Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (15 page)

When Autie was seven years old, war with Mexico loomed. The Democrats were hawks, the Whigs doves. At militia drill one day Autie waved a penny flag and called out loudly, “My voice is for war!” Emmanuel quoted the battle cry so often, and others like it, that Autie learned a life-long lesson—the outrageous statement or action was a sure way to draw attention to himself.
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Starting at the age of six or seven, Autie spent a few months each year in school. Prior to that time his education had been in family hands; now society took over a part of the task. By the 1840s most Ohioans supported the idea of public education and saw to it that a majority of the children got some book learning. By 1850 Harrison County had only 1,507 illiterates out of a total population of 20,157.
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Autie’s first teacher was probably a woman, but whether male or female, the teacher inculcated in him the values of the society. In so doing, of course, the teacher was seconding, reinforcing, and extending the lessons he had already learned at home. The whole idea
was to make Autie inner-directed, in David Riesman’s phrase, or as Erich Fromm expresses it: “In order that any society may function well, its members must acquire the kind of character which makes them
want
to act in the way they
have
to act as members of the society or of a special class within it. They had to
desire
what objectively is
necessary
for them to do.
Outer force
is to be replaced by
inner compulsion
and by the particular kind of human energy which is channeled into character traits.”
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Fromm’s insight, of course, applied also to Crazy Horse and the Oglalas.

Autie’s teachers taught him, first of all, discipline and respect for authority. A large and growing body of literature on education instructed the teachers on their duties, of which the most important was training good citizens for the Republic. The common theme in the pedagogical literature was that the maintenance of rigid discipline and authority in the schoolroom was by far the best means of inculcating respect for law and order.
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Corporal punishment was common. The schools also were used to pull the diverse population together; in the words of the superintendent of public instruction in Indiana, the policy was “to make of all the varieties of population among us, differing as they do in origin, language, habits of thought, modes of action, and social custom, one people, with one common interest.”
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The accepted method for accomplishing that goal was a heavy emphasis on American history, especially on the Revolution and the Constitution. Autie learned that his country was uniquely blessed, had the finest form of government ever conceived by man, was the freest the world had ever known, and had a Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent. He heard no criticism of past American actions, only praise for what his predecessors had accomplished.
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The schools laid great emphasis on the principle of the equality of white Americans, but in practice openly recognized the existence of a class society. Indeed, teachers sold the idea of public schooling on the grounds that they would teach the poor to respect other men’s property. One professional educator minced no words in putting the question, “What surer guaranty can the capitalist find for the security of his investments, than is to be found in the sense of a community morally and intellectually enlightened?” while another spokesman observed that “to the owner of property, no economy is more important than that which shall reform those who have it in their power to plunder and destroy.”
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David Page, the leading writer on education for nearly half a century, emphasized the duty of teachers to instruct children with regard to “the sacredness of all property”; similar lessons were taught by Noah Webster’s
Elementary Speller.
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So young Autie learned what was expected of him and how to prosper in his society. He had a happy disposition and seems to have been everyone’s favorite. Strong, handsome, and athletic, he had a dare-devil spirit and an infectious grin. Having had so much experience wrestling, fighting, racing, and playing other sports with his older brothers and sisters, he outstripped all his classmates at school in athletics. Emmanuel had moved from New Rumley to a farm a couple of miles outside the village, so Autie worked hard, ate well, and grew stronger every day. He knew a great deal about the care and use of domestic animals and about growing a crop. He was especially good with horses; Emmanuel had kept up his blacksmith business and Autie frequently helped him with that work too. Most of all, Autie was responsible—by the time he was ten he could be trusted to feed the stock or clean the stables, or do other tasks.

A classmate of young Autie, Judge R. M. Voorhees, later described him during this period: “Without advantages, despite the hard work of the farm, he was a leader in sports, by nature manly, exuberant, enthusiastic, with a noble, knightly countenance.” It must be said that when the judge delivered his opinion, Custer was dead and famous; one can doubt that as a child anyone thought of Autie as “knightly” or “noble.”
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By the time Autie was ten years old his parents had three more boys of their own—Nevin, Thomas, and Boston—and the house must have been crowded. At least one of the older children had moved out, however; in 1845 Autie’s half sister, Lydia Kirkpatrick, married David Reed of Monroe, Michigan, and went there to live. The young bride became lonesome in a home of her own without a gang of kids running around all day long. And she especially missed Autie, who had always been her favorite, almost a son—she had helped make his baby clothes and his velvet military suit. (The only physical scar Autie had—or would ever have—came because of Lydia. When Autie was a tot she had put him on a skittish heifer for a joke. The heifer bucked and Autie was thrown to the ground, receiving a bad cut on his forehead.)

Lydia wanted Autie to come to Monroe to live with her, help David in his draying business and on the farm, and attend school. Maria agreed—she had more than enough children to look after and Monroe’s schools were thought to be superior to those of New Rumley.
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So Autie left home. Monroe had a population of 3,500 in 1849, equal parts French, English, and German. The second oldest town in southern Michigan, it had pretensions of sophistication. There
was an established class, a group of leading citizens who owned or controlled the community’s economic life and liked to think of itself as composing an elect society. In Monroe, in short, Autie encountered snobbery for the first time. He saw it from the underside, too, for the Reeds were not members of the better classes.

