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

by Stiles, T. J.

  54. GAC to William Russell Jr., February 13, 1865, GAC to F. C. Newhall, February 20, 1865, GAC to William Rupell Jr., February 24, 1865, L. Hubert to A. B. Nettleton, February 24, 1865, GAC to A. C. M. Pennington, February 24, 1865, 3rd Cavalry Division, Cavalry Corps, Army of the Potomac, Entry 1593: Letters Sent August 1863–June 1865, 87–97, RG 393, Part 2, No. 71, NA; A. B. Dyer to GAC, January 4, 1865, GAC Correspondence, LBH; Wert, 199–204.

  55. EBC to Parents, November 20, 1864, and December 4, 1864 (typescript), Folder 2, Box 4, MMP, NYPL; Nettie Humphrey to EBC, December 31, 1864, January 8, 1865, Folder 8, Box 2, LAFCC; Merington, 131–36; Wert, 199–204.

  56. DSB to GAC, February 8, 1865, DSB to Sister, February 17, 1865, Folder 1, Box 1, LAFCC; Wert, 203–04.

  57. EHC to GAC, February 20, 1865, Folder 20, Box 1, LAFCC.

  58. DSB to Sister, February 17, 1865, Folder 1, Box 1, LAFCC.

  59. GAC to Zachariah Chandler, February 22, 1865, Zachariah Chandler Papers, LOC; Wert, 204–05.

  60. New York Herald in Chicago Tribune, March 14, 1865; New York Times, March 26, 1865; Edward G. Longacre, Lincoln’s Cavalrymen: A History of the Mounted Forces of the Army of the Potomac, 1861–1865 (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2000), 318–19; Wert, 205–10; Urwin, 226–30.

  61. GAC to Zachariah Chandler, March 19, 1865, Zachariah Chandler Papers, LOC; Wert, 213. Bingham wrote to Stanton, urging GAC’s appointment to the rank of brigadier general in the Regular Army; John A. Bingham to Edwin Stanton, April 3, 1865, Civil War Letters Received, GAC Correspondence, LBH, and Personnel Files, CRM.

  62. GAC to EBC, March 30, 1865, Folder 3, Box 4, MMP.

  63. McPherson, 563–65. For more than a generation, historical scholarship has stressed the agency of enslaved African Americans. See, for example, Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 1–127, and Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 77–123. On the centrality of slavery to the existence of the Confederate States of America, see for example Section 9 of Article 1 of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America.

  64. Mark Grimsley and Brooks D. Simpson, “Introduction,” and Mark Grimsley, “Learning to Say ‘Enough’: Southern Generals and the Final Weeks of the Confederacy,” in Mark Grimsley and Brooks D. Simpson, eds., The Collapse of the Confederacy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 1–12, 40–79.

  65. GAC to EBC, March 30 and 31, 1865, Folder 3, Box 4, MMP; OR, Series 1, Vol. 46, Part 1: 1129–31; Urwin, 237.

  66. OR, Series 1, Vol. 46, Part 1: 1129–31; Longacre, Lincoln’s Cavalrymen, 327–28; Urwin, 239–43; Wert, 216–19; Carl F. Day, Tom Custer: Ride to Glory (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 60–65; McPherson, 844–46.

  67. McPherson, 846.

  68. Urwin, 244; Wert, 218–20; Day, 67–71; OR, Series 1, Vol. 46, Part 1: 1131–32.

  69. Whittaker, 301–04; Wert, 244–50; 220–21; Day, 71–77; McPherson, 848; OR, Series 1, Vol. 46, Part 1: 1132.

  70. Wert, 222–23; Whittaker, 306; Urwin, 249–53. For an account of executions of two men for “insulting women,” see entry for October 26, 1864, Diary of Corporal William E. Walsh, Special and Archival Collections, Providence College.

  71. James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America (Philadelphia, Pa.: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1908), 627; Wert, 224–25.

  72. McPherson, 849.

  73. GAC to Sister, April 21, 1865, typescript copy, GAC Papers, USMA.

  74. GAC to EBC, April 11, 1865, EBC Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

  75. GAC to ECB, April 10, 1865, Folder 3, Box 4, MMP; Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, 130–32; Wert, 225–26; GAC to the Soldiers of the Third Cavalry Division, April 9, 1865, CRM.

  76. Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, 130–32; Wert, 225–26; PHS to EBC, April 10, 1865, Civil War Letters Received, GAC Correspondence, LBH; HR 338, CRM; S. F. Chalfin to GAC, May 19, 1865, GAC Correspondence, LBH, states that the appointment date was April 3, 1865.

  77. The standard estimate for the number of dead in the Civil War has long stood at around 620,000. However a new scholarly consensus of 752,000 to 851,000 has emerged, thanks to J. David Hacker, “A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead,” Civil War History 57, no. 4 (December 2011): 307–48.

