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

by Stiles, T. J.

  92. War Memoirs I.

  Two: The Observer

  1. Mark R. Wilson, The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–1865 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 5–7.

  2. GAC, “War Memoirs: From West Point to the Battlefield,” Galaxy (April 1876) (to be called War Memoirs I); Ernest A. McKay, The Civil War and New York City (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 59–65, 87; Stiles, First Tycoon, 336–44. See also Frederick S. Lightfoot, ed., Nineteenth-Century New York in Rare Photographic Views (New York: Dover, 1981).

  3. War Memoirs I; William Howard Russell, My Diary: North and South, vol. 1 (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1863), 44–45; Oliver Wendell Holmes, “My Hunt After ‘The Captain,’ ” in Pages from an Old Volume of Life: A Collection of Essays, 1857–1881 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1891), 22. Note that GAC, in War Memoirs I, misdated his arrival in Washington as “soon after daylight, Saturday morning, the 20th of July.” Even in 1861 it only took twelve hours to travel from New York to Washington, not thirty-six. See Edward K. Spann, Gotham at War: New York City, 1860–1865 (New York: Rowman and Littlefield), 69. By GAC’s own account he spent a sleepless night in Washington and spent the following night riding to McDowell’s army, which means he could not have arrived on the 20th and reached the army by the early hours of the 21st.

  4. War Memoirs I; Russell, 46–47.

  5. Ibid. Adam Goodheart is especially good on the pervasive role of slavery in Washington in 1861: The Civil War Awakening (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 61–64.

  6. War Memoirs I. On Ebbitt House, see, for example, NYT, November 30, 1865.

  7. The story presented here of GAC’s trip to Washington through his journey to McDowell’s army relies on his own account from fifteen years later, in War Memoirs I. The quotes are from his memory, and should be viewed in that light.

  8. See, for example, Russell’s fine account of a dinner with Scott in the spring of 1861, 105–10.

  9. War Memoirs I. See also Catherine S. Crary, ed., Dear Belle: Letters from a Cadet and Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858–1865 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1965), 103–06. On August 8, 1861, GAC wrote a twenty-four-page letter to his old roommate, Tully McCrea, about his adventures—though he clearly exaggerated in some places.

  10. GAC, “War Memoirs: Was the Battle of Bull Run a National Disaster?,” Galaxy (May 1876) (to be called War Memoirs II); William C. Davis, Battle at Bull Run: A History of the First Major Campaign of the Civil War (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 157.

  11. Davis, 203–10; War Memoirs II. On the din of battle, see Earl J. Hess, The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 15–19.

  12. Davis, 204–12; War Memoirs II.

  13. Crary, 103–06.

  14. War Memoirs II.

  15. Crary, 105; GAC, “War Memoirs,” Galaxy (June 1876) (to be called War Memoirs III hereafter).

  16. Wert, 45; Crary, 106.

  17. Tully McCrea to GAC, August 13, 1861, GAC Correspondence, LBH; Davis, 112.

  18. GAC to Mrs. David Reed, April 26, 1861, typescript copy, GAC Collection, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

  19. Wert, 45–46; W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 187, 191–218. See also James L. Morrison Jr., “The Best School in the World”: West Point, the Pre-Civil War Years, 1833–1866 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1986).

  20. GAC to Sister, February 21, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  21. GAC to Sister, February 21, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH. Nellie Van Wormer emerges as increasingly significant in his correspondence. Her full name is identified in GAC to Brother and Sister, July 13, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  22. GAC to Parents, March 17, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH; Crary, 106–07.

  23. Stephen W. Sears, George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999 [orig. pub. 1988]), 10–12, 35, 43–49, 51–67; Richard Slotkin, The Long Road to Antietam: How the Civil War Became a Revolution (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), 15–16.

  24. Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001 [orig. pub. 1992]), 22.

  25. EHC to GAC, February 2, 1862, Folder 20, Box 1, LAFCC.

  26. GAC to Parents, March 17, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  27. GAC to Parents, March 17, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH; Stephen W. Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860–1865 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992), 211. Sears notes in To the Gates, 21, that GBM kept a portable printing press with him even in the field, and “the Yankee camps were flooded with copies” of the address to the troops quoted here.

