The Custer Conundrum by T. J. Stiles

real pleasure to be here and oh it just kicked in I can hear the my own voice being amplified I don't want to waste any time so I'm going to get straight into it though I have to say it's not just a pleasure to be here it's real honored to be invited to give this important and distinguished lecture so thank you all for coming now Custer is somebody of course who is not the first name in leadership I think that when we think about Custer this is obviously a artist's imagining no artists who saw him - I survived - right as you do the artwork except for on the Lakota and their allied side there's actually some really interesting artwork from that side but from the American you and that is the u.s. perspective this is how he was imagined at the time going down at the Little Bighorn but we all know about Custer going down fighting and yet this moment this defining moment for Custer his last battle has left an impression of him as someone who is foolhardy who was reckless and rash someone who even at the time though his widow fought against this impression brought on his own and his own demise and so especially at the present moment is historical fortunes have they've risen and they've fallen but at the present moment his reputation in terms of leadership really stands at an all-time low and as I'll discussed there are some reasons for that but there's also some reasons why that's wrong during the Civil War Custer had quite the opposite reputation and here I've got an illustration of him from the cover of Harper's Weekly during the Civil War in 1864 and there's also an illustration from the Smithsonian of the little side table at which General Grant wrote the surrender terms for generally an Abba Maddox courthouse that table was purchased by the commander of the cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac Philip Sheridan and presented to Libby Custer it was George Armstrong Custer's wife and for those of you who can't see the quotation he said I respectfully present to you the small writing table in which the conditions for the surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia were written by Lieutenant General Grant and permit me to say madam that there is scarcely an individual in our service who has contributed more to bring about this than you're very gallant husband that is very much the opposite of the image that we have from thinking of him as the man who died disastrously at the Little Bighorn who brought five companies out of 12 the largest battalion of the seventh Cavalry to disaster by the banks of the Little Bighorn in the Montana territory in the Civil War he was seen quite differently well these are the two polar opposites of Custer as leader but they're also other images of Custer from his own time there is Custer as the peacetime officer managing a Cavalry Regiment in the West during long periods where there's no combat taking place there's also Custer as a celebrity he was very much a national celebrity starting with a moment that I'm going to come to later in the lecture very early in life at the age of 23 Custer was also a private entrepreneur tried to launch a silver mine and Wall Street among other enterprises Custer was a public intellectual he wrote a memoir of his life on the plains called my life on the plains which is not simply an adventure story but the first two chapters are actually an extended intellectual discourse on the Great Plains on the natural history on the native peoples of the Great Plains you're very much wanted to be seen as a public intellectual after the Civil War and there's also Custer as a politician something that got him into a lot of trouble so what we see in Custer is we see someone who had great strengths and leadership we also see somebody who had great failings and part of the story is all show when we you really began to become a divisive figure and when we see the division between the strengths and weakness's comes at the end of the civil or in the years that followed as he struggled to find a role for himself in the peacetime army and this was a struggle also with the way in which the country was changing a change in which the army played a leading role and in which many ways the army was the representative institution as well as the implementer of new policies and a new vision for America so let's go back to the start of the Civil War Custer graduated from West Point in 1861 when two classes were graduated they abandoned the five-year system at West Point which had come in several years beforehand so his class was graduated early Custer graduated last in his class but first in demerits so there's that Custer himself often stressed that had some of the southern cadets not resigned to go fight for the south that he would not in fact have been last but I would say close enough and yet this image of Custer is he played pranks at West Point he was more interested in the esteem of his fellow cadets than he was in the esteem of the institution he was somebody who when you go through the demerit book at West Point and it lists all those demerits and you know the minute the top of the class there's half a page for four years Custer you're thinking are we going to go on to another book I mean the the ledger books are full of his transgressions and they're full of descriptions like boyish trifling this is the sort of behavior that got him in trouble and yet this masked something important about Custer's something we have to think about the army as well which is West Point recent scholarship has really established that far from being merely and I think we shouldn't say that anyway but merely an engineering school it really was probably the world's foremost institution of military education in the United States and you know going through Custer specifically the detail in the depth of which they studied all aspects of the military enterprise for the Army is remarkable I mean the manufacturer of ammunition not only you know practicing cutting down dummies with sabers on horseback but also you know actually practicing and studying infantry tactics artillery sand tables understanding how to lay siege how to build field fortifications it was a very thorough military education and this is very important because America coming into the Civil War is very much a very personal world it's who you know it's the the training you've gotten firsthand what they called a practical education only 1% of white men went to college before the Civil War and when they did usually was not technical training they were institutions designed to produce gentlemen you studied the classics you might study some foreign languages and mathematics but it was it was a liberal education it was not a professional technical education so Custer even though he's last in his class goes into the Civil War as a professional in a world of amateurs and an America of amateurs so he goes into the Civil War I won't go into his first year so although he was at first Bull Run wrote a letter to friends in which he claimed to have been the thickest of the fighting he didn't see he didn't fire a shot during the battle but he goes off with the army the Potomac in 1862 on the Peninsula Campaign when the army the Potomac was transported to Fort Monroe at the end of the peninsula east and south east of Richmond General George B McClellan commanding a remarkable logistical enterprise I now I'm speaking off the top of my head I believe the Army of the Potomac was equivalent to the ninth largest city in the United States imagine an entire city being transported by sea and deposited at the end of a peninsula every man every horse every bit of waste every bit of food everything has to be transported assigned taken care of and this artillery part gives you a mere glimpse of the scale of this enterprise so the Union Army like the Confederate Army it's full of volunteers these are people who have signed up their volunteers organizationally as well as personally that is they are filling out regiments of us volunteers which are separate from the standing Regular Army and gets confusing when people talk about Custer because he becomes a general in the Civil War as I'll talk about a moment but that's a general of us volunteers they're an organization it's an organization that exists only for the the war itself and this reflects the America that's exists it's very political it's local communities are organizing their regiments and signing up in mass for companies you know this is America under arms and yet Custer actually represents the wave of the future he's a trained professional in the pioneering