  PART II

  Nine: The Executioner

  1. Affidavit of Junius Garland, May 23, 1865, Affidavit of Richard V. Gaines, May 23, 1865, GAC Papers, Receipt, July 1, 1865, Civil War Letters Received, GAC Correspondence, and EBC Notes, EBC Literary Manuscripts and Notes, LBH.

  2. Affidavit of C. W. P. Brock, May 23, 1865, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  3. John Keegan, The Mask of Command (New York: Penguin, 1988 [orig. pub. 1987]), 233.

  4. Rebecca Richmond to Father, March 24, 1865, Civil War Letters Received, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  5. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 40–44; GAC to Sister, April 21, 1865, typescript copy, GAC Papers, USMA; IPC to GAC, May 16, 1865, Folder 3, Box 1, LAFCC; Baltimore Sun, May 25, 1865.

  6. GAC to Sister, April 21, 1865, typescript copy, GAC Papers, USMA; DSB to Sister, May 20, 1865, Folder 1, Box 1, LAFCC.

  7. DSB to Sister, May 20, 1865, Folder 1, Box 1, LAFCC; GAC to Jacob Greene, Washington, D.C., n.d., Jacob Greene Papers, U.S. Army Military History Institute; Whittaker, 310–11; Harper’s Weekly, June 10, 1865.

  8. Chicago Tribune, May 24, 1865; Harper’s Weekly, June 10, 1865; New York Evangelist, May 25, 1865; New York Tribune, May 24, 1865; Harrisburg Weekly Patriot and Union, June 8, 1865.

  9. PHS to GAC, May 7 and 17, June 17, 1865, GAC Correspondence, LBH; OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2: 743; New York Tribune, May 25, 1865; Baltimore Sun, May 25, 1865; McPherson, 668.

  10. New York Tribune, June 1, 1865.

  11. Baltimore Sun, May 25, 1865; Monroe Commercial, June 1, 1865.

  12. Monroe Commercial, June 1, 1865; Marie Miller to GAC, n.d., Folder 21, Box 1, LFCC; EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 40–44, 76. See also Nina Silber, Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 215, 231–32.

  13. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 36–38.

  14. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 50–66; New York Tribune, June 30, 1865.

  15. GAC to Brother & Sister, June 23, 1865, typescript copy, GAC Papers, USMA; OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2: 743, 917 and Vol. 53: 608.

  16. GAC to Brother & Sister, June 23, 1865, typescript copy, GAC Papers, USMA; EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 67–71; Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indiana Cavalry Volunteers (LaPorte, Ind.: Herald Company, 1876), 162; John F. Marszalek, Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order (New York: Free Press, 1993), 123–49.

  17. Merington, 168.

  18. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 76–80; Cogley, 164. On racial stereotypes and Democratic political culture, pertinent to further developments in this chapter, see Jean H. Baker, Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998), 212–58.

  19. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 76, 106–10; Foner, 77–81, 106–10 (quote on 109); Baker, 177–81; George Frederickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1987 [orig. pub. 1971]), 63.

  20. Washington Constitutional Union, July 19, 1865.

  21. Foner, 175–93, 199–205.

  22. It should be noted that GAC’s orders were both controversial and also part of a continuum of military action. On the controversy, see, for example, San Francisco Bulletin, August 24, 1865. General Gordon Granger, who occupied Galveston and declared slaves in Texas free on June 19, 1865 (thereafter celebrated as “Juneteenth”), also warned against “idleness,” as did Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard, the commissioner of the Free
dmen’s Bureau. Other officers, influenced by white planters, tried to suppress what they saw as “vagrancy.” Perhaps most important, from the standpoint of precedent and law, was Gen. Nathaniel Banks’s General Orders No. 23, issued in Louisiana. Banks eliminated flogging, allotted plots to allow black families to raise food for themselves, established schools and medical care, and limited work to a ten-hour day; but he also required able-bodied men to take labor contracts, prohibited them from leaving their workplaces, and seized the unemployed as vagrants and put them to work on public works. See William L. Richter, Overreached on All Sides: The Freedmen’s Bureau Administrators in Texas, 1865–1868 (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 1991), 19–27; William L. Richter, The Army in Texas During Reconstruction: 1865–1870 (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 1987), 14–16.

  23. Affidavit of Richard V. Gaines, Affidavit of Junius Garland, Affidavit of C. W. P. Brock, all May 23, 1865, GAC Correspondence, LBH; Washington Star in New York Herald, June 30, 1865.

