What kind of person was custer

He wore a uniform of black velveteen, with gold lace that extended from his wrist to his elbow, a wide-collared blue sailor shirt with silver stars sewn on and a red necktie around his throat.

He had apparently had the uniform made by a tailor at an earlier date. Custer said later that he wanted a distinctive uniform so his men could see him during combat. Superior officers and newspapermen could also see such striking attire, unlike any other in the army.

Whatever doubts the Michiganders had about their new brigadier, Custer removed them within days. At Hanover, Pa. Two days later, at Hunterstown, he personally led a company in an attack down a narrow road, and his horse was killed under him. Custer had been deploying skirmishers to test the Confederate position and numbers when his superior, Brig. Judson Kilpatrick, ordered the mounted charge. When Custer rode to the front of the company, he evidently wanted to demonstrate his personal bravery to the men.

The renown that he had sought for so long came a day later, on the John Rummel farm east of Gettysburg. In an engagement with Maj. Riding in the van of each regiment, Custer shouted to the men, Come on, you Wolverines!

During the Southern retreat from Gettysburg, clashes occurred almost daily between the mounted opponents. On July 14, at Falling Waters, Md. As he had done at Hunterstown, Custer deployed dismounted skirmishers. Two companies of the 6th Michigan ascended a ridge and plunged into the Rebel works, held by infantrymen. In the ensuing melee, the Federals lost more than half their numbers and were routed. It had not been Custer who had acted rashly, but Kilpatrick. The old Michigan Brigade adored its Brigadier, and all felt as if he weighed about a ton.

A private declared that Custer had put the very devil into the regiments. They had called him at first the boy General of the Golden Lock.

But he had shown them, in the estimation of one Wolverine, that he was not afraid to fight like a private soldier…and that he was ever in front and would never ask them to go where he would not lead. An officer told his mother in a letter, It is an honor to belong to Mich Cavalry. No soldier who saw him on that day…ever questioned his right to wear a star, or all the gold lace he felt inclined to wear.

One of his aides confided in a letter: To say that General Custer is a brave man is unnecessary. He has proved himself to be not only that but also a very cool and self possessed man. It is indeed difficult to disturb his mental Equilibrium. A Michigander put it bluntly to his wife, He is a very odd man but he understand his business. He, Merritt and others brought aggressiveness to Federal cavalry tactics. Union troopers had achieved parity, which eventually became superiority.

In February , Custer secured a leave, returning to Monroe for his wedding. For much of the previous year, he and Elizabeth Libbie Bacon had conducted a clandestine courtship through letters. By the fall of , however, Judge Bacon had relented to her wishes, and on February 9, , the couple was married. Custer and Libbie enjoyed a honeymoon and another extended leave together before he rejoined the army for its spring operations.

By then, General in Chief Ulysses S. Grant had appointed Major General Philip H. Thirty-three years old, Sheridan was a barrel-chested man with unusually short legs. Lincoln wryly described him as a brown, chunky little chap, with a long body, short legs, not enough neck to hang him, and such long arms that if his ankles itch he can scratch them without stooping.

Sheridan possessed, however, a combativeness that Grant wanted instilled into the mounted arm. Sheridan from what I learn and see is an able and good commander and I like him very much. Their personal and professional relationship was destined to endure until Little Bighorn.

As the Michiganders prepared for the forthcoming campaign, their writings revealed their abiding respect for and devotion to Custer. Kidd of Custer in a letter to his father.

He can get twice the fight out of this brigade than any other man can possibly do. A member of the 5th Michigan Cavalry believed that he is the best cavalry officer left in the Army of the Potomac. A private could talk to him as freely as an officer. If he had any complaint to make, Custer was always ready to listen. During the Overland Campaign in May-June , under the leadership of Custer and his regimental commanders, the Michiganders—fighting mounted and dismounted—showed time and again that they were arguably the finest cavalry brigade in the Union army.

So brave a man I never saw and as competent as brave. Under him a man is ashamed to be cowardly. Under him our men can achieve wonders.

A fierce test came for the Michiganders on June 11 at Trevilian Station. In terms of the battle, the main point I wish to make is that made by Robert Utley: We should give the Lakotas, Cheyennes, and Arapahos credit for their victory rather than putting all the focus on Custer.

They earned that victory, not just with numbers but with fighting skill, morale, and exceptional leadership. How do you see it? His expedition to the Black Hills found gold, and thus paved the way for a massive illegal immigration into this piece of Sioux territory. I think Custer does not bear much of the blame personally, but he certainly served as a willing instrument of federal policy.