institution a kind of systematic formalized way of going about things the army not only provides the engineers for the railroads and the early corporations in America it's really the template for the new America that will come about so Custer is in the u.s. volunteers in this gigantic army that's being organized for the war and yet he's himself as a professional this gives you an idea of the movement I'm not going to go into detail but there is a long stand on the Yorktown line and then finally the Confederates withdraw there's a battle Williamsburg which Custer took part in and then finally they advanced up in the siege of Richmond began now Custer during this operation he was originally assigned to the cavalry and he was actually had a rank specifically tethered as all officer ranks were to a regiment of the regular a regular regiment of the u.s. cavalry but like many regular officers he's assigned to other duty during the war and he gets assigned to the topographical engineers again a technical branch of the service and the u.s. maps that the federal officers had were so poor that they actually had to make new maps so rather than sitting with these fellows at a table making maps photographing them distributing them to the generals customers out scouting so he's in a technical core and yet he actually has a chance to go out and engage in derring-do and for example this is a gun emplacement he scouted as he was sketching it from behind the chimney of a burned-out house they spotted him fired a shell the fuse in the shell was cut a little too it hummed over his head he went facedown in the mud and exploded behind him with the rest of his party hooter maid behind where it was safe killing one of the men who he was with it was one of Custer's exposures to the randomness of death and warfare a lesson that would not take hold Custer also took part is a topographical engineer in new technology he became an aerial observer with the balloon Corps that accompanied the Army of the Potomac now of course balloons don't move very fast but neither did McClellan so that worked out pretty well and Custer actually we know from his accounts that again you know contrary to the impression he left from West Point he's a resourceful officer there's no hint in the reports from his superiors of the miscreant of West Point so and the Yorktown line he went up and you know it was daytime he couldn't see through the tree craft cover the Confederate line so he decides to go up in the night when they're gonna be bonfires where this campfires being cooked are being for cooking etc but then he decides discovers that it's actually pretty warm still in Tidewater Virginia and there aren't very many fires Sonny thinks aha when they're cooking breakfast that's the time to go up and in fact he goes up at breakfast time and he gets a pretty good estimation of the size of the Confederate force on the other side again he's thinking he's thinking very clearly he's resourceful he's actually showing some merit as a young officer in the Army the Potomac well again Custer is more interested in the dashing side of things plays a fairly gallant role as a junior officer in battle of Williamsburg and he takes part in a raid led by himself and another topographical engineer across the Chickahominy River and this comes to the attention of the commander of the Army of the Potomac Custer was written up by his fellow topographical engineer as the man who fired the first shot was the last to leave the field McCullen calls him to his tent and says how do you like to come on my staff Custer idolized McClellan he was a young nobody from the backwoods of Ohio he had great ambition but he had no connections he had he's from the bottom of society McClellan was in the top of society one of the the intellectual leaders of the pre-war army railroad executive after he left the army a man from a respectable Philadelphia family he's everything that Custer is not and wishes he could be so Custer has merit his professional training but he also benefits from patronage and that that politics of personal advancement it really comes to the fore in the u.s. volunteers again it's America under arms so if you've got a political backer in Congress that's going to help you rise up if you've got a patron within the army that's going to help you and it's very interesting of the Civil War Army shows the intersection of a kind of a professional army and also the mass American army we've got politics comes in with Americans because they're all political so Custer gets a patron that's very key for his rise well during the seven days and then through into the Antietam campaign he really becomes mccollins right-hand man McCullen really liked best the young West pointers who he'd picked out and put on his staff he's also got French noblemen family members etc but Custer is really somebody who he really likes and during the the seven days Custer performs very bravely and well but especially during the Antietam campaign he ends up riding at the front and reporting back to Custer and so after Antietam when you know McClellan just fails to pursue the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia then Custer you know he falls when his commander Falls when McClellan is fired and he goes on a long leave and he comes back to the Army of Northern Virginia after months away and he was wondering what's going to become become of him well lucky for him during the Antietam campaign he'd really built a close relationship with one of the senior cavalry commanders in the Army of the Potomac and General Alfred Pleasonton was somebody who had just been promoted or was actually about to be promoted to become head of the newly organized cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac under General Joseph Hooker and so Custer goes to see Pleasanton when he comes back to the Army of the Potomac after his long leave and Pleasanton puts him on his staff and thus Custer lieutenant Custer is able to survive the downfall of his patron by finding another patron now there's a reason why he liked Custer again he was very capable young officer but for Custer's rise merit had to be tied to patronage as well he's not working his way up as a company commander as then to become a regimental commander and working his way up he's leaping from one staff to another and he's got merit but also it's that patronage that personal politics that's helping him along well then customer gets probably the luckiest break of his life apart from maybe McClellan picking him out and that's Lee invading Pennsylvania you've probably heard of this in 1863 after the Chancellorsville campaign Lee decided that you might win the war the decisive blow invaded Pennsylvania and hooker failed to bring on a decisive battle Lincoln fires him and pleasant and approached Meade and Pleasanton who had been worried about getting sacked by Hooker he now gets a chance to appoint his own picked men as brigade commanders and so he picks Meade gives him gives him the leave to do so so he picks three young officers from his staff customers only one there are all new 20s Custer's I think the youngest but you know he's it's not unusual for a young man to get a general star but he gets a general star becomes a brigadier general at the age of 23 two years after graduating from West Point last in his class but first and demerits so what happened to Custer when he became commander of a brigade well first of all he asked for the Michigan Brigade because he had now adopted through family connections Michigan as his hometown he was born in Ohio he's adopted Michigan the governor of Michigan because of his connections of McClellan and his family's Democratic background had already refused to appoint him to one of the Michigan Brigade Michigan regiments of cavalry and so Custer was quite proud of himself for outmaneuvering the governor they getting command of a whole brigade of Michigan cavalry regiments and so on his very first day in command something happens that defines the Civil War career and is very important for the way his men saw him and for us in defining his leadership he went into battle the very first day and what did he do did he lead a reckless charge like we associated him with at Little Bighorn know that at a hunter's town they were excuse me Hanover pardon me Hanover he was part of a blocking force that kept the Confederate cavalry from rejoining robert e lee and the infantry of the Army of Northern Virginia did he lead a charge no he deployed his men on foot and a loose skirmish line and along with a very talented artillery commander Alexander Pennington he was able