And so the grand plan for a justified war lurched into motion. The predatory Indians — who had not been very predatory at all during the past year — had been given their chance to become “civilized.”39 Their refusal of this offer had forced the army to take action.
IN THE MEANTIME, General Sheridan began to make plans for a quick winter strike at the hostiles, the majority of whom were reported to be near the mouth of the Little Missouri, a hundred miles from Fort Lincoln.40 The same strategy had been successful in 1868, when Custer had overwhelmed Black Kettle’s Cheyenne village and over the next several months had managed to help pacify the hostile Indians who remained on the southern plains.
In the earlier campaign, Custer had commanded one of three discrete columns attempting to converge on the hostiles from different directions. Sheridan’s overall plan for the current campaign was very similar. Colonel John Gibbon would lead a force eastward from Fort Ellis in western Montana Territory. Brigadier General George Crook would move north from Fort Fetterman in Wyoming. Custer and the Seventh Cavalry, augmented by a battalion of infantry and artillery, would march west from Fort Lincoln. The key was to strike hard and strike soon, before the spring, while the Lakotas and their horses were at less than battle strength and disposition. The different bands tended to winter separately, and a quick attack could also catch the Indian camps before they were reinforced by the many Lakotas who left the reservations to hunt with their nontreaty brethren during the summer.
Sheridan contacted his departmental commanders, Terry and Crook, for reports on the feasibility of a winter campaign. Crook, who had been at the White House meeting, replied from his headquarters in Omaha that he had been making secret preparations and was ready to commence operations immediately. The considerably less bellicose Terry was unenthusiastic. The Great Plains had been ravaged by severe snowstorms, and it would be several months before his snowbound Dakota posts would be ready to march out, much less tackle the considerable logistical challenge of supplying a large column weeks out from their supply base without the aid of steamboats or trains. (Neither mode of transport could operate during the winter.) But Sheridan was adamant about the importance of a winter strike and told Sherman that “unless [the Indians] are caught before early spring, they cannot be caught at all.”41 On February 8, he wired Terry and Crook that operations against the hostiles had been ordered. Sheridan believed the nontreaties to be fairly few in number and regarded their fighting prowess and inclination so cavalierly that he gave no orders for coordinated actions to Crook and Terry. “I will hurry up Crook,” he later wired Terry, “but you must rely on the ability of your own column for your best success. 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.”42
Only nine of the Seventh’s companies were within Terry’s jurisdiction; the remaining three — B, G, and K — were stationed with the Department of the Gulf on detached service. A day after Custer arrived in St. Paul, Terry asked Sheridan that the three troops be allowed to rejoin their regiment. Terry and Custer also requested recruits to fill out the thin ranks, the usual detail of Indian scouts to guide the column, and other necessities. By February 21, Terry was able to relate to Sheridan his strategy: “I think my only plan will be to give Custer a secure base well up on the Yellowstone from which he can operate, at which he can find supplies, and to which he can retire at any time the Indians gather in too great numbers for the small force he will have.”43 Several companies of infantry would accompany the Seventh to man the supply depots while Custer searched for the enemy, and steamers would freight supplies up the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. The Dakota column would leave Fort Lincoln on April 5.44