A retired Army officer with aristocratic pretensions, Major Joseph R. Smith, dismissed the Reeds with a verbal back of the hand: “Of course we did not associate with them.” Another resident of Monroe commented: “We did not associate with the [Reeds and] Custers. They were quite ordinary people, no intellectual interests, very little schooling.”
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We can only conjecture as to how Autie reacted to the new situation. A bright, inquisitive, sensitive youngster, he probably noticed the difference between his family’s standing in New Rumley and in Monroe. He does seem to have worked harder at his studies. He could never stand to be second at anything and he had the American faith that education was the best ladder for social and economic climbing.

He got a job working for the town’s leading resident, Judge Daniel S. Bacon, a man of imposing position, power, and wealth. Everyone in town knew and respected the judge, a widower with one daughter; she was much the prettiest girl in town. Elizabeth “Libbie” Bacon was about two years younger than Autie,
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but she caught his eye nonetheless. One day Autie was walking down Monroe Street when he ran into Libbie swinging on her front gate. “Hi, you Custer boy!” she called out, grinning, before fleeing to the house.
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Libbie fascinated Autie—she was so pert, sprightly, and out of reach. He asked the judge if he could do odd jobs in the yard and the judge agreed. But whatever happiness Autie felt was soon dashed, as he quickly learned his place. A neighbor related: “Young Custer got a little job working for the Bacons. He used to hang around the back yard and wait for Libbie. He was not received in her home. He was of good character but the family just couldn’t see him.”
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One can imagine Autie standing at the back door of the judge’s home, digging a toe in the dirt, receiving a few coins from the judge for the day’s work, trying to peek around his rather corpulent figure to catch a glimpse of the interior of the finest house in Monroe—it even had a piano!
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After two years in Monroe, Autie went back to New Rumley. The reason is unknown. He stayed in Ohio for two years, working on
Emmanuel’s farm and continuing his studies, then returned to Monroe, probably because of its better schools. At the age of fourteen Autie entered Alfred Stebins’ Young Men’s Academy, which he attended for the next two years. He was the top scholar in his class, so good that he could hold his position without studying. His deskmate, John Bulkley, recalled how Autie often smuggled novels into class and read them behind the textbook during geography hour. His favorite reading was military fiction.

Autie had a fierce temper and was astonishingly impetuous. He was a good speller and led his class in spelling bees. On one occasion a truant rival stood outside the schoolhouse window as Autie was struggling with a difficult word. The rival made faces and ornery gestures at Autie. Angry beyond endurance, Autie sprang to the window, smashed his fist through the glass, and bloodied his tormentor’s nose.
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Autie graduated from the Academy at the age of sixteen and immediately got a position as principal of a school back in Harrison County, Ohio—“principal” meaning that he was the only teacher in the one-room schoolhouse. He was paid $25 per month, with board. When he received his first month’s pay he rushed home to New Rumley, where he found his mother sitting in a rocker. Breathlessly, he threw the money into her lap. “My first earnings,” he managed to gasp. “For you.” He later said it was one of the happiest moments of his life.
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Autie was a popular teacher. His students recalled that he tusseled with the boys on the playground, washed the girls’ faces in the snow, and played an accordion for opening exercises. He enjoyed arguing politics, just as Emmanuel did, and used to roar out denunciations of “Black Republicans” (abolitionists). A staunch Democrat, he once assigned a student, Sara McFarland, the theme topic “James Buchanan, Our Honored President.” Sara changed the title to “Ten-Cent Jimmie,” but Autie did not punish her for the impudence. Sara also remembered Autie’s dancing blue eyes and his curly red-gold hair which he brushed back over his ears. She thought, as she watched him, “what a pretty girl he would have made.”
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Autie boarded in the home of a substantial farmer, and there he fell in love with the farmer’s daughter, Mary Holland. After school he would write of his emotions to her. Custer biographer Jay Monaghan writes, “Boy and man, Custer preferred to express himself on paper rather than orally.” “You occupy the first place in my affections, and the only place as far as love is concerned,” he wrote Mary. “If any power which I possess or control can aid in or in any way hasten our marriage, it shall be exerted for that object. But I will talk with you
about it when I see you next at the trundle-bed.” He ended one note, “Farewell, my only Love, until we meet again — From your true & faithful Lover, Bachelor Boy.”

Whichever of the joys of intimacy Autie and Mary were discovering on the trundle bed on the Holland farm, they were enough to lead the love-struck Autie to poetry:

To Mary

I’ve seen and kiss’d that crimson lip

With honied smiles o’erflowing,

Enchanted watch’d the opening rose,

Upon thy soft cheek glowing.

Dear Mary, thy eyes may prove less blue,

Thy beauty fade to-morrow;

But Oh, my heart can ne’er forget

Thy parting look of sorrow.
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By this time the sixteen-year-old Autie was interested in going to the United States Military Academy at West Point. It was the only place, besides the Naval Academy, in the country where he could get a free higher education; it would give him immediate social standing (and he had learned from both the Bacons and the Hollands that his social standing needed improvement) and a secure future. He wanted Mary to marry him before he left but she did not like the idea of being a soldier’s wife. At this point her father seems to have intervened. He knew that West Point cadets could not marry, evidently felt besides that his daughter was much too young to be contemplating marriage, and may have wanted her to do better for herself in the husband line. In any event, Holland evidently played a major, though discreet, role in getting Autie his West Point appointment.

Custer’s biographers have been mystified by Autie’s desire to go to West Point, but the reasons seem clear enough. He had gone as high as he was likely to go in Harrison County, Ohio; he had no real future in Michigan; he was ambitious; his parents couldn’t possibly afford a higher education and West Point was free; he wanted adventure; and the idea of soldiering