to play key role in holding Stuart back it wasn't some big dramatic clash rather it was a very adroit use of a tactical advantage he had a technical advantage which was excuse me which I'll get to in a minute sorry I thought it was the next slide now this formation by the way is very different and it is very important to note that cavalry warfare was very different from the infantry warfare of the civil war that that muzzleloading rifled musket as a much longer range and is more accurate than the old smoothbore musket and yet still they fought in relatively dense formations there were still standing up for the most part fighting because of the way the it was loaded and because of the technology it wasn't recent research has shown that these dense firing lines actually still made sense but it was very different kind of warfare that the cavalry engaged in so Custer by deploying his men and a loose skirmish line was able to be as effective as a denser formation because of this technological breakthrough that had just this new weapon that had been just been issued to one or two of his regiments which is the Spencer rifle later they got the Spencer carbine this is not simply a repeating rifle it's a magazine-fed repeating rifle and this is a dramatic improvement over those muzzleloading single-shot rifle muskets this is one of his men said when they captured prisoners at the end of the gettysburg campaign they were absolutely astonished that there was struck dumb and they said they couldn't understand how they could reload so rapidly so that loose skirmish line proves very effective when they've got these magazine-fed weapons and Custer knows it he writes a report in which he says this is the most effective firearm we can adapt so here we see Custer on his first day going into battle making shrewd tactical deployments understanding the weaponry that is newly available this is a brand new weapon that's been issued he understands his potential he makes good use of it he's not leading reckless attack it goes quite against our image of him as a tactical commander and yet we still have to remember that other side of Custer the the as they would say at the time the gallant cavalry commander and this comes to the fore on the third day of Gettysburg Custer found himself and what we now call the East cavalry field in which he's on the right flank of the Army of the Potomac and he is alongside general Gregg and he'd just been ordered to rejoin his division on the other flank of the Army of the Potomac and then Jeff Stewart approached trying to get into the rear of the Union line in conjunction with Pickett's Charge in the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg Gregg actually asked Custer to support him in defying an order from Pleasanton denying or refusing an order to send Custer away because it was obvious this was a major Confederate attack and Custer agreed and so what happened is Custer we had a discussion by the way beforehand it's quite possible that maybe even likely that on his first few weeks in command he was not wearing this classic black Velveteen uniform and yet this was was Custer's style we can certainly say this his men saw him as a dashing leader he had already had that long golden hair he wore a slouch hat that was considered to be a rather southern in style and so he effected an air that that really was much more identified with a Confederate side in fact there was a general who dressed very much like Custer on the third day of Gettysburg at Gettysburg his name was a general Pickett he was on the Confederate side and so you know this shows Custer a product of border state culture and yet we see at Gettysburg this dashing personal style actually had a tactical purpose as well so on the third day again he deploys most of his men for most the day again on foot in skirmish lines making use of their Spencer rifles making use of his excellent rifled artillery so you know they're suppressing the Confederate artillery they're holding back the Confederates there's one charge he leads a counter-charge it's kind of muddled because they end up running into a fence they pull back finally at the end of the day Jim Stewart tries to break through with a major charge Custer leads a counter charge now Custer's timing of these charges was he gave orders to his men and as he approached his regiment to to go and do a charge he found out that Greg had already ordered the same charges in orders so Greg the more experienced commander basically ratifies and shows us that Custer's judgment and when he wanted to lead a counter-charge was sort of verified by a more senior commander on the field he's counterpunching he's not just recklessly attacking he's waiting until the confederates attack then he goes into a counter-charge but he leads from the front and and this is very important to think about both the pluses and minuses the - is is that as a brigade commander in charge of over 2,000 men at Gettysburg that number dwindles as casualties were down the Michigan Brigade but over 2,000 men if he had died in combat as as officers so often did he would or even just being in the middle of combat he couldn't command his his regiments he couldn't he can fight his units so that's the downside but the positive side is at a key moment being in the mix with his men he's leading a charge he's fighting alongside them and he's a rallying point and he's also an inspiration this is a battlefield in which command and control is executed through sight and sound the cavalry is not in the same sort of density and same numbers as infantry there's still fairly compact formations in which people are getting their orders by listening for bugles listening for bands looking for flags on the field so as Custer at least eventually shows up in a black Velveteen uniform gold braid from his cuff up to his elbow a blue sailor shirt tufting out over the back a bright red tie he's deliberately standing as out his men can see him on the field then there's also something else to remember about Custer by the way that charge is successful he plays a key role in holding back the Confederate attempt to get in the rear of the Union line which I don't think necessarily means he won the Battle of Gettysburg if if Stuart had gotten into the rear of the Union line his men would have been worn down they still would have been a cavalry force against the Union infantry line but it certainly would have caused me to rethink all his decisions and the Battle of Gettysburg would have gone differently so the the battle went the way it did I believe because Custer played a key role now another thing to remember is that Custer himself was a good fighter now the the infantry lines they're standing off there they're fighting at a distance they're relying upon firepower they would often even in order to charge they would stop short and stand and deliver volleys at each other Custer on the other hand fighting in the cavalry they most often fought other cavalry almost every cavalry charge against an infantry prepared infantry formation of Civil War ended in disaster the rifled musket is a very deadly weapon and even though some historians have argued that it's been over oversold still it consistently Shatter cavalry charges with some exceptions I'll get to but the cavalry most often fought cavalry on the flanks of a great battle in skirmishes in advance of the army etc and being mounted sometimes they fought dismounted but sometimes that mounted and they could close very quickly and that means they're fighting with close range weapons that actually require great personal skill revolvers and the saber Custer was very good at sword fighting I don't know about the statistics from the spanish-american war but he may well be one of the last American generals to kill someone personally in a sword fight now think about the repercussions of that one is it helps explain why he becomes this big cultural figure this is an America that is losing what will be a probably at least 750,000 people our deadliest war by far this isn't a war that's challenging people's idealism and Romanticism it's really a shocking moment and yet here's Custer with long is a boy general he's got this long golden hair he's got a dashing style and he's fighting with a sword on horseback like a medieval knight and he's good at it there are letters from his men writing back about after the Gettysburg Campaign I saw him thrust his saber into the belly of a rebel who was trying to kill him you can imagine how hard men fight for a general like that the general is out fighting with him and he's good at it and this is very important to