  24. New York Times, June 25, 1865; Receipt, July 1, 1865, GAC Correspondence, LBH; GAC to DSB, fragment, c. July 1865, EBC Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

  25. Pedigree of Don Juan, dated April 12, 1866, and Affidavit of GAC, June 19, 1866, GAC Correspondence, LBH.

  26. PHS to GAC, October 10, 1865, PHS to Headquarters, Armies of the United States, July 8, 1865, Letters Received, GAC Correspondence, LBH; OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2: 1068.

  27. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (New York: Da Capo Press, 1982 [orig. pub. 1885]), 186.

  28. John Keegan, The Mask of Command (New York: Viking, 1987), 194.

  29. John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, vol. 15 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), 259n; OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2: 917, 1068 and Vol. 53: 608; Charles H. Lothrop, A History of the First Regiment Iowa Cavalry (Lyons, Iowa: Beers and Eaton, 1890), 217.

  30. John M. Carroll, Custer in Texas: An Interrupted Narrative (New York: Sol Lewis, 1975), 32; Cogley, 164; Lothrop, 216; entry 3099: Special Orders Issued, June 1865–January 1866, Vol. 17/48 DTex, pp. 22–25, 34, No. 198: 2nd Cavalry Division, Department of Texas, RG 393, Part 2.

  31. OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2: 1068; Lothrop, 217–18, 226–30; Henry L. Morrill to Henry Albers, July 19, 1865, Folder 2, Box 1, Henry Leighton Morrill Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

  32. ECB to Judge Bacon & Wife, August 6, 1865, GAC to Judge & Mrs. Bacon, October 5, 1865, Folder 3, Box 4, MMP; EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 81–89, 119; Cogley, 165.

  33. Entry 3099: Special Orders Issued, June 1865–January 1866, Vol. 17/48 Department of Texas, pp. 44–45, No. 198, 2nd Cavalry Division, Department of Texas, RG 393, Part 2, NA; Cogley, 164; Carroll, 31.

  34. Lothrop, 218–19; Richter, The Army in Texas, 13–16.

  35. Lothrop, 218–19.

  36. Lothrop, 222; Henry L. Morrill to Henry Albers, June 27, 1865, Folder 2, Box 1, Henry Leighton Morrill Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

  37. Entry 3099: Special Orders Issued, June 1865–January 1866, Vol. 17/48 Department of Texas, pp. 68–70, No. 198, 2nd Cavalry Division, Department of Texas, RG 393, Part 2, NA.

  38. Carroll, 33, 50–51; Cogley, 165–66; Lothrop, 223–24; Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, vol. 15: 431–32n; Wert, 233–34. As noted by the 2nd Wisconsin historian, quoted in Carroll, Lancaster was released after a few months and long outlived GAC.

  39. Inspector General, Department of the Army, “The Mikolashek Report: Detainee Operations Inspection, July 21, 2004,” in Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel, eds., The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 630–907.

  40. Henry L. Morrill to Henry Albers, August 26, 1865, Folder 2, Box 1, Henry Leighton Morrill Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; Lothrop, 290.

  41. Lothrop, 290; EBC to her Aunt, Eliza Sabin, September 3, 1865, Folder 3, Box 4, MMP; General Orders No. 15, August 7, 1865, Charles H. Lothrop Papers, State Historical Society of Iowa; Leckie, 72–76; EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 119–30.

  42. PHS to GAC, August 15, 1865, GAC Correspondence, LBH; Provost Marshal Lee to George B. Davidson, September 11, 1865, Charles H. Lothrop Papers, State Historical Society of Iowa; Wert, 235; entry 3099: Special Orders Issued, June 1865–January 1866, Vol. 17/48 Department of Texas, pp. 36–37, and Old Book 48: 39, 43, No. 198, 2nd Cavalry Division, Department of Texas, RG 393, Part 2, NA. For commentary on the civilian whipping, see Henry L. Morrill to Henry Albers, September 3, 1865, Folder 1, Box 3, Henry Leighton Morrill Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

  43. GAC’s reply is typical of his pique in dealing with these resignation attempts. Entry 3099: Special Orders Issued, June 1865–January 1866, Vol. 17/48 Department of Texas, pp. 38–39, 48–49, No. 198, 2nd Cavalry Division, Department of Texas, RG 393, Part 2, NA.

  44. Lothrop, 292, 297; EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 100–04.

  45. Henry L. Morrill to Henry Albers, September 10 and November 6, 1865, Folder 2, Box 1, Henry Leighton Morrill Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; entries for September 1, October 15 and 19, 1865, Vol. 154, Register of Letters Received, Secretary of War, Roll 125, Microfilm Publication M22, NA; Simon 15: 431, 431–32n; Washington Constitutional Union, March 22, 1866; Wert, 235.