Custer also began to lay plans for press coverage, which was not unusual for a large-scale campaign. A few days after Terry’s wire to Sheridan, he wrote to his friend Whitelaw Reid, editor of the New York Tribune: “Thinking you would like to have the Tribune represented, I write confidentially to say that the most extensive preparations are being made for a combined military movement against the hostile Sioux that have been attempted since the war.” He went on to reveal the basic plan of three columns and concluded: “This I write for your personal information. The authorities have been laboring to keep all movements secret, but they will be made public perhaps by the hour this reaches you. If you send a special correspondent select some good man accustomed to roughing it.”45
The Northern Pacific’s regular operations west of St. Paul had been canceled until April due to the heavy snow, but the railroad — mindful of Custer’s assistance and promotion, among other reasons — outfitted a special train with three engines and two snowplows to transport Armstrong, Libbie, and several others to Bismarck (along with plenty of merchandise for the boomtown’s retailers). Also bound for Fort Lincoln was a contingent of artillerymen assigned to man a battery of Gatling guns to accompany the Dakota column.46
A raging blizzard hit the area on March 7, and at Crystal Springs, sixty-five miles short of Bismarck, huge snowdrifts stopped the train.47 On board was a forty-two-year-old telegrapher turned newspaperman by the name of Mark Kellogg, a widower whose two young daughters lived with his dead wife’s parents in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He was returning from a trip east — probably to visit his children — and was on his way to seek his fortune in the Black Hills, along with thousands of other desperate men, and possibly to renew his reporting for the Bismarck Tribune.48 He had had some financial troubles since his wife’s death in 1868, and he wanted very much to make enough money to educate and take care of his two girls.49
After a few days stuck in the stalled train, a pocket telegraph relay was found. Kellogg spliced into a nearby line and sent a message to Bismarck, prompting recently promoted Captain Tom Custer and a veteran stage driver to leave Fort Lincoln in a mule-drawn sleigh, pick up Armstrong and Libbie (and three of Custer’s hounds), and deliver them safely to the fort on March 12.50 The train and its passengers, including Kellogg, would not arrive until a week later after a thaw.
An enthused Custer set about preparing the regiment for its upcoming field operations. Supply logistics, troop drilling, target practice, the mustering of Indian scouts — there was much to do, and the bulk of the Seventh hadn’t even arrived yet from their scattered stations. But he had barely unpacked before a telegram from Washington arrived three days later. Custer’s presence was desired to testify before a committee investigating malfeasance by the office of Secretary of War William W. Belknap in regard to the appointment of traders at frontier forts. The proliferating scandals of President Grant’s administration were about to engulf Custer and seriously hinder his hope of leading the last great Indian campaign.
FIVE
Belknap’s Anaconda
It seemed to be [Grant’s] wish to make every creature connected with him by blood, marriage or friendship the sharer of his good fortune.
NEW YORK HERALD, JULY 7, 1876
The public’s respect and adoration for Ulysses S. Grant — a good-hearted, self-made man who seemed to personify the young American dream — had propelled him to two terms as President, and he was angling this centennial year for a third. The unpretentious General was a folk hero, almost a legend — the man who, especially after Lincoln’s death, had saved the Union.
But by this time, seven years into his administration, an embarrassment of scandals had soured the public on Grant’s presidency. Soon after his second inauguration, a steady stream of corruption involving Grant’s relatives, friends, and appointees had turned into an unprecedented deluge. By the spring of 1876, it seemed that every day brought a new revelation of high-level dishonesty. For example, on March 30, the New York Times ran five lead stories on its front page; four of them involved cases of national fraud.