remember this is from before he got promoted the Battle of Aldi when Custer himself even though he wasn't in one of the unit's deployed he was a staff officer threw himself in and ended up cutting down three men and sword fights in the middle of this battle gives you an idea of that intense kind of close range fighting the cavalry often fell into now as cap as Custer pursued his career rather than being rash he was aggressive but he wasn't rash he actually ran into trouble where he resisted some of the charges that were ordered by his commander Judson Kilpatrick and Kilpatrick actually ordered at falling waters at Williamsport when the one last division of the Army of Northern Virginia was holding the northern riverbank as the rest of the army escaped across the Potomac the cavalry encountered them first in advance of the Army of the Potomac no other army Northern Virginia is escaping and they're in a fortified position as shown here and Custer's division commander ordered a charge they had one regiment on hand okay at full strength that would be 1,200 men but it was probably less than half strength most of the unit's were a few hundred at that point and so Custer deploys his boy got a hundred men on hand he deploys him on foot to carefully advance he said no no no I want him out of charge Custer opposed it they charged in it was so reckless the Confederates thought that it was their own men coming in and they let them in over the top of the fortifications and so they got in the middle of them they realized their mistake and they were all cut down or taken prisoner in Custer had to work the rest of the day to try to restore the disaster that his own division commander had brought on it's an interesting moment because it shows Custer's the difference between Custer's aggressiveness and recklessness and Kilpatrick had actually ordered a cavalry charge at the other flank of the Army of the Potomac and the third day of Gettysburg which ended in disaster and one of the staff officers who was appointed Brigadier General alongside Custer was killed leading his men the same way Custer did on the other flank and it shows you the difference between a rash and an aggressive attack with cavalry in the Civil War so Custer spent a lot of time the cavalry engaged in constant skirmishing and fighting so we spent a lot of time in combat his men see him as a combat leader they know he's brave they they know he's leading them from the front and they also know that he's got some some tactical skills that they've seen in action not just leading charges but really smart deployments and yet a lot of what the the cavalry officer in the Civil War had to endure was grinding grueling very unromantic stuff there was a wonderful letter written may 12 18 63 by Charles Francis Adams was the brother of Henry Adams grandson of John Quincy Adams himself a major intellectual and he had volunteered for the 1st Massachusetts cavalry he was a captain and so during the pre lude I guess is the more than the Chancellorsville campaign he said an officer of the cavalry needs to be more horse doctor than soldier and who has not tried it can realize the discouragement to company commanders in these long and continuous marches so we're looking now at the reality of life in the cavalry something that the customers sort of skipped over and yet as a brigade commander he's dealing with at a slightly higher level he says you are a slave this is from a company commander you are a slave to your horses you look like a dog yourself and you exact the most extreme care from your sergeants you see diseases creeping up on you day by day and your horses breaking down under your under your eyes and you have two resources one to send them to the reserve camps at the rear and so strip yourself of your command the other to force them on until they drop and then run for luck and then run for luck that you'll be able to steal horses to remount your men and keep up the strength of your command the last course is the one I adopt so I but one rule a horse must go on until I can't be spurred any further and then the rider must get another horse as fast as he can see his one says every night excuse me imagine a horse with his withers swollen to three times their natural size with a volcanic running sore pouring matter down each side and you have a case with which every cavalry officer is daily called upon to deal when you imagine a horse which has still has to be ridden until he lays down and sheer suffering under the saddle then we seize the first horse we come to then put the dismounted man on his back the air of Virginia is literally burdened today with a stench of dead horses federal and Confederate you pass them on every Road and find them in every field all from their carry-ons you can follow the march of every army that moves on this last raid dying horses lined the road poor brutes how it would astonish and terrify you you and all the others at home with your sleek and well-fed animals to see the weak gaunt rough animals with each rib visible and hip bones starting through the flesh on which these dashing cavalry raids are executed it would knock the romance out of you so this gives you an idea that as much as Custer as somebody who's represents the romance of the cavalry warfare which is occurring somewhat on the sidelines of the main infantry warfare this is a grim reality in which he's immersed in which they're literally just trying to keep their horses alive and well customer has to deal with it this is something that again to a certain extent he jumps over the men who are dealing with these gritty realities in a daily basis he becomes a brigade commander he skips all the intermediate levels of command and this is something that I think will come back to haunt him as I'll talk about so Custer when other side of his Civil War experience excuse me this is a nice photo cavalry in winter camp again in the winter the fighting would die down in Custer would write home about the immense paperwork in which he was immersed so he can't escape management he can't escape the reality all around him of things like dying horses of men who need to be fed of camps that need to be kept in order so he is engaged in the kind of management side of leadership and yet the intensity of combat for the cavalry in the Civil War allows this to be overshadowed for us and I think overshadowed for Custer himself as a commander is a brigade commander in the Civil War he was also busy doing things like tending to his own career now again as I mentioned the the Civil War Army is a very political army they have brought the politics of you know the homefront to the battlefront as a brigadier general of us fallen tears Custer has to have his appointment be confirmed by the Senate and he needs support in Congress to be able to maintain his position and as he hopes to advance her to get a better command and so representative Francis Kellogg is one example from Michigan zechariah chandler is another these are people who he begins the butter up and when he gets married in early 1864 to a quite beautiful and very well-educated incredibly socially skilled young woman libby bacon custer she becomes his liaison to capitol hill her letters are remarkable she goes to dances and and social events with senators she butters them up she wanted on Capitol Hill she writes letters about how drunk they all get how they're all kind of leering over her all the time Kellog at one point goes to visit Libby in her boarding house and she literally has to like leap out of her chair and put a put a pillow between her and him because he's coming after her and yet she puts up with it she says at one point everyone says that he's corrupt and licentiousness you know I paid no attention to that I think is a very nice man in other words yes it's all true but I can work with this guy so you know her sort of political realism and her skill in buttering up congressmen that really is is one biographer of her his wrote it's a partnership dedicated to advancing his career so this is the other thing Custer's doing again a professional and yet he's also in a very political army now Custer really gets his chance to shine in 1864 when grant comes ease and at first he was very upset his patron Pleasanton has been shaken out of the he's been sent off to the west and this infantry officer Sheridan is brought in to command the cavalry Corps and customer-first was very upset but when he actually meets Sheridan he likes it and then during the Overland campaign when Sheridan leads his first famous raid which leads to yellow tavern the great confrontation with Jeff Stewart