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

by Stiles, T. J.

  68. GAC to Zachariah Chandler, January 8 and 14, 1866, Roll 2, Zachariah Chandler Papers, LOC.

  69. GAC to Sister, January 12, 1866, typescript copy, GAC Papers, USMA.

  70. C. H. Whittelsey to GAC, January 27, 1866, Letters Sent by the Department of Texas, the District of Texas, and the 5th Military District, Roll 1, Microfilm Publication M1165, NA; GAC to Jacob Greene, January 31, 1866, Jacob Greene Papers, U.S. Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pa.: New York, January 10, 1866; EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 266–68, 270–80. When the plans to muster out GAC were announced in the press, DSB intervened with Senator Chandler on his son-in-law’s behalf, without success. See Zachariah Chandler to DSB, January 17, 1866, and DSB to GAC, January 20, 1866, Folder 1, Box 1, LAFCC. It appears that GAC was initially uncertain of his muster-out, as he sent a telegram to headquarters asking for confirmation; see GAC to Horatio Wright, January 27, 1866, Personnel Files, CRM.

  Ten: The Politician

  1. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 273–81.

  2. GAC to EBC, April 10, 1867, in Tenting on the Plains, 552–53.

  3. HR 30, Part 4: 72, 1st Session, 39th Congress.

  4. See, for example, GAC to Zachariah Chandler, January 8, 1866, Roll 2, Zachariah Chandler Papers, LOC, and Eric L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 145.

  5. Foner, 216–19; Henry L. Morrill to Henry Albers, October 9, 1865, Folder 3, Box 1, Henry Leighton Morrill Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

  6. Foner, 216–27, 239–40.

  7. Foner, 243–49.

  8. HR 30, Part 4: 72–78, 1st Session, 39th Congress; New York Times, April 1, 1866. For historians’ agreement with GAC’s assessment, see Kenneth W. Howell, “Introduction: The Elusive Story of Violence in Reconstruction Texas, 1865–1874,” 1–33, James M. Smallwood, “When the Klan Rode: Terrorism in Reconstruction Texas,” 214–42, and John Gorman, “Reconstruction Violence in the Lower Brazos River Valley,” 387–420, in Kenneth W. Howell, ed., Still the Arena of Civil War: Violence and Turmoil in Reconstruction Texas, 1865–1874 (Denton, Tex.: University of North Texas Press, 2012). On January 25, 1866, while still in Texas, GAC wrote an open letter to the National Republican to denounce “the statements and doctrines of the ex(?)-rebels, whose hostility and opposition to the Government is now as strongly and openly manifested as at any time during the Rebellion!” See Philadelphia Inquirer, March 1, 1866.

  9. Baltimore Sun, March 22, 1866; Independent, March 29, 1866; New York Times, April 1, 1866; Foner, 246–47.

  10. See Joshua Paddison, “Race, Religion, and Naturalization: How the West Shaped Citizenship Debates in the Reconstruction Congress,” in Adam Arenson and Andrew R. Graybill, eds., Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 181–201.

  11. Foner, 242–51.

  12. Merington, 177–81.

  13. Merington, 178–79.

  14. Merington, 180; Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 672; Stiles, First Tycoon, 415. I am not the first to note GAC’s attraction to New York, nor his connections to the conservative Democratic financiers associated with Belmont and others. See in particular Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994 [orig. pub. 1985]), 373–76, 389–91, 405–06.

  15. Merington, 180–82; Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, 147–49; Leckie, 82–85; Burrows and Wallace, 955; Harper’s Weekly, April 14, 1866. See also GAC to EBC, April 17, 1866, Folder 4, Box 4, MMP.

  16. Merington, 181; Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin, 39; Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, 147–49.

  17. GAC to EBC, April 17, 1866, Folder 4, Box 4, MMP; Pedigree of Don Juan, dated April 12, 1866, and Affidavit of GAC, June 19, 1866, LBH; USG to F. M. Romero, May 16, 1866, USG Papers, USMA; Stiles, First Tycoon, 194, 484, 504.

  18. Leckie, 85.

  19. DSB to GAC, January 20th, 1866, Folder 1, Box 1, LAFCC; Merington, 182–84; Leckie, 85–86.

  20. Merington, 182–84; Leckie, 86; Roy Morris Jr., Sheridan: The Life and Wars of General Phil Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1993 [orig. pub. 1992]), 271–72.

  21. Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin, 39; Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1866; Turf, Field and Farm, August 11, 1866. Don Juan is buried in Tecumseh, Michigan, where it was lodged at a stud farm. A boulder and plaque marks the site.