Relief from this constant barrage of iniquities came from two sources. First, there was the distraction of the centennial. To celebrate its first hundred years, the country had decided to mount the Centennial Ex
hibition in Philadelphia, to be held for six months from May to November. The expo would occupy 450 acres, jam-packed with exhibits celebrating both America’s glorious past and its limitless future — a future symbolized by the gigantic Corliss engine, a forty-foot-high, steam-powered behemoth that powered 8,000 smaller machines. Many other inventions were featured, including an electric lamp, a typewriting machine, and a device that received little attention — Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone.1 Of the nation’s 46 million residents, 8 million would visit the Centennial (as it quickly became known) that summer, almost one out of every five Americans, and it made an unforgettable impression on virtually everyone who attended. “Nothing but seeing it with your own eyes can give you any conception of its magnitude,” wrote one visitor. “Everything that was grand, beautiful, useful and ludicrous is there, not only from our own beloved land, but also from every nation I ever heard of and some that I had not heard of.”2 The keynote speaker at the opening of this frenzy of self-congratulation was none other than the President of the United States. But Grant’s stock had fallen so low that his short address received more hisses than hurrahs.3
The second distraction came from the sad fact that Grant was hardly alone in his perfidy. In the postwar Gilded Age, money and its pursuit were all-important. The confluence of technology, opportunity, and greed created a wide-open era of unparalleled upheaval and advances in massive new industries on an unforeseen scale. The Civil War had started many avaricious men — speculators, contractors, agents — on the road to riches. After the war, when these industries grew more quickly than any attempts to regulate them, these unprincipled schemers brazenly set forth to corrupt men at the highest levels of business and government — and succeeded in quite a few instances. The Tweed Ring, the Gold Ring, the Indian Ring, the Navy Ring, the Custom-House Ring — there was even a Moth Ring, involving almost half a million dollars paid to a firm for a worthless moth repellent. And there were regional rings, such as the Land Grab Ring on the Pacific coast and the Warren County Ring in New Jersey.4
Unfortunately for Grant, when a few honest men and the watchdog press began to investigate, his administration — or at least his appointees at its highest levels — seemed to be an integral part of many of the worst offenses. On the surface, Grant appeared to have triumphed over his humble beginnings. But his distrust of those better educated and more refined than he caused him to surround himself with men of similar background, primarily ex-soldiers who had fought their way up as he had, without the aid of higher education or the luxury of higher culture. Indeed, upon ascending to the presidency, Grant rewarded many of his closest associates — men who had served him well during the recent conflict — and an inordinate number of relatives (forty-two) with government positions. Many of these men were easily influenced, and some of them possessed principles that were less than finely honed.
Abel Corbin, the President’s brother-in-law (one of three who caused Grant trouble and embarrassment),5 was a perfect example. He had given the unscrupulous financiers Jay Gould and Jim Fisk inside information, with which they conspired to corner the gold market in the summer of 1869. Grant’s decision to release enormous amounts of gold on the market foiled the plan and vindicated him. But the fact that he had known of the scheme in advance, and had even socialized with the schemers at their homes (and on Fisk’s luxury steamer), tempered the public’s forgiveness.
Though the worst aspects of the Crédit Mobilier scandal, in which Congressmen had sold their influence for kickbacks, had taken place in the previous administration, its exposure during the presidential race of 1872 only increased the distrust of the American people in their chosen leaders. (Both Grant’s outgoing Vice President and his incoming Vice President were implicated.) In May 1875, Grant’s private secretary, Orville Babcock, one of his oldest and closest friends, was revealed to have been taking bribes, though he avoided a jail sentence. Another swindle, known as the Sanford Contracts, involved tax fraud and featured the Secretary of the Treasury — whom the President fired and then immediately appointed to a judgeship on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Nepotism and favoritism were standard tools of the spoils system before and after Grant, but never in the history of the Republic has a generous benefactor been repaid in such ungrateful coin. Yet the President had nobody to blame but himself, for he seemed to be completely incapable of recognizing a crook.6 During the war, Grant had looked the other way while corruption occurred in the areas of supply and procurement, and he had stocked his headquarters with men of questionable morals.7 One of his greatest assets, his loyalty, was also his greatest weakness. He discouraged, politicked against, and fired reformers who dared help prosecute his friends, and in at least one case, the Whiskey Ring, the President even perjured himself in a deposition made before the Chief Justice of the United States to keep Babcock out of jail.8 (Grant’s testimony was probably the principal reason his aide was found innocent.) In the face of mounting evidence of improprieties, Grant continued to support and defend these intimates to the bitter end and beyond — an admirable code of conduct for a friend, but deplorable in a President, whose higher duty is to the integrity of the nation.