they build a close relationship which B which marks the rest of Custer's life and what happens at yellow tavern and Custer's leading a very aggressive role all through the raid in a yellow tavern it's Custer who spots the opportunity to lead a charge that would come up on the Confederate left flank Jeb Stewart was badly outnumbered and yet he'd posted his men in a very strong position on a concave position on ridges overlooking Sheridan's approach and it's Custer who sees that there's a artillery battery that holds a key position and that if he could approach it from the right angle from the left in a charge he thinks he can break the the Confederate line and in fact that's exactly what happens and that really seals his place as Sheridan's favorite and he goes on and he makes mistakes at Trevelyan station but he also ends up holding his own when he gets cut off behind the Union or Confederate force there he fights and keeps his men alive keeps his units together as regiments together he really builds a place as Sheridan's favorite so when Sheridan goes to the Shenandoah Valley and takes command of Union forces there he brings Custer with him and as still as a brigade commander Custer shows his tactical skill and playing a key role in the Union victory at 3rd Winchester when Sheridan finally launches an all-out confrontation with a Confederate Army in the Shenandoah Valley that had caused so much trouble and you don't really have to watch this too closely you'll see over here Custer's name and you see the the Union cavalry coming up on the Confederate left flank the Confederates are badly outnumbered and yet they're in a very strongly fortified position Sheridan's men got stuck coming through a very I think it's Berryman Canyon I'm gonna just bumble it standing up here and it really was a long drawn-out kind of not very decisive battle gradually crook comes up on the right flank and pushes the Confederates back and yet still there had not been a decisive break in the Confederate line and so Custer with the cavalry again on the flank we're usually the cavalry fought in the Civil War mostly fighting other cavalry he comes up against infantry behind a stone wall and he withdraws his men behind the reverse slope of a hill where they're out of sight and he gets orders from his division commander to launch a charge because Sheridan wants action and he says wait send a message back to sends the messenger back to his division commander to tell Sheridan that he's facing infantry but he's been watching redeployments because of the pressure along the main inventory battle front so he waits and they say yes ok fine we'll follow your lead so he waits until through his filled glass he sees the Confederates rise up and turn and start to redeploy keeping that part of the front quiet they see as they start to redeploy that's when his men now in charge and so the Confederates rather than being prepared and waiting always deadly for a charge of cavalry against infantry when they're prepared behind a fortification ready for them in this case they're beginning to redeploy they're not ready and they only have time to turn and fire one volley before they're up over the top and they are in fact breaking the Confederate line and again there's one of those wonderful moments that helps explain why customers so beloved by his men a witness wrote about how one of the infantrymen aimed his rifle must get it at Custer Custer pulls back on the reins the horse goes up on his hind legs the bullet misses and customer cuts him down with the saber it's something out of a bad movie let alone a movie and yet this is the kind of action which customers involved it's really quite it's really quite fascinating that he combines this role of the personal action hero with a very well timed charge where he understands the tactical conditions and in fact as one Confederate officer said it's the only time he's seen mounted cavalry being extremely effective in a general engagement with infantry and is one of the rare cases of an cavalry charge breaking a infantry line in the Civil War and everyone agrees that only nightfall saved the early and his men from complete destruction again though his men are drawn to this Cavalier image so you know the Civil War is firepower's coming to the floor we now have rifled firearms rifled artillery you've got obviously ironclad ships that machinery warfare logistics mass mobilization this is beginning to come to the fore in the Civil War and yet Custer represents an earlier more romantic image due to the nature of cavalry warfare this however is in great contrast to General Grant General Grant is somebody who's deliberately understated he is of course at a higher level of command but the idea of putting on a big show as an athame to grant now grant doesn't deal with Custer much in the Civil War and yet in the years to come their contrast really comes out because it's a contrast not just a personal style not just of the changing nature of generalship as firepower makes that personal leadership less and less useful and more and more deadly but also it reflects their approach to politics the role of the Army in public life Custer shows this in 1865 when he is redeployed to Texas he leaves behind he'd become a division commander he played a key role in the after Maddox campaign this is somebody who ends the Civil War as a household name seen as one of the great Union generals one of the few division commanders who's talked about in the same way in the same breath with army commanders people like Sherman and grant so you know Custer really ends a civil war in a remarkable place in the American mind he goes west without those men that he had fought with during the Civil War he has that intense bond from their very first day in combat though his brigade was not in his division but you know they're been fighting all the time he takes command of men who don't know him and he goes into occupy Texas well this becomes a story of not only how he deals with new men in a non-combat situation but it also becomes a story of Custer dealing with the repercussions of the civil war in Texas which was not occupied by Union forces during the Civil War slavery actually got stronger the white population doesn't feel defeated and the great struggle in which the army plays a central role to provide protections and eventually civil rights and eventually voting rights for the freed slaves this is something that it's just beginning and Custer has to deal with it and in Custer finds himself socializing that finds himself he goes out he socializes with the former planters he refuses to offer protections the freed slaves in fact he orders them to go back to work and it says if you don't go back to work for your former masters you could all have you arrested he really does not like the army playing the role that inevitably is playing because the south is held in the grasp of war Texas is under martial law even deals of the case of an 8 year old girl who was murdered by her former masters simply because she left the plantation to be read with her mother and she got murdered and Custer arrests the boy who did it and then he thinks better of it me releases him and we see Custer turning from the role of a wartime Emancipator someone it really began to change his mind about slavery and race to someone who's now seeing a post-war world and he's becoming more conservative going back to his Democratic roots which back then was on the very much on the conservative side conservative an 1860 sense of being friendly to slavery opposed to any idea of racial equality so that's one side of what happens in in Texas the other is is that Custer in dealing with his troops he doesn't know he's now dealing with them in a really harsh manner now sometimes this has been described as the west pointer who's dealing with in Regular Army fashion with volunteers there may be some truth to that but I think there's something to be drawn from one of the great observers of human nature Leo Tolstoy and Tolstoy wrote some wonderful things about what it means to be an army officer from his own experience fighting in the Crimean War and in Russia's Indian Wars of the 1850s and the in caucuses he says at one point in the sevastopol sketches discipline and obedience depend not merely on military law but quote the subordinates recognition that those placed in authority over him are possessed of a higher degree of experience military prowess or not to beat around the bush moral development now in the Civil War his men see that in Custer they see that he knows what he's doing he's a pro he's deploying his men well