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

by Stiles, T. J.

  30. OR, Series 1, Vol. 36, Part 1: 787–88, 817–18, 828; Kidd, 282, 296–306; Longacre, Lincoln’s Cavalrymen, 266–68; Longacre, Custer’s Wolverines, 210–14; Foote 3: 229–31; Wert, 155–57.

  31. Chicago Tribune, June 1, 1864; OR, Series 1, Vol. 36, Part 1: 787–88, 817–18, 828, 834; New York Herald, May 16, 1864, reprinted in Chicago Tribune, May 20, 1864. The Tribune story of June 1 identified the private who shot Stuart as “Dunn,” but in other respects it corresponds closely to other reports, including Alger’s. Most historians describe Huff as having shot Stuart with a revolver—in many accounts, as the Michigan Brigade was driven back from a charge. I quote the Tribune account because it agrees with Alger’s report, was printed soon after the event, and makes the most sense: a long-range shot with a Spencer, after dislodging the Confederates from their initial position. However, reporting of such small details of large battles is necessarily inaccurate; certainty is impossible. Stuart may have been shot with a revolver as traditional accounts claim. See, for example, Mark Grimsley, And Keep Moving On: The Virginia Campaign, May–June 1864 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 116.

  32. Chicago Tribune, June 1, 1864; OR, Series 1, Vol. 36, Part 1: 787–88, 817–18, 828, 834; New York Herald, May 16, 1864, reprinted in Chicago Tribune, May 20, 1864; Foote 3: 231–32; McPherson, 728. Foote’s Southern bias comes through clearly in his description of the conclusion of the battle, in which he states that the Confederates restored their line and Sheridan concluded to leave, which was simply not true.

  33. GAC to EBC, May 17, 1864, Folder 2, Box 4, MMP.

  34. McPherson, 736–41; Grimsley, And Keep Moving On, 90–93; Richard Slotkin, No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, 1864 (New York: Random House, 2009), 7–17.

  35. New York Herald, May 16, 1864, reprinted in Chicago Tribune, May 20, 1864; Circular, July 11, 1864; EBC to her parents, May 1, 1864, quoted in Merington, 94; James H. Kidd to his parents, June 3, 1864, James H. Kidd Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

  36. GAC to EBC, April 23 and May 16, 1864, Merington, 93, 97.

  37. EBC to GAC, April 1864, quoted in Merington, 89.

  38. Merington, 89–95, 100, 107, 113; EBC to Aunt Eliza, July 3, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  39. Leckie, 45; Merington, 92, 95; GAC to EBC, May 17, 1864, Folder 2, Box 4, MMP.

  40. Leckie, 44; Merington, 93, 100–01; GAC to Judge Christiancy, July 26, 1863, insert in Henry Clay Christiancy Diary, Folder 3, Box 1, Christiancy and Pickett Families’ Papers, LOC. See also Shirley Leckie’s fine study of the Custer marriage during the war years, “The Civil War Partnership of Elizabeth and George A. Custer,” in Carol K. Bleser and Lesley J. Gordon, eds., Intimate Strategies of the Civil War: Military Commanders and Their Wives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 178–98.

  41. Merington, 90–93 (Merington frequently combines different letters or paraphrases or makes error of transcription without explaining herself, so these quotes may well be from multiple letters); John J. Hennessy, “I Dread the Spring: The Army of the Potomac Prepares for the Overland Campaign,” in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Wilderness Campaign (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 66–105. On May 22, 1863, War Department General Order 143 created the Bureau of Colored Troops; see Walter B. Hill Jr., “Living with the Hydra: The Documentation of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Federal Records, Part 2,” Prologue Magazine 32, no. 4 (winter 2000).

  42. Merington, 90–91; EBC to Aunt Eliza, July 3, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  43. Merington, 100–01, 113. For an example of Francis Kellogg’s brazen trading of favors, see Francis W. Kellogg to James H. Kidd, June 5, 1864, James H. Kidd Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. In it, he promises that Governor Austin Blair will appoint Kidd as colonel of the 6th Michigan Cavalry Regiment, and in return he expects Kidd to appoint Kellogg’s designees to his staff.

  44. Merington, 101, 106, 108–09; EBC to Aunt Eliza, July 3, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  45. Grimsley, And Keep Moving On, 151–52, 196–221; Merington, 101. For descriptions of Haw’s Shop and GAC’s behavior there, see James H. Kidd to Parents, June 3, 1864, James H. Kidd Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.; Sheridan, 218–22. John Huff, the trooper who killed Stuart, died at Haw’s Shop.