Hot on the heels of the most damaging revelations of the Whiskey Ring, a conspiracy of hundreds of public officials and distillers who diverted millions of dollars in unpaid liquor taxes to their own pockets, came the first details of another high-level government scam. A law had been passed six years previously that granted the Secretary of War the power to appoint traders at frontier forts. Formerly, these traders, known as “sutlers,” had been selected by local boards of army officers, who monitored their operations. That bit of legislation was the result of a struggle between the commanding General of the army, William T. Sherman, and Secretary of War William W. Belknap over a specific appointee — a conflict that also involved the duties and powers of the War Department and the Interior Department. These two government entities had been tussling since at least the Civil War for complete control of the country’s Indian wards. Belknap’s alliances in Congress had resulted in the 1870 military bill expanding his power, and the Secretary of War had initiated other new protocols that bypassed Sherman and weakened his authority. Grant had promised Sherman that he would rectify the situation, but he never did, and a disenchanted Sherman had cooled toward the President. Weary of Washington politics and especially the Secretary of War’s continued appropriation of his powers, Sherman had relocated his headquarters to St. Louis in October 1874. It was a sad end to what had once been a close relationship, for Belknap had served under Sherman during the war and had landed his high office largely through a recommendation from his former commander.
Widespread fraud in the Bureau of Indian Affairs had long occurred on the agency level and was commonly known even in the ranks.9 As early as 1865, General Alfred Sully had written, regarding Indian annuities, “It is my opinion that very little of it reaches the hands of the Indians,” and claimed that the traders pocketed most of the money.10 Custer had spoken out against the corruption in interviews, articles, and books, and had even forced the removal of two of Belknap’s traders.11 Other officers, foremost among them Colonel William B. Hazen and Colonel Ranald Mackenzie, had also testified to the problems, but it wasn’t until the spring of 1876 that things came to a head. The upcoming election had increased the usual Washington feeding frenzy. Neither party offered a clear-cut front-runner, and with Grant’s plummeting reputation ending any plans of his running, the Democrats were excited about their chances of winning the presidency for the first time in twenty years.
Custer entered this quagmire at the end of March. Upon receiving the telegram requesting his testimony before the House Committee on Military Expenditures, chaired by Democratic Congressman Hiester Clymer, he had wired Terry (the former lawyer) for advice. The departmental commander was not happy about this hitch in plans, and when Custer told him that anything he could tell the committee would be mostly hearsay, Terry suggested that he ask if
it were possible for him to answer questions by telegram. Custer did so, but he was clearly conflicted about his duty to speak out against corruption that harmed both the Indians and the soldiers on the frontier. Before he received a reply, he sent another telegram telling the committee chairman that he would come to Washington as requested.
Before he left, Custer directed Major Reno and Captain Benteen at Fort Rice, to place their garrisons “in efficient condition for prolonged service in the field.” He also ordered supplies to be sent to the soldiers on the Northern Pacific train still stranded in the snow.12 Then he boarded a stagecoach headed east.
A week later, on March 28, he arrived by train in Washington. Although the city had changed dramatically since the Civil War — approximately one-third of its 150,000 inhabitants were black, and large fields around the city that had once housed thousands of Federal troops now contained scattered wood-frame houses and shanties — some things remained the same. For instance, the half-finished Washington Monument still towered over the Mall. Begun in 1848, its construction had been abandoned in 1854 due to a lack of funds. The monolith would not be finished for another ten years.13
Belknap had already tendered his resignation in the face of potential impeachment. He had been implicated in the trading post scheme by Colonel Hazen four years earlier. Although the charges (which had caused the contentious Hazen to be banished to Fort Buford, widely known as the least hospitable frontier fort) had been ignored at the time, they had resurfaced after the New York Herald had published its investigative series on the subject. That investigation had been aided on the sly by Custer, a friend of Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett, who had sent an undercover reporter to Bismarck to look into widespread reports of corruption among Indian agency and military trading post appointments on the upper Missouri. Custer, who had railed against such injustices and illegalities in print14 and had fed Bennett and other Democratic organs information injurious to the Republican administration,15 had assisted the newspaperman.
A Terrible Glory Page 12