go ahead and take that it's okay he's brave he's fighting well he's got personal character and ability and yet unfortunately for Custer Tolstoy goes on the man who feels unable to inspire respect by virtue of his own intrinsic merits is instinctively afraid of contact with the subordinates and attempts to ward off criticism by means of superficial mannerisms his subordinates who see only the superficial aspect of the man once they find offensive are inclined often unjustly to suppose that it conceals nothing good and what we see is Custer he's a young man has been vaulted to high rank after this during the Civil War he hasn't worked his way up to the ranks when he's confronted with men with whom he hasn't fought men who were disgruntled and want to go home they're giving him resistance they're they're unhappy and he gets insecure he gets brittle and he lashes out and so he has men he has their head shaved he has accuses them of carrying out depredations on civilians which actually could have been carried out by demobilized Confederates sort of like working their way home he's having men whipped which had actually been made illegal by Congress and he is somebody who is again overreacting and then when he gets to the West he actually begins to retreat from his men and from contact with other officers he often as his wife put it carried out the little trick of suddenly disappearing when others come near so we see in Custer both sides of this Tolstoi comment we see somebody who when confronted with a management role at a time when he's under pressure as I'll explain in a moment you know both from his men and also from the larger world he lashes out he's insecure he's brittle we see that Custer as a manager somebody who's got to manage people day in day out in the non-kinetic situation outside of combat that's where we begin to see him fail now I'm just going to move very quickly through Custer in the West because I want to be able to take questions Custer's Western experience actually comes straight out of 1866 when there's a huge political fight over whether there will be any kind of racial equality civil rights or voting rights for african-americans and Lincoln successor Andrew Johnson campaigns publicly against them and grant is very much fed up with Johnson and on his way to becoming the Republican nominee and the man who really fought hard to enforce this new idea of civil rights for african-americans Custer goes on campaign with Andrew Johnson he actually is a serving army officer he serves as delegate to Johnson political convention in 1866 he really puts himself out there in a way that grant is not too happy with so the in the north unionist newspaper is that it seen him as a great hero now they're divided about him a lot of them are scorning him for siding with Andrew Johnson who they see as a traitor to Lincoln's legacy so he goes out to Fort Riley in 1866 he gets his reward from Johnson he gets command not of a black regiment which granted assigned him to put a white regiment which is what custard asked for the 7th u.s. cavalry a new unit they go on they fight in the Great Plains this is a battle against the high plains nomadic people west of the hundredth Meridian the high plains are pretty much over here though they're fighting over this area as well this is actually a somebody talked about on the book this is a fight over transportation routes the Custer's main task was to protect protect the railroads in the wagon routes and the migrant routes across the Great Plains but for the high plains nomadic peoples this is destroying their lifestyle because those River bottoms are the resource zones that keep bison herds and horse herds alive during the winter there only 7% of the landmass and yet they're absolutely critical for both Buffalo and for horse herds and of course when migrants cross the plains what do they do they follow where the water is they cut down the timber they tear up the grazing they pollute the water and it's actually not settlement but it's this environmental assault that leads to the first wave of main wave of wars between the Great Plains peoples and the US Army Custer actually gets into a terrible war just a bad idea his man he'd fought with that Williamsburg and Civil War Hancock goes out an expedition to intimidate the great plains peoples when they flee from him he orders their village destroyed with all of their property that sparks a war Custer is assigned to chase down the people who had escaped Custer who was wanted to save his marriage which he'd imperiled by probably cheating on his wife long story he actually wants nothing to do with the war he wants to get back to his wife he actually gets hoodwinked by this fellow Pawnee killer and Oglala Lakota leader they see him meeting there in Nebraska Pawnee killer then turns around and ambushes a party bringing orders to Custer this kind of pushes Custer over the edge so in his first campaign he ends by abandoning his men in the field abandoning two men of his escort who got shot and going back to see his wife well he saved his marriage but he got court-martialed and rather than being driven out of the army he was suspended for a year without pay as grant put it was now President or rather it was not present he was still commander in chief of the army he said this rather light punishment for all the sins that he was prosecuted for Custer though this becomes a pattern after the Civil War digs a hole and he has an opportunity to fight and his ability to fight is still there so the the army's goal in the West is to get control of populations these are small populations of peoples who are nomadic it's not guerrilla warfare it's rainning warfare from nomadic peoples so the Army's goal is not just to win a few fights it's to get control of the whole people so in the middle of winter when the Army has logistics that the natives don't have he attacks a southern Cheyenne village it happens to be a village led by the leading peace chief of the southern Cheyenne's which Custer doesn't know it does however it was whoever home to some of the people had taken part in the warfare however this controversial battle is a key blow in a campaign that really brings an end to a period of warfare in Kansas especially in the Indian Territory in northern Texas and so even though it's still much debated by people it was a key blow in this in this war and again it begins to resuscitate his reputation but then follows a long period of peace in which Custer's mainly interested in himself rather than in his men so rather than keep alive the spirit of unity in his regiment rather than then keep manage his men who are unhappy Western regiments faced double-digit desertion rates the officers are being promoted because the army was continually shrinking so officers face the reality in which something like 42 percent of the officers who were commissioned between the Civil War in the spanish-american war 30 years something like 40 percent of them were commissioned within two years of the Civil War and meanwhile the army is Siddeley shrinking so this is a real management challenge this is managing people this is not kinetic combat leadership this is I'm in charge of a few hundred people who are really unhappy and Custer spends a lot of time building up his own image he goes on leave for a total of a couple of years on Wall Street he spends time writing his memoirs and then finally his regiment gets redeployed throughout the south he gets sent to Kentucky where the duty is to enforce the Ku Klux Klan act the army again is the basically the only tool the federal government has to enforce civil rights Kentucky was basically in a state of siege I won't I want to take some questions so I will read all of these the the state government was actually allied secretly with the Ku Klux Klan and there was a major federal offensive against the Klan dozens of prosecutions going on Custer wanted nothing to do with it and he wrote sarcastically in a report that he'd much rather have his men on fatigue Duty digging latrines than out arresting Ku Klux Klansmen in Kentucky but he spends a lot of this period in New York trying to sell stock in his silver mine unsuccessfully as a terrible businessman he does get a chance in 1873 gets to the northern plains gets in terrible trouble with his commander on that expedition by now Custer is a lieutenant colonel in the Regular Army he is one of his best friends a Confederate General Tom Rosser and his brother are on this expedition he's got his favorite scout bloody knife is with him but Custer and his kind of self very much effected air of celebrity infuriates