  46. Merington, 100–01; EBC to Aunt Eliza, July 3, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  47. Unidentified Author, Diary, Mss 5:1 W2767:1, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Va.

  48. Grimsley, And Keep Moving On, 135–36.

  49. Unidentified Author, Diary, Mss 5:1 W2767:1, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Va.

  50. Merington, 104; Eric J. Wittenberg, Glory Enough for All: Sheridan’s Second Raid and the Battle of Trevilian Station (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2001), 22–23. Wittenberg, xviii, notes that Sheridan tended to distort the truth in his reports and memoirs, often using hindsight to claim intent where favorable developments had been, in fact, purely fortuitous; this appears to be the case with the intent of the raid, which Sheridan claimed was designed to draw away Lee’s cavalry. And yet, as Wittenberg also notes, such a purpose was consistent with Grant’s strategy, and so in fact may have been an aspect of the original plan.

  51. Wittenberg, 37–41, 47, 52–57.

  52. Merington, 104; Wittenberg, 97–125, particularly 112–13.

  53. David G. Smith, “Race and Retaliation: The Capture of African Americans During the Gettysburg Campaign,” in Peter Wallenstein and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, eds., Virginia’s Civil War (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005), 137–51.

  54. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 40–42.

  55. Merington, 104.

  56. Merington, 104–06, 109.

  57. Wittenberg, 97–125, particularly 112–13; Merington, 104; OR, Series 1, Vol. 36, Part 1: 796, 823; Wittenberg, 59, 98–100. A military rule of thumb states that an attacking force should have a three-to-one advantage to be confident of success. GAC only found the road with the guidance of a local contraband; see his testimony in HR 30, Part IV: 72, 1st Session, 39th Congress.

  58. Wittenberg, 71–91; OR, Series 1, Vol. 36, Part 1: 823–25.

  59. Millard K. Bushong and Dean M. Bushong, Fightin’ Tom Rosser, C.S.A. (Shippensburg, Pa.: Beidel Printing House, 1983), 1–3, 12, 75; McDonald, History of the Laurel Brigade, 234–35.

  60. Kidd, Personal Recollections, 353; Wittenberg, 102.

  61. Wittenberg, 102–25 (Rosser quoted on 123–24); OR, Series 1, Vol. 36, Part 1: 823–24; Kidd, Personal Recollections, 360–61.

  62. Wittenberg, 125, 138.

  63. Merington, 104–05; Wittenberg, 117–25; Urwin, 157–64.

  64. Wittenberg, 114–15.

  65. James H. Kidd to Parents, June 21, 1864, James H. Kidd Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.; Wittenberg, 72–91; 133–36.

  66. Wittenberg, 151; OR, Series 1, Vol. 36, Part 1: 823–25.

  67. Wittenberg, 156–58.

  68. Morris Schaff, The Sunset of the Confederacy (Boston: John W. Luce and Co., 1912), 179.

  69. Schaff, 179–80; Reynolds, 70; Merington, 104.

  70. Wittenberg, 183–217.

  71. Charles Francis Adams Jr. to Charles Francis Adams, May 29, 1864, Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1864, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920), 131–34.

  72. For an example of GAC using the phrase “Custer luck,” see GAC to EBC, February 8, 1869, Folder 7, Box 4, MMP.

  73. Merington, 113.

  74. Merington, 113–14; EBC to Aunt Eliza, July 3, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  75. GAC to Zachariah Chandler, June 26, 1864, Zachariah Chandler Papers, LOC.

  76. Merington, 113–14; EBC to Aunt Eliza, July 3, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  77. Acting Surgeon in Chief’s Statement, 1 Brig. 1st Div., July 11, 1864, Personnel Files, CRM.

&
nbsp; 78. James H. Kidd to his parents, July 12, 1864, James H. Kidd Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

  Eight: The Victor

  1. Merington, 102, 105. When Merington transcribed this June letter (the original now being unavailable to researchers), she wrote “double entendu.” As Merington made various errors of transcription of letters that are available for inspection, the phrase has been rendered correctly here, on the assumption that she made an error in this case.

  2. Wert, 167–69; Leckie, 48; Merington, 121. Wert, 34–35, suggests plausibly that GAC’s treatment for gonorrhea at West Point may have impaired his fertility. Of course, there may have been other factors that inhibited the couple’s ability to produce children.