  28. GAC to Parents, March 26, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH; Sears, To the Gates, 23; Sears, Civil War Papers, 220; Stiles, First Tycoon, 159.

  29. GAC to Sister March 28, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH. See also Allan Nevins, ed., A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright, 1861–1865 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), 28.

  30. Crary, 107; GAC to Parents, March 26, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  31. Prince François de Joinville, The Army of the Potomac: Its Organization, Its Commander, and Its Campaign, trans. William Henry Hurlburt (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1862), 30–37; Sears, To the Gates, 24.

  32. Richard Slotkin offers a fine summary of army units in The Long Road to Antietam, xxix–xxxi. A note on terminology: “rifle” refers specifically to a long firearm with rifling, or a spiral groove, inside the barrel, to spin the bullet and add greatly to accuracy. Most rifles carried by infantry in the Civil War were rifled muskets, loaded through the barrel like the smoothbore muskets used by armies for centuries past.

  33. Wainwright, 35.

  34. Joinville, 38, 53; OR, Series 1, Vol. 5: 38.

  35. Joinville, 60. Brig. General Andrew A. Humphreys, commander of the topographical corps, noted that another part of his men’s work was to map the Army of the Potomac’s own position, so GBM and his subordinates knew where their various units were. See Humphrey’s report, OR, Series 1, Vol. 11, Part 1: 152–53.

  36. GAC to Sister, [April] 11, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH. Note that this letter is actually dated March 11, which is impossible; in such misdating of months or years in correspondence, the most common error is the use of the preceding month or year. Again, a useful summary of artillery munitions appears in Slotkin, Long Road to Antietam, xxxi.

  37. GAC to Sister, April 19, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH. On the skirmish that produced these casualties, see Sears, To the Gates, 55–56.

  38. Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 3–31. See also her discussion of burial rituals, 61–101.

  39. GAC to Sister, April 19, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  40. GAC, “War Memoirs: Yorktown and Williamsburg,” Galaxy (November 1876) (to be referred to as War Memoirs IV). This is the primary source for the account given here of GAC’s balloon ascensions, but at least one contemporary letter confirms some specific details; see GAC to Sister, May 15, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH. Robert Utley confirmed by e-mail that he had examined a map drawn by GAC in a balloon, at the time in the private collection of Brice C. W. Custer, since alienated to an unknown private collector.

  41. Sears, To the Gates, 41, 54–55; War Memoirs IV.

  42. War Memoirs IV.

  43. War Memoirs IV; OR, Series 1, Vol. 11, Part 1: 526, 533–34. On the slow counter-fortification of the Union line opposite the Confederate Yorktown line, see Sears, To the Gates, esp. 57–59. GAC remained a topographical engineer, but performed his duties specifically for Smith after his assignment.

  44. OR, Series 1, Vol. 11, Part 1: 526, 533–36 and Vol. 11, Part 3: 140; Sears, To the Gates, 70–71.


  45. OR, Series 1, Vol. 11, Part 1: 526, 533–36 and Vol. 11, Part 3: 140; Sears, To the Gates, 76, 78; William A. Blair, “The Seven Days and the Radical Persuasion: Convincing Moderates in the North for the Need for a Hard War,” in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Richmond Campaign of 1862: The Peninsula and the Seven Days (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 153–80.

  46. OR, Series 1, Vol. 11, Part 1: 526, 533–36; Sears, To the Gates, 76, 78–80; War Memoirs IV; Glenn David Brasher, The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 126–29.

  47. OR, Series 1, Vol. 11, Part 1: 537–40; Sears, To the Gates, 79–83; GAC to Sister, May 15, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH; Brasher, 129–30.

  48. GAC to Sister, May 15, 1862, GAC Correspondence, LBH; Wert, 52.

  49. Wainwright, 71, 70. I am combining quotes from Wainwright’s diary from May 26 (“most tropically”) and May 24 (“sea of mud”). See also Sears, To the Gates, 108–09.

