Maggie camped with them that night. On May 18 the women said good-bye and watched the men march out of sight.95

  EPILOGUE

  AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK IN the morning on January 13, 1879, a collection of military officers took seats in a room on the mezzanine of the Palmer House hotel in Chicago. They wore full-dress uniforms—double-breasted tunics, now standard for all officer ranks, and white gloves. They began by reading the order for these proceedings.

  By direction of the President and on the application of Major Marcus A. Reno, 7th Cavalry, a Court of Inquiry is hereby appointed…for the purpose of inquiring into Major Reno’s conduct at the Battle of the Little Big Horn River*1 on the 25th and 26th days of June, 1876.

  The directive assigned Col. John H. King, 9th Infantry, Col. Wesley Merritt, 5th Cavalry, and Lt. Col. William B. Royall, 3rd Cavalry, as judges. The recorder (in essence the prosecutor), 1st Lt. Jesse M. Lee, noted, “There is a man by the name of Whittaker whom I understand has made certain accusations against Major Reno.” Indeed, Reno had asked for this inquiry because the writer Frederick Whittaker publicly blamed him for the disaster that struck the 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn.1

  The court reconvened the next day. A half-dozen reporters and some twenty civilian observers attended, interested less in Reno than in his former commander. This would be the closest thing to an official investigation of the mysterious fate of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer. Even Lieutenant Lee seemed to feel the public’s anticipation; he denied that he was Reno’s prosecutor, saying, “The course seems to be to get at the whole truth of the matter.” Regardless, Reno brought counsel: Lyman D. Gilbert, deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania.

  The Chicago Times described King, the presiding officer, as wearing a “perpetual smile.” A rather soft-looking officer of medium height, he had silver hair and a giant English-style mustache—a contrast with Merritt on his right, still boyish, with “a dark-brown, coarse mustache, with a comfortable Jeff Davis beard.” The bald Royall sat silently on the panel’s left. Reno and his lawyer took their seats. Speaking in “clarion tones,” the newspaper wrote, King ordered the proceedings to begin.2

  Lee called 1st Lt. Edward Maguire to the stand. The Chicago Times thought him “a trifle nervous,” observing that his hand shook as he took the oath “to testify to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Maguire explained that he served on Gen. Alfred Terry’s staff in St. Paul. At the time of the battle, “I accompanied Gen. Terry as engineer officer…to within about eight miles of Gen. Custer’s battlefield on the Little Bighorn.” He added that Col. John Gibbon commanded the troops that he and Terry accompanied, and they were “moving to form a junction with Gen. Custer.”3

  Maguire did not explain the preliminaries. Weeks earlier, Gibbon had marched east from Fort Ellis, Montana, with almost 500 men of the 7th Infantry and 2nd Cavalry. He had met Terry and Custer on the steamboat Far West on the Yellowstone on June 21. Terry outlined a classic hammer-and-anvil operation, often used by the U.S. Army against guerrillas and raiders. Custer was to march south with the 7th Cavalry, up the Rosebud valley, find the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne trail and follow it west, toward the Little Bighorn, then drive north, attacking any villages he found from the south. Terry wanted Custer to drive the surviving Lakotas toward Gibbon, who would march up the Little Bighorn (i.e., south from the Yellowstone) with his slower-moving foot soldiers. On June 22 Custer had set out with a stripped-down column of all twelve companies of his regiment, taking no sabers, Gatling guns, or wagons, packing all supplies on mules. Terry and Gibbon proceeded south at an easy pace.4

  “When did you arrive there?” Lee asked, referring to the battlefield.

  “At about 10 o’clock on the morning of the 27th of June, 1876,” Maguire responded. He described the valley of the Little Bighorn: “There was a river bottom proper, which is timbered and is very narrow.…Then comes the first bench, which is treeless, an open grassy plain.” (This dry “bench” was described by most of the troops as the river “bottom.”) Beyond that, Maguire added, came slopes and bluffs, and then the broad prairie. “When we arrived the ground was strewn with saddles, camp kettles, and things the Indians had left.…The ground was covered with tracks.”

  Lee’s questions broke Maguire’s account of Terry’s arrival into disordered fragments. Restored to chronological sequence, they narrate Terry’s discovery of the Little Bighorn battlefield on June 27. “The first two officers I saw were lieutenants [George] Wallace and [Luther] Hare. They were riding rapidly towards us.” They guided Maguire to “the position which Major Reno occupied…on the bluff across the river on the opposite side. They were, I should say, from 80 to 90 feet high.…Gen. Terry and the rest of them rode up. There were shouts and there were enlisted men and also officers crying. That is, some had tears rolling down their cheeks, and others showed it in their voices. They were talking rapidly and excitedly about the affair.”

  Four and a half miles down the river, “we found dead bodies in a circle around the crest of a little hill and quite a number of empty shells.…There were empty shells lying all around and the marks of p
onies or horses having been ridden all around.” There were corpses scattered and clustered in this general area. Maguire found a ford nearby. “My theory was that Gen. Custer went to the ford and was met there and driven back, and they separated into two bodies.” He provided a rough map.

  Maguire’s words evoked powerful images: the ghost of a vast Indian village; Reno’s demoralized, exhausted cluster of soldiers atop a high bluff; and down the river the horror of bodies and shell casings—“government shells, and Winchester shells, and one peculiar brass shell…which was supposed to belong to Gen. Custer’s pistol,” one of his two English Webley revolvers. What Maguire could not describe was the battle.5

  —

  WHEN THE COURT finished with Maguire, it accommodated rising public interest by moving to room 229 in the Palmer House, which could hold 100 people. On January 15, Reno and his counsel sat with their backs to a window as tables were arranged into a T. The witness and recorder sat facing each other at the bottom, the stenographer sat next to them, and the judges were aligned in a row across the top.

  Lee called 1st Lt. George D. Wallace, one of the two officers who rode out to meet Terry and Gibbon’s column. The Chicago Times observed that Wallace was “the second lieutenant of Company G of the 7th Cavalry at the time of the battle on the Little Big Horn.…He is a tall young fellow, with considerable of the military dash about him.” He would be the first to speak of how the disaster unfolded.6

  Lee began by asking his role at the time. “I was acting engineer officer with Gen. Custer’s column,” Wallace replied.7

  Having elicited a description of the battlefield and aftermath from Maguire, Lee asked Wallace to begin with Custer’s approach to the Lakota and Cheyenne village, the morning before the fighting began. “On the 25th day of June, 1876, what were the indications, if any, of the proximity of hostile Indians?”