  3. Ida C. Brown, Michigan Men in the Civil War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), 36; Victor Comte to Elise, November 6, 1863, Victor E. Comte Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

  4. Charles Wainwright, June 14, 1864, Allan Nevins, ed., A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright, 1861–1865 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998 [orig. pub. 1962], 419–20; McPherson, 742–43; Richard Slotkin, No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, 1864 (New York: Random House, 2009), 7–15; Mark Grimsley, And Keep Moving On: The Virginia Campaign, May–June 1864 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 90–93, 161.

  5. McPherson, 740–43; Grimsley, And Keep Moving On, 90–93, 225–39.

  6. McPherson, 739, 756–58; Joseph T. Glatthaar, “U. S. Grant and the Union High Command During the 1864 Valley Campaign,” in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 34–55.

  7. McPherson, 756–58.

  8. GAC to LAR, August 24, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH; Wert, 172–73; Gregory J. W. Urwin, Custer Victorious: The Civil War Battles of General George Armstrong Custer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990 [orig. pub. 1983]), 171–74.

  9. James H. Kidd to Parents, September 9, 1864, James H. Kidd Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.; GAC to DSB, September 2, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH; Jeffry D. Wert, From Winchester to Cedar Creek: The Shenandoah Campaign of 1864 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 18–22.

  10. Merington, 116.

  11. GAC to LAR, August 24, 1864, GAC to DSB, September 2, 1864, GAC to LAR, September 17, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  12. Reynolds, 46; GAC to LAR, August 24, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  13. GAC to DSB, September 2, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH; EHC to GAC September 1 and 20, 1864, Folder 20, Box 1, LAFCC. Note that the manuscript letter from GAC to DSB refers to DSB only as “My dear Father,” which raises the possibility that it was addressed to EHC, not DSB. However, the formality of the letter and contextual references make it clear that it was sent to DSB, whom GAC referred to as “father” after his marriage to EBC.

  14. GAC to DSB, September 2, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  15. New York Tribune, August 22, 1864.

  16. McPherson, 771; Stephen W. Sears, George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999 [orig. pub. 1988]), 371–77.

  17. Merington, 118–19.

  18. Reynolds, 77–78.

  19. EHC to GAC September 1 and 6, 1864, Folder 20, Box 1, David Reed to GAC, September 14, 1864, Folder 12, Box 2, LAFCC.

  20. GAC to Friend, September 16, 1864, GAC Papers, USMA.

  21. Wert, 174–75; Jay W. Simson, Custer and the Port Royal Executions of 1864 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Co., 2009).

  22. GAC to Friend, September 16, 1864, GAC Papers, USMA; New York Times, October 27, 1864. The New York Times edited the letter somewhat.

  23. I. P. Christiancy to GAC, September 21 and 22, 1864, Folder 3, Box 1, LAFCC.

  24. EHC to GAC, September 22, 1864, Folder 20, IPC to GAC, September 22, 1864, Folder 3, Box 1, LAFCC.

  25. GAC to EHC, October 16, 1864, typescript copy, GAC Papers, USMA; New York Times, October 27, 1864.

  26. I. P. Christiancy to GAC, September 22, 1864, Folder 3, Box 1, LAFCC.

  27. GAC to Amasa E. Dana, September 8, 1864, CW 77, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.; Wert, From Winchester to Cedar Creek, 41–54, 73.

  28. Wert, From Winchester to Cedar Creek, 73–74.

  29. Wert, From Winchester to Cedar Creek, 47–70, 74, 80–94.

  30. Wert, From Winchester to Cedar Creek, 77–78; OR, Series 1, Vol. 43, Part 1: 456.

  31. OR, Series 1, Vol. 43, Part 1: 456.

  32. Wert, From Winchester to Cedar Creek, 47–70, 74, 80–94; OR, Series 1, Vol. 43, Part 1: 456–57.

  33. OR, Series 1, Vol. 43, Part 1: 456–57; “Recollections of General Custer at Winchester, Sept. 19, 1864,” in W. C. King and W. P. Derby, eds., Camp-Fire Sketches and Battle-Field Echoes (Springfield, Mass.: King, Richardson and Co., 1888), 77.

  34. Wert, 180–83; Urwin, 178–88; Wert, From Winchester to Cedar Creek, 95–97, 103, 106; OR, Series 1, Vol. 43, Part 1: 445, 458.