Colonel Stan Lee who was his commander Stan Lee has arrested at one point Custer is talking to Rosser about having Stan Lee arrested but what happens he fights a battle against sitting then he fights his second battle and contrary to the Little Bighorn against these same people he handles his men with discretion and with skill he avoids an ambush because he's read up on recent history of weather tactics was an ambush deploys his men well maximizes firepower leads a charge at a critical moment when he sees that the rest of the column is advancing toward their position in other words he fights very well against a very difficult enemy and he saves his reputation with Stanley he saves his reputation in the army and Custer goes on spends his time and goes back to New York his men now are settled it for an Abraham Lincoln in the Dakota Territory Custer again is absorbed by himself absorbed by his chance to make money as a short seller and the Great Depression leaves a huge debt for his widow unfortunately and then in 1876 he once again ten years after he did it the last time throws himself into politics and now I now the Democrats have taken control of the house representatives they have launched a wave of investigations and rather than sit this out as a serving Army officer Custer goes to Capitol Hill you not only testifies he wanders around with a Democratic leadership rice letters that they're honest with their stationery at their tables in the in Congress has lunch with him publicly he openly allies himself with a political opposition to the commander-in-chief and grant pulls him from command of the seventh Cavalry as they go out in a little bit corn expedition and Custer has to beg and his commanding officer general Terry he has to beg said no actually this is the one thing he's good at they don't say that that's what everyone's thinking he's good at fighting and we need him and that pattern he had after the Civil War dig a hole get out of it by fighting the Little Bighorn it didn't work anymore thank you very much I apologize what about 10 minutes over my plan I have to excuse me thank you very much all right ladies and gentlemen we have time for a few questions we don't have a tremendous amount of time so I would like to ask everybody to try to limit themselves to one question at a time for now and then if we can come back to you if you have a second we will so is there anybody who'd like to start out please raise your hand myself for Mary we'll come around with the microphone where did you get her who did the the drawings Oh most of the drawings that are in here well after the Civil War the ones that I've shown are from Theodore Davis who was a Harper's illustrator who accompanied Custer out west and often went West this one actually in the will they published this in Harper's they made the men into skeletons because it was too gruesome for people to deal with no in Custer's men whereas they they did it that way the others are from wha and then also there's one from the Battle of aldis from another artist he was one of Law's favorite subjects Forbes Thank You Forbes did the Battle of Aldi Wall just absolutely loved Custer and even sketched some scenes that I think have been overblown in retrospect I don't you obviously wasn't there that's for example that's a wall sketch etc okay well let's move on another question what do you think about his health in 1876 relative to implications that he had a lifelong infection that may explain why I never consummated his marriage with Libby yeah this is something that you know he was diagnosed at West Point is having gonorrhea and so yeah it was yeah and they are they this is something that you know has been pointed by very fine previous biography that you know they not only could gonorrhea make you sterile but the way they treated it could make you sterile they did a lot of injections and places you don't want injections under any circumstances with mercury and things like that so you know did the diagnosis correctly we don't know if there's any suggestion that he had syphilis there was a claim that my previous subject Vanderbilt had syphilis and that he went insane and so I really went through and studied the disease and I don't see any sign that Custer had syphilis and I you know so I I don't think that's true and he certainly wasn't going crazy at the end through it so yeah I probably had gotten gonorrhea and there's a very good chance that it made him sterile but you know again we're dealing with you know doctors in the 1860s sometimes no they're talking about sometimes didn't I am from Ohio so the idea of his commanding at Michigan regiment seems a little profane to me but that also begets a question that is he a person that since he was somewhat intellectual did he have an overarching philosophy a moral compass something that he tried to live by was there any suggestion of that yeah he's a very interesting fellow because you know he was very sincere in his politics now he's from a Jacksonian family you really believe in the common man and being self-made and but that also you know in the 19th century that along come along with you know white supremacy you know I mean democracy meant democracy for white men and they were very upfront about that very clear about it and Custer certainly felt that way so you know race was a part of his worldview democratic politics was very sincerely partisan he actually again he endangered his own career by being a Democrat under you know Republican commanders in the army certainly agents of war but even afterwards when Grant was in charge so that shows his sincerity but he also was very you know and he loved his wife passionately but you know he was this you know he was appetite and ambition and so he would go over the boundaries like he would draw boundaries for himself then he'd go over them and one of the most fascinating things he did for example in the Civil War is when he felt the need to to get he really was worried that his marriage would not come through because he wouldn't be confirmed and so he wrote this crazy letter to general gist senator Jacob Howard which was reprinted as a facsimile by Howard Sun it's a great reading in which he he sort of wrote a satire of what he thought the radical view was which he says things I know he didn't believe but like I think every disloyal man woman and child should be hung in the south I should be repopulated with loyal people I think he didn't think that you know that you know he had old-fashioned ideas about gallantry he had old-fashioned ideas about courage and bravery he was very he was very loyal to the Union you know despite his own he was very it was pro-slavery before the Civil War he opposed Lincoln's election he's very upset about John Brown but there was no question he was gonna stand for the Union there's no doubt about he was a patriot there's no question so it's interesting as an interesting mix of ambition and a kind of willingness to just say what he feels like he needs to say and also these like real core values that he had and it helps explain why you know when I wrote the book he's such a volatile figure whenever he's at his best I tried to keep the seeds out there how he's gonna go bad and why people would get fed up with him and when he's at his worst I tried to keep out there why it is that he had deep friends who loved him and thought he was great even when you're fed up with him as I was you know and that he had both sides to him he was it's so volatile and exaggerated that you know he brings out the idiot the idealistic and also the opportunistic are both alive of him at the same time and that's part of why he was so much fun to write about we have a professor's question here I don't want to miss Steele time though yes how did he get appointed to West Point it was actually an accident where I think it was because the somebody else who had been appointed withdrew and his spot opened up but is his father was an outspoken Democrat and yet John Bingham who was the the senator was not only Republican he was a guy who went on to become one of the key drafters of the 14th amendment so which is the basis of civil liberties and civil rights in America so Bingham you just wrote this letter and Bingham said it was this amazingly earnest letter and he he decided to appoint him just because he seemed like a really great kid basically and so during the Civil War he really looked upon Custer as his protege and so he sort of overlooked the thing everybody took into account at the time which is politics because Custer again had this there was something eager and earnest and and just like enthusiastic