Everyone expected his expedition to find gold. As far as the campaign goes, Custer joined it late. As in on the Southern Plains, Gen. Philip Sheridan planned for three columns to converge on hostile territory. Unknown to Custer and his commander, Gen. Alfred Terry, the southern column was driven off at the Rosebud shortly before the Little Bighorn.

Custer was sent to attack the big gathering of Lakotas and Cheyennes and drive them north, toward Terry and another force under Col. John Gibbon. Custer found the village, and on his approach divided the 7th Cavalry Regiment into three battalions and a pack train. He and the largest battalion were surrounded and wiped out; the others were besieged on a hilltop through the next day, before Terry and Gibbon rescued them.

The injustice of federal policy toward the Sioux and Cheyennes seems more apparent to most Americans. As a result, the Little Bighorn is much more commonly seen as poetic justice, both for Custer personally and for the frontier Army. Your book suggests that there was much more to this man than the stereotype preferred by competing factions. An intense, ambitious person, he was extremely volatile, lurching from great successes to self-created disasters.

I see him as a figure on a frontier in time, as modern America came into existence. He helped to create modernity, yet he could never adapt to it. He was a career officer in the Army, the first large institution in an increasingly organizational society, yet he never functioned smoothly in that setting. He fought in what some call the first modern war, the Civil War, yet he escaped the brutal mass slaughter of the infantry battles that characterized it. A new, much darker literary sensibility arose out of the war, yet Custer remained a romantic, his illusions reinforced by his wartime adventures.

He wrote for new national magazines, which fostered a more economical, modern prose, yet he wrote in a florid antebellum style. He threw himself into politics, but he opposed the new vision of universal rights that emerged after emancipation. He used his image as a frontiersman to try to float a silver mine on Wall Street, yet he never got a grip on the new world of finance. His life is a fascinating story of a capable yet self-destructive man struggling to escape obsolescence in a changing world.

Was this the real man or a careful construct? It made him brittle and volatile; he lashed out whenever he was criticized.

He won high rank in the Civil War, where his men loved him, but he felt unsure of his ability to inspire men outside of combat.

He compensated with martinet manners and ferocious discipline, leading to widespread resentment. He also failed to maintain healthy relations with his subordinates. At the Little Bighorn, he was not served well by Maj. Marcus Reno or Capt. Frederick Benteen, his two senior subordinates; Benteen in particular hated Custer.

Yet, despite the failings of these men, Custer was the commander. He bore the ultimate responsibility for the atmosphere in his command. Stiles: Custer was always projecting a story about himself, yet he also had real ability.

In it Tolstoy describes a young man who had a reputation as the most dashing man in the regiment. It is not an actual description of Custer, of course, but in writing of this Russian officer, Tolstoy captures Custer perfectly:. In turn, the visibility of that post led to his promotion to brigadier general in Placed in command of the Michigan Cavalry Brigade, over the next few years Custer distinguished himself at such important battles as Gettysburg and Yellow Tavern and earned himself the nickname "Boy General," in reference to his relatively young age.

By the war's end, Custer had been promoted yet again, to the rank of major general, and his cavalry units were crucial in blocking the movements of Confederate General Robert E. Lee 's retreating forces, which helped hasten his surrender at Appomattox, on April 9, In recognition of his heroism, Lieutenant General Philip Sheridan gave the young military hero the table used to sign the war's peace terms, including with it a note to Custer's wife, Libbie, in praise of her husband.

Following the war, as the still-young country looked to settle the West, it needed to defeat the Lakota Sioux and Southern Cheyenne that dominated parts of the frontier. To that end, the 7th Cavalry was created and Custer was placed in its command. After serving a brief suspension for deserting his post in , Custer returned to action the following year and participated in several small battles against Native Americans in the region over the next several years.

But Custer's legendary bravery in battle would prove to be his undoing when, in , the United States ordered an attack intended to crush the Lakota and Cheyenne. Though the plan was for three separate forces—one of which was led by Custer—to surround and overwhelm them, Custer and his men advanced more quickly than the other two units, and on June 25 Custer ordered his men to attack a large Native American village.

On the other side of the attack was Sitting Bull , the revered Lakota chief who had originally wanted peace at Little Bighorn. Custer, however, was determined to fight. Against the onrush of thousands of Lakota, Arapaho and Cheyenne warriors, Custer and all of his men were surrounded, overwhelmed and killed.

The Battle of Little Bighorn was a stinging embarrassment to the U. For his role in the battle, Custer earned himself his place in American history, though certainly not in the way he would have wished for. During her final years, Custer's wife wrote accounts of her husband's life that cast him in a heroic light, but no story could overcome the debacle that became known as Custer's Last Stand. The lock came from the collection of artist and American West enthusiast Glen Swanson, who said that it was preserved when Custer saved his hair following a trip to the barber, in case he needed a wig.