  22. Coffman, 216–19; GAC to Andrew Johnson, August 13, 1866, Paul A. Bergeron, ed., The Papers of Andrew Johnson, vol. 11 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 68; McPherson, 769; Paul A. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 137.

  23. John Y. Simon, ed., Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, vol. 16 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), 274–75, 75–77n.

  24. Simon 16: 276–77n; GAC to Andrew Johnson, August 13, 1866, Bergeron 11: 68.

  25. Stiles, Jesse James, 175–77; Morris, 272–74; Foner, 261–65.

  26. Bingham quoted in New York Times, March 1, 1866; Akhil Reed Amar, America’s Constitution: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2005), 385–88, and The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008); Foner, 267–68.

  27. New York Times, August 22, 1866.

  28. EBC to Rebecca Richmond, August 29, 1866, EBC Correspondence, LBH; Foner, 264–65.

  29. Merington, 303; Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin, 39; EBC to Rebecca Richmond, August 29, 1866, EBC Correspondence, LBH. For more on the intensity of the politics of this year, see Patrick W. Riddleberger, 1866: The Critical Year Revisited (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979), and Stiles, Jesse James, 175–87.

  30. Philadelphia Wigwam for the Johnson Convention, lithograph, 1866, Library Company of Philadelphia; New York Times, August 12, 13, 17, 18, 1866; Albert Castel, The Presidency of Andrew Johnson (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1979), 85–86.

  31. Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1866.

  32. Chicago Tribune, August 15, 26, 1866; New York Times, August 22, 1866.

  33. New York Times, August 22, 1866; New York Tribune, August 25, 1866; “Custer’s Reply to the Atrocious Attempts of the Corrupt Insane Radical Press to Pervert His Testimony, &c.,” Cleveland Plain Dealer (Extra), 1866, GAC Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

  34. New York Times, August 17, 1866.

  35. Stiles, First Tycoon, 429; Castel, 89–90; Paul H. Bergeron, Andrew Johnson’s Civil War and Reconstruction (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2011), 126–29.

  36. Jean Edward Smith, Grant (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 426; McFeely, 249–52.

  37. Garry Boulard, The Swing Around the Circle: Andrew Johnson and the Train Ride That Destroyed a Presidency (Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, 2008), 75–88, 95–103; Castel, 89–92; Stiles, Jesse James, 175–77. See also Cincinnati Inquirer, September 14, 1866, New Hampshire Sentinel, September 20, 1866.

  38. Merington, 188–89.

  39. Castel, 90–92; Foner, 264–66.

  40. Grant quoted in McFeely, 252; Chicago Tribune, September 14, 1866; Cincinnati Inquirer, September 19, 1866.

  41. Cincinnati Inquirer, September 14, 1866.

  42. Detroit Free Press, in New York Times, September 16, 1866.

  43. Chicago Tribune, September 18, 19, 21, 1866; New York Times, September 19, 1866.

  44. Boston Advertiser in New Orleans Times, October 15, 1866.

  45. Monroe Commercial, September 20, 1866.

  46. Ulysses S. Grant to PHS, December 19, 1865, Box 39, PHS Papers, LOC.

  47. Simon 16: 277n; Cleveland Herald in Monroe Commercial, September 27, 1866. I have corrected the spelling of “Riley” in Grant’s letter.

  48. EBC to Rebecca Richmond, August 29, 1867, EBC Correspondence, LBH.

  49. Chicago Tribune, October 6, 7, 30, November 14, 16, 1866; New Y
ork Times, October 8, 1866; Monroe Commercial, October 11, November 1, 1866; Flake’s Bulletin, November 6, 1866; J. Logan Chipman to Andrew Johnson, October 5, 1866, Bergeron 11: 308.

  50. GAC to Jacob Howard, December 26, 1866, in Hamilton Gay Howard, Civil-War Echoes: Character Sketches and State Secrets (Washington, D.C.: Howard Publishing, 1907), 315–18.

  Eleven: The Fallen

  1. Lawrence A. Frost, The Court-Martial of General George Armstrong Custer (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 96–104; Arthur Brigham Carpenter to Mother, February 10, 1867, Arthur Brigham Carpenter Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; Benjamin Grierson to Alice Grierson, n.d. [September 1867], Benjamin Henry Grierson Papers, Newberry Library. For more on “11worth,” see De B. Randolph Keim, Sheridan’s Troopers on the Border: A Winter Campaign on the Plains (Philadelphia, Pa.: David McKay, 1885), 9–11. I have consulted the records of these proceedings in the National Archives; see the 1867 court-martial file in CRM, and General Court-Martial of Gen. George Armstrong Custer, 1867, Microfilm Publication T-1103. I will cite Frost’s published transcription as a convenience to the reader and researcher, but each quotation of the proceedings for which I cite Frost’s book may also be found verbatim in these National Archives records.