  35. Wert, From Winchester to Cedar Creek, 144; Edward G. Longacre, Lincoln’s Cavalrymen: A History of the Mounted Forces of the Army of the Potomac (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2000), 307–09; Merington, 122; Special Orders No. 42, September 26, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH; McPherson, 777; Robert E. L. Krick, “A Stampeede [sic] of Stampeeds [sic]: The Confederate Disaster at Fisher’s Hill,” in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 161–99; William J. Miller, “Never Has There Been a More Complete Victory: The Cavalry Engagement at Tom’s Brook, October 9, 1864,” in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 134–60, esp. 140–41; James H. Kidd to Father, October 21, 1864, James H. Kidd Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

  36. Edward G. Longacre, Custer and His Wolverines: The Michigan Cavalry Brigade, 1861–1865 (Conshohocken, Pa.: Combined Publishing, 1997), 251; Merington, 119–20; Wert, 186–87; GAC to James H. Kidd, October 3, 1864, James H. Kidd Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

  37. Wert, From Winchester to Cedar Creek, 144.

  38. Wert, 188–89; Wert, From Winchester to Cedar Creek, 144–45; William G. Thomas, “Nothing Ought to Astonish Us: Confederate Civilians in the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign,” in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 222–56; OR, Series 1, Vol. 43, Part 1: 55–56. On the violence in Missouri, see Stiles, Jesse James, 73–143. Mark Grimsley emphasizes the term “hard war” over “total war,” noting that space must be preserved for the great difference between the Civil War and the mobilization and mass killing of civilians seen in twentieth-century world wars. He stresses the limits on the destruction, but also shows how emancipation transformed the Civil War, and was the “touchstone of hard war.” See Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 120–41, 171–225.

  39. Miller, “Never Has There Been a More Complete Victory,” 135; Millard Bushong and Dean Bushong, Fightin’ Tom Rosser, C.S.A. (Shippensburg, PA: Beidel Printing House, 1983), 111–14.

  40. Miller, “Never Has There Been a More Complete Victory,” 139–41; PSH, Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992 [orig. pub. 1888]), 310–11.

  41. Miller, “Never Has There Been a More Complete Victory,” 139–41; Wert, 190–91; OR, Series 1, Vol. 43, Part 1: 520–22.

  42. Miller, “Never Has There Been a More Complete Victory,” 139–41; Wert, 190–91; OR, Series 1, Vol. 43, Part 1: 520–22, 527–28; Whittaker, 258.

  43. Miller, “Never Has There Been a More Complete Victory,” 139–41; Wert, 190–91; OR, Series 1, Vol. 43, Part 1: 520–22, 527–28; Merington, 122. Making fun of Rosser as the �
��Savior of the Valley” was a popular sport after Tom’s Brook, indulged in by Sheridan and James H. Kidd, among others. See James H. Kidd to Father, October 21, 1864, James H. Kidd Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

  44. OR, Series 1, Vol. 43, Part 1: 522–28; EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 40–44.

  45. Harper’s Weekly, November 5 and 11, 1864; Wert, 193–97; OR, Series 1, Vol. 43, Part 1: 522–28; William W. Bergen, “The Other Hero of Cedar Creek: The ‘Not Especially Ambitious’ Horatio G. Wright,” in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 85–133; Gary W. Gallagher, Stephen Dodson Ramseur: Lee’s Gallant General (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 164–66.

  46. W. H. Seward to General Stevenson, October 22, 1864, Personnel Files, CRM; New York Times, October 27, 1864; Boston Herald, October 25, 1864; Harper’s Weekly, November 12, 1864; Merington, 125–26; Leckie, 59–60. GAC was the commander of only about half of the enlisted men taking part in the ceremony.

  47. Merington, 127–28.

  48. New York Times, October 27, 1864.

  49. Special Orders No. 340, October 10, 1864, and No. 132, October 23, 1864, GAC Correspondence, LBH; GAC to James H. Kidd, October 3, 1864, James H. Kidd Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.; Carl F. Day, Tom Custer: Ride to Glory (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 47.

  50. GAC to Samuel Dreck, December 2, 1864, Personnel Files, CRM; GAC to Judge Bacon, November 20, 1864, EBC to Parents, Folder 2, Box 4, MMP, NYPL; Merington, 129; Wert, 199.

  51. Margaret Custer to GAC and EBC, December 2, 1864, Folder 2, Box 2, LAFCC.

  52. EBC to Parents, November 20, 1864, and December 4, 1864 (typescript), Folder 2, Box 4, MMP.

  53. Diary of Corporal William E. Walsh, Special and Archival Collections, Providence College.