and vibrant about Custer that made him really appealing to mentor figures all through his life so you know there were Republican you know there's a key Republican figure and a couple key Republican figures in Michigan who just really liked him and they knew he's from a Democratic family but they backed him because they just liked him and you know in Pleasanton and Sheridan they just like this young guy they just yeah I mean there was something some charisma in a way that isn't just celebrity but kind of a personal charisma that older men really took a shine to him and I think one of the earliest signs of that is how he got appointed at West Point but I'm interpreting a little bit but Bingham himself said it was just this amazingly earnest letter that really caught his attention thank you for your fascinating insights at General Custer you talked about his relations with his superiors McClellan Pleasanton Sheraton how about his relations with his subordinates we know there's a lot of dissension in the seventh Cavalry but how about in the Civil War and the Michigan cavalry Brigade in the 3rd cavalry division how did he relate to his senior subordinates within his command um my my sense is is that he had pretty healthy relations with his subordinates and you know again I think one is that I didn't really see any signs of favoritism that it was not that stood out to people at the time I think he fought his his units well they won under him and if you remember all the volunteers they didn't sign up to serve or for a paycheck they signed up to win and he was someone who won and so for example when he took over his division there was someone who said one of one of the brigade commanders said you know I think you're gonna hear a bitter cannabis now that we have a gallant leader in charge though it's going to mean a lot more fighting and more losses and so you know they were willing to put their lives on the line but they wanted to be for something and with custom they felt like they were getting something so the problem is after the Civil War you know again you know there's just there's no goal there's there's no enemy in front of them and there was some you had some people who really liked him they kind of think oh that Custer's circle the court and then there were those who were just kind of fed up but we also have to remember that there were a lot of lousy regimental commanders after the Civil War and the army is one one reporter put it is a great school for grumblers so you know it's probably always been true but in the western frontier it was really true you know you're out with you know five guys at a you know a telegraph station somewhere you know in miserable hot conditions lousy food day after day of doing nothing people were unhappy but Custer put really after the Civil War did not put much effort into you know really managing his his subordinate officers ladies and gentleman we have time for one more question what was the reason for his attack on Black Kettle presumably knowing that they were friendly Indians well actually the problem is they didn't know that there was there was a chain of settlements again they would go into winter camp the Indians would and there along the Washita River and most of them Black Kettle was kind of on the outs with the rest of the southern Cheyenne's because he was opposed to confrontation so his his camp was a little bit away from the main camp and they would camp with allies who they intermarried with like the Kiowa as for example and and what happened is they followed the back trail of a war party through the snow and it led directly to black kettle's camp and then Custer sent out scouts in it you know he had a group of civilian as well as Osage Scouts with him to go circle around and recognize and so you know he they wanted to launch a surprise attack it was a standard army tactic on on a native village to attack a concentric attack he didn't want to give it away so how he would have actually discovered he's been criticized for tagging by cattle and certainly was as terrible and yet there's two things one the war party did go through the village members of black kettle's band had taken part in in these you know there's no firm line between this band in that and the the third thing is is that quite frankly I don't know how he would have known who was the chief of that band that's where the trail led that's where he attacked and you know I mean that you know he would have had to basically called the truce and got it and but the interesting thing is that later on in that same campaign he actually surprised another southern giant village an even larger one and in that case he did not attack and the reason was that they had two white women hostages and he didn't want to endanger their lives so he he was posted ready to attack and eventually he sees two hostages three hostages so pretty brutal you know rough tactics and yet he avoided an all-out battle so the irony is is that custer himself I would say customers fulfilling all the obligations he was doing what he was ordered to do Sheridan wanted a bloody attack as a send a signal that it's it's pointless to oppose us and to get control of a part of that population and so Custer I think could not have gone the whole campaign without attacking and yet at the same time he also showed later on that it was possible to get control of a population without attacking because he actually managed that credit directly so the irony is he showed his first attack wasn't necessary the other thing about that Washita is that his mostly criticized for killing women and children his coughing compared to Sand Creek which was a deliberate massacre by us volunteers from Colorado it was they delivery tried to kill everybody including women and children in this case Custer put a stop to the killing of women and children as soon as he saw it was going on but Sheridan had ordered him to kill all fighting aged males and he brought a nun back alive so that means any fighting aged males that were wounded or fell into their hands did not survive so Custer did exactly what he was ordered to do now it's not like we've got orders of them being lined up and shot but there was no they were not going to take prisoners and they didn't so there was an atrocity and what I say about Custer is that this doesn't absolve Custer but it puts him in context so you know he could have defied those orders he could have taken prisoners the later you know incident defined expectations and didn't attack but it also shows that the problem with Custer morally in terms of the Indian Wars is that use very mainstream for the frontier army it's the nature of that conflict now as I mentioned the Indian Wars and the high plains especially the central plains are driven by migration as people go into the mines into California and other places farther west there's only later that settlement comes into the issue that migration was eroding the the very basis of their economy and their lifestyle the irony is is that the army could have not fought and eventually they would have won just that the way things were going it would have made their independence and their resistance untenable on the other hand it's hard to imagine when that warfare involved raids on settlements when when they're raping women murdering people you know civilians it's hard to imagine army officer like Sheridan saying well we've got to take the bigger picture I mean this is 1868 they're gonna say we have to we have to punish them and so it's unrealistic to expect them to take that option even though that option objectively did exist so again Custer could be very ruthless in the West but that doesn't make him an outlier that actually puts some totally mainstream in the frontier army alright ladies and gentleman if you can help me say thank you to mr. Stiles can I just say those are great questions nobody asked me like what happened to the Little Bighorn thank you that's it my my book deals with a little big hurt in the epilogue but my my whole point of departure was part of the reason the little bigger is such a big deal is that it was Custer who got wiped out there so to understand that we have to look at Custer leading up to that moment why he was both a celebrity and so divisive so thank you for not making my talk about the Little Bighorn thank you

Channel: The USAHEC

Views: 63,429

Keywords: USAHEC, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, T.J. Stiles, George Custer, Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

Id: qeb3MMP-Tg4

Length: 73min 28sec (4408 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2017