  46. Simon 15: 431, 431–32n; Des Moines State Register, July 24, 1868.

  47. Henry L. Morrill to Henry Albers, December 1, 1865, Folder 2, Box 1, Henry Leighton Morrill Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. Contrast GAC’s difficulties with the success of Wesley Merritt on a longer march, Richter, Army in Texas, 18–19. See also New York Times, March 5, 1866.

  48. Des Moines State Register, July 24, 1868.

  49. M. P. Hanson, Surgeon, 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry, to E. M. Gregory, Superintendent of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands, October 12, 1865, Letters Received, Unregistered, 1865–66, Roll 17, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Texas, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869, Microfilm Publication M821, NA.

  50. McPherson, 174–76, 852.

  51. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 160–70, 206–08.

  52. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 78–81, 166–68, 179–208, 230–31.

  53. Richter, The Army in Texas, 33; Richter, Overreached, 11.

  54. Provisional Governor A. J. Hamilton of Texas to Major General H. G. Wright, September 27, 1865, Letters Received, Unregistered, 1865–66, Roll 17, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Texas, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869, Microfilm Publication M821, NA; Carl H. Moneyhon, Texas After the Civil War: The Struggle of Reconstruction (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 5–6, 21–37.

  55. Maj. General H. G. Wright to Governor A. J. Hamilton, October 10, 1865, Letters Sent by the Department of Texas, the District of Texas, and the 5th Military District, Roll 1, Microfilm Publication M1165, NA.

  56. M. P. Hanson, Surgeon, 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry, to E. M. Gregory, Superintendent of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands, October 12, 1865, Letters Received, Unregistered, 1865–66, Roll 17, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Texas, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869, Microfilm Publication M821, NA.

  57. Benjamin L. Brisbane to Thomas W. Conway, September 14, 1865, Letters Received, Unregistered, 1865–66, Roll 17, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Texas, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869, Microfilm Publication M821, NA.

  58. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 245–46, 258.

  59. EBC to Rebecca Richmond, November 17, 1865, EBC Correspondence, LBH; EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 158–64, 179–82, 216–25, 266.

  60. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 232–36.

  61. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 179–208; EBC to Rebecca Richmond, June 29,
1865, EBC Correspondence, PHS to GAC, October 10, 1865, GAC Correspondence, LBH; GAC to Brother & Sister, October 15, 1865, typescript copy, GAC Papers, USMA.

  62. GAC to Daniel and Rhoda Bacon, October 5, 1865, Folder 3, Box 4, MMP.

  63. GAC to Daniel and Rhoda Bacon, October 5, 1865, Folder 3, Box 4, MMP; EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 80–81; GAC to Brother & Sister, October 15, 1865, typescript copy, GAC Papers, USMA; Baker, 177–81, 212–58; Frederickson, 71–96, 130–97.

  64. George C. Aston [?] to E. M. Gregory, December 16, 1865, Letters Received, Unregistered, 1865–66, Roll 17, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Texas, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869, Microfilm Publication M821, NA. See also Richter, Overreached, 3–75.

  65. New York Times, March 5, 1866; Special Orders Nos. 7 and 8, Vol. 1, pp. 108–109, Entry 4794: Special Orders Issued, August 1865 to August 1868, Department of Texas and 5th Military District, RG 393, Part 1; GAC to Jacob Greene, January 8, 1866 (three letters of same date), GAC to Jacob Greene, n.d., Jacob Greene Papers, U.S. Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pa.: Richter, Army in Texas, 25–28, Overreached, 40. See also Major General H. G. Wright to GAC, January 15, 1866, and Regimental Returns, January 9, 1866, Letters Sent by the Department of Texas, the District of Texas, and the 5th Military District, Roll 1, Microfilm Publication M1165, NA.

  66. Major General H. G. Wright to Maj. George Lee, January 5, 1866, and Major General H. G. Wright to GAC, January 11, 1866, Letters Sent by the Department of Texas, the District of Texas, and the 5th Military District, Roll 1, Microfilm Publication M1165, NA; Kenneth W. Howell, “Introduction: The Elusive Story of Violence in Reconstruction Texas, 1865–1874,” 1–33, and James M. Smallwood, “When the Klan Rode: Terrorism in Reconstruction Texas,” 214–42, in Kenneth W. Howell, ed., Still the Arena of Violence: Violence and Turmoil in Reconstruction Texas, 1865–1874 (Denton, Tex.: University of North Texas Press, 2012).

  67. GAC to Zachariah Chandler, January 5, 1866, Thomas W. Custer to Edward M. Stanton, December 29, 1865, PHS and GAC, Endorsement of Application for appointment of Thomas W. Custer as lieutenant in the U.S. Army, January 9, 1864, GAC to Zachariah Chandler, January 24, 1866, Roll 2, Zachariah Chandler Papers, LOC.