  2. Entry 558, Cullum 1: 347-48; Photograph of William Hoffman, Commissary General of Prisoners, 1865, Call Number LC-B817-7288, and photograph of Benjamin H. Grierson, Call Number LC-USZC4-7991, Prints and Photographs Division, LOC; Benjamin Grierson to Alice Grierson, n.d. [September 1867], Benjamin Henry Grierson Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago, Ill.; William L. Richter, The Army in Texas During Reconstruction: 1865–1870 (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 1987), 19; Frost, Court-Martial, 96–104.

  3. GAC to?, September 26, 1867, Folder 5, Box 4, MMP; Frost, Court-Martial, 99–104.

  4. Frost, Court-Martial, 92; entry 1945, Cullum 2, 556; Merington, 211. For evidence of GAC’s involvement in his defense, see, for example, GAC to unknown, September 26, 1867, Folder 5, Box 4, MMP, and I. P. Christiancy to GAC, October 13, 1867, Folder 3, Box 1, LAFCC.

  5. Frost, Court-Martial, 99–104.

  6. E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1927), 47, 63.

  7. Lawrence Barrett, “Personal Recollections of General Custer,” in Whittaker, 629–43.

  8. Quoted in Leckie, 85.

  9. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 328–33, 336–37; Leckie, 89; Anna Darrah to EBC, n.d., Anna Darrah to EBC, October 1864, Folder 9, Box 2, LAFCC.

  10. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 336–37.

  11. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 339–40; EBC to Rebecca Richmond, December 6, 1866, EBC Correspondence, LBH. Barker helped GAC with the transportation of his horses; see GAC to C. F. Hatch, October 1, 1866, Folder 2, GAC Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

  12. EBC to Rebecca Richmond, December 6, 1866, EBC Correspondence, LBH; EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 341–46; Report of the Treasurer of the Missouri Southern Relief Association (Missouri History Library and Museum: St. Louis, Mo., 1866); Stiles, Jesse James, 224; Aaron Astor, Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation, and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Missouri (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012), 204.

  13. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 343–46; Elwyn A. Barron, Lawrence Barrett: A Professional Sketch (Chicago: Knight and Leonard, 1889), frontis, 28–30; Barrett, “Personal Recollections of General Custer,” in Whittaker, 629–43; New York Times, March 21, 22, 1891.

  14. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 343–46; Barrett, “Personal Recollections of General Custer”; EBC to Rebecca Richmond, December 6, 1866, EBC Correspondence, LBH; New York Times, March 21, 22, 1891.

  15. EBC, Tenting on the Plains, 371; Barrett, “Personal Recollections of General Custer.”

  16. Leo Tolstoy, “Sebastopol in August 1855,” in The Sebastopol Sketches, trans. David McDuff (New York: Penguin, 1986), 152–53.

  17. EBC to Rebecca Richmond, December 6, 1866, EBC Correspondence, LBH; Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin, 44–45; Ron Field, Forts of the American Frontier, 1820–91: Central and Northern Plains (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2005), 22; Elliott West, The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 120, 273.

  18. Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin, 44–47; Wert, 244–49; Coffman, 255, 328–39, 350–52; William Y. Chalfant, Hancock’s War: Conflict on the Southern Plains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 84.

  19. Robert M. Utley, ed., Life in Custer’s Cavalry: Diaries and Letters of Albert and Jennie Barnitz, 1867–1868 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987 [orig. pub. 1977]), 10; Wert, 247–48; Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin, 44–47; entry 313, Cullum 2: 168–69; photograph of Alfred Gibbs, reproduction number LC-DIG-cwpb-05859, Prints and Photographs Division, LOC.

  20. The 1866 act restructuring and expanding the Regular Army required that all lieutenants in the newly formed regiments come from the ranks of Civil War volunteers, and that all ranks above first lieutenant be staffed with an equal number of West Point graduates and volunteers; Paul Andrew Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999 [orig. pub. 1985]), 137; John M. Carroll, They Rode with Custer: A Biographical Directory of the Men That Rode with General George A. Custer, Revised and Enlarged (Mattituck, N.Y.: J. M. Carroll and Co., 1993), 260–61; Coffman, 222–23.