  50. Entry 1850, Cullum 2: 496–97; OR, Series 1, Vol. 11, Part 1: 111, 652–54; Monroe Commercial, June 12, 1862. Previously GAC had sounded the Chickahominy under the supervision of Brig. Gen. John Gross Barnard, chief engineer for the Army of the Potomac. See OR, Series 1, Vol. 11, Part 1: 639; William J. Miller, “I Only Wait for the River: McClellan and His Engineers on the Chickahominy,” in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Richmond Campaign of 1862: The Peninsula and the Seven Days (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 44–65.

  51. OR, Series 1, Vol. 11, Part 1: 111, 651–54; Monroe Commercial, June 12, 1862.

  52. GBM, McClellan’s Own Story (New York: Charles L. Webster and Co., 1887), 364; Sears, Civil War Papers, 275–76; OR, Series 1, Vol. 11, Part 3: 198–99. GAC later wrote that, before being taken on staff by GBM, the general had only seen him face-to-face twice and had not said twenty words to him; GAC to Jacob Howard, January 19, 1864, reproduced in Hamilton Gay Howard, Civil War Echoes: Character Sketches and State Secrets (Washington, D.C.: Howard Publishing, 1907), 306–13. On GAC’s state of mind, see Reynolds, 74. Reynolds collated EBC’s unpublished notes on the Civil War (all of which may be found in the LBH collection, though I am citing Reynolds for the convenience of researchers). Though this insight into his mind was related by EBC years after his death, it rings true, given GAC’s own frequent commentary in his letters on how he was unable to change his uniform for days on end. GAC’s promotion is commonly attributed to his fording the river to sound its depth, under the command of Brig. Gen. John G. Barnard, chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac; according to this version, the armed reconnaissance was conducted after GAC’s promotion. This version seems to be based on a misleading account of GAC’s promotion that was circulated by the headquarters staff not long after the event; see next chapter for a full discussion. In fact, GBM specifically named the armed reconnaissance in his memoirs as the reason he called GAC to his tent; even Barnard’s report on the fording of the river attributed its importance to its facilitating the subsequent raid described here. See OR, Series 1, Vol. 11, Part 1: 111.

  Three: The Protégé

  1. James H. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, vol. 1 (New York: D. Appleton, 1912), 100–01; Letter of August 12, 1863, quoted in Catherine S. Crary, ed., Dear Belle: Letters from a Cadet and Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858–1865 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1965), 214.

  2. Stephen W. Sears, George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999 [orig. pub. 1988]), 10–12, 35, 43–49, 51–67; Richard Slotkin, The Long Road to Antietam: How the Civil War Became a Revolution (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), 15–16. For my ideas of how economic dynamism created a competitive social arena and rendered social status unstable, see Stiles, First Tycoon, 37–43, 49, 148–50.

  3. OR, Series 1, Vol. 5: 23; Edwin C. Fishel, The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 123; Sears, George B. McClellan, 135.

  4. Hartford Courant, July 3, 1862; Wilson, 101–02. GAC did test the river, but not spontaneously and not under GBM’s eye. He was ordered into the river by Brig. Gen. John G. Barnard, chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac; OR, Series 1, Vol. 11, Part 1: 111. GAC’s staff promotion to captain was effective June 5, 1862, and his Regular Army promotion to first lieutenant was dated July 17, 1862; HR 3328, CRM.

  5. Hartford Courant, July 3, 1862. Barnard’s reconnaissance of the river with GAC clearly was the basis for this muddled account, which has often been repeated in biographies of GAC with many embellishments of the great dangers involved. In fact, Barnard’s report makes no mention of the enemy at all, though he notes, “The attack and capture of the enemy’s pickets by him [GAC] and Lieutenant Bowen was founded upon these reconnaissances.” See OR, Series 1, Vol. 11, Part 1: 111. See also GBM’s proud reference in a letter to “some youngsters I have caught,” Sears, George B. McClellan, 237.

  6. Slotkin, Long Road to Antietam, 45–46; see also Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001 [orig. pub. 1992]), 21.

  7. Sears, George B. McClellan, 105–06, 110–11, 137, 189; Sears, To the Gates, 21. The chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac, Brig. Gen. John G. Barnard, later expressed a disillusionment that reveals how great the illusions about GBM had once been, complaining of “the erroneous ideas disseminated concerning his capacity, merits, and agency.” See William J. Miller, “I Only Wait for the River: McClellan and His Engineers on the Chickahominy,” in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Richmond Campaign of 1862: The Peninsula and the Seven Days (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 44–65, and Barnard’s own The Peninsular Campaign and Its Antecedents (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1864).

  8. Sears, To the Gates, 163–65; Miller, “I Only Wait for the River,” 44–65. Sears, George B. McClellan, uses the term “fatalism” and develops this argument at length, demonstrating convincingly that GBM’s messianic belief in himself and his fear that God would crush his hopes were intertwined. Curiously, GBM’s need to control every variable blinded him to the danger that delay would give the enemy time, creating new contingencies, or that exhaustive safeguards for battle led to rising losses from sickness as his men remained in the field.

  9. GBM quoted in Ethan S. Rafuse, McClellan’s War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 179. Sears, To the Gates, 159, notes that GBM was conducting an “active defense” as taught at West Point, which the general said would protect “against the consequences of unforeseen disaster.” As Sears writes in George B. McClellan, 175, GBM “was invariably brought up short by the unexpected.” Slotkin, Long Road to Antietam, 51–52, similarly observes that GBM played the role of “the fighter for the press when his real purpose was to escape the chaos of a battle he could not control.”

  10. Prince François de Joinville, The Army of the Potomac: Its Organization, Its Commander, and Its Campaign, trans. William Henry Hurlburt (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1862), 52–53; Mark R. Wilson, The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–1865 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 35–36.

  11. Sears, George B. McClellan, 50–51, 107–09, 179–80, 187–88; Fishel, 102–29; Sears, To the Gates, 98–99; Stephen W. Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860–1865 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992), 271, 274; see also Stiles, Jesse James, 251–52. Fishel, 102 and 238, argues that most of the blame was not Pinkerton’s: “As for McClellan, he could not have been deceived by Pinkerton’s overestimates, for he was a party to them—the dominant party, in fact.…It is now clear that George McClellan was his own intelligence officer; Pinkerton never came close to filling that role.”

  12. Sears, George B. McClellan, 103, 134, 176–77, 188; Fishel, 239; Sears, Civil War Papers, 275.

  13. EHC to GAC, April 18, 1862, Folder
2, Box 1, LAFCC. The staff shared GBM’s anger at his enemies; see Slotkin, Long Road to Antietam, 45–46, 176–79. Slotkin, 31, writes that GBM believed himself to be engaged in a “two front war to save the Union from the Rebels in front and the Radicals in the rear.”

  14. “Fair Oaks, Va. Lt. James B. Washington, a Confederate Prisoner, with Capt. George A. Custer of the 5th Cavalry, U.S.A.,” James F. Gibson, photographic print, call number LC-B815-428 Lot 4188, Prints and Photographs Division, LOC; Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative, vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville (New York: Vintage, 1986 [orig. pub. 1958]), 445–51. The photograph label, provided by the Brady Studio, identifies GAC as a captain, though his official designation as a “Captain and additional aide-de-camp” was dated June 5, 1862, several days later; HR 3328, CRM.

  15. Morris Schaff, The Spirit of Old West Point, 1858–1862 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1908), 142. Washington was a distant nephew of the nation’s first president.

  16. “Lieut. Washington, a Confederate Prisoner, and Capt. Custer, U.S.A.,” photographic print, call number LC-USZ62-109737, Prints and Photographs Division, LOC. EBC would later claim that Washington called for the young contraband to be included, but the photographer used the same young man in at least one other photograph. See Merington, 129–30.

  17. Marie Miller to GAC, n.d., Folder 21, Box 1, LAFCC. The letter is undated, but it makes reference to his interest in Nellie Van Wormer and his apparent direct contact with contrabands, which suggests that it was written while he was on the Peninsula. Examples of other letters discussing the sending home of contrabands appear in Nina Silber, Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 215, 231–32.

  18. James Marten, “A Feeling of Restless Anxiety: Loyalty and Race in the Peninsula Campaign and Beyond,” in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Richmond Campaign of 1862: The Peninsula and the Seven Days (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 121–52.

  19. Marten, “A Feeling of Restless Anxiety,” 121–52; James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 118–19; Glenn David Brasher, The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 144–45.