  21. Frederick Benteen to Frank Blair Jr., September 13, 1866, Frederick Benteen to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, March 14, 1867, Frederick Benteen to Tom Nuell, July 9, 1867, James H. Wilson to Adjutant General, U.S. Army, June 14, 1867, Frederick Benteen Reference Microfilm, NA; Charles K. Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets: The Army Career of Frederick William Benteen, 1834–1898 (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1985), 11, 129–30.

  22. Utley, ed., Life, 15; Wert, 246.

  23. Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin, 44–45; entry 976, Cullum 1: 566–67. On Weir’s administrative role in the District of the Upper Arkansas, see, for example, GAC to Thomas B. Weir, May 4, 1867, Special Files of Headquarters, Division of the Missouri, Relating to Military Operations and Administration, 1863–1865, Roll 7, Microfilm Publication M1495, NA.

  24. GAC passed his examination and a physical examination on December 5; W. Thomson to David Hunter, December 5, 1866, and David Hunter to Adjutant General, December 5, 1866, Personnel Files, CRM. See also Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin, 44; Chalfant, 84. EBC wrote from Fort Riley of GAC’s absence, as she remained behind; EBC to Rebecca Richmond, December 6, 1866, EBC Correspondence, LBH.

  25. Chalfant, 84. Professional examinations would not become routine in the U.S. Army until 1890, but had been instituted for this wave of veterans of the U.S. Volunteers who had been appointed to the Regular Army. An institutional impulse toward professionalization existed as early as the 1820s, but gained momentum in the three decades following the Civil War; see Coffman, 96–103, 269–81.

  26. New York Times, February 11, 1867, October 10, 1906; EBC to GAC, April 5, 1867, Tenting on the Plains, 440–42, 535–37; EBC to Rebecca Richmond, December 6, 1866, EBC Correspondence, LBH.

  27. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, February 1867; Joseph G. Rosa, They Called Him Wild Bill: The Life and Adventures of James Butler Hickok (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974), 104–07; Richard Maxwell Brown, No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 49–51; Wert, 253; Chalfant, 81–89, 175–76.

  28. Chalfant, 81–89; Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866–1891 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994 [orig. pub. 1973]), 13–14.

  29. W. J. D. Kennedy, ed., On the Plains with Custer and Hancock: The Journal of Isaac Coates, Army Surgeon (Boulder, Co.: Johnson Books, 1997), 46–49. I have consulted the original Coates journal—actually a detailed memoir—in the Western history collection of the Denver Public Library, but for ease of reference for those consulting these n
otes, I am referring to Kennedy’s published version, which I find contains very few transcription errors and includes helpful supplementary information.

  30. Arthur B. Carpenter to Mother, April 9, 1867, Arthur Brigham Carpenter Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; Utley, ed., Life, 28–30; GAC to EBC, March 28, April 3, 1867, GAC to EBC, April 3 1867, Tenting on the Plains, 516–19, 524; Kennedy, 49; Barnett, 132.

  31. GAC to EBC, March 30, April 10, 1867, Tenting on the Plains, 521–22, 552–53.

  32. GAC to EBC, April 8, 1867, Tenting on the Plains, 525–30.

  33. West, 273; Field, 23; Arthur B. Carpenter to Mother, April 9, 1867, Arthur Brigham Carpenter Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; Henry M. Stanley, My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895), 27; Kennedy, 55.

  34. GAC to EBC, April 8, 1867, Tenting on the Plains, 525–30.

  35. Stanley, 29–35; Utley, ed., Life, 44; Kennedy, 52–60; New York Tribune, April 24, 1867; Theodore Davis, “A Summer on the Plains,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (February 1868); Chalfant, 135–43.

  36. Utley, ed., Life, 31; GAC to EBC, April 14, 1867, Tenting on the Plains, 556–59; Chalfant, 147–53.

  37. Davis, “A Summer on the Plains”; Kennedy, 61–63; Chalfant, 147–55.

  38. GAC to EBC, April 14, 1867, Tenting on the Plains, 556–59.

  39. For an excellent overview and a stress on the disadvantages as well as advantages of the adoption of mounted nomadism, see Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures,” Journal of American History 90, no. 3 (December 2003): 833–62.

  40. Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008), esp. 23–29, 141–43 (to be referred to as “Hämäläinen”).

  41. West, 63–87. Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 65, emphasizes that the nomadic bison-hunting culture of the high-plains tribes, and the communal ethic it engendered, “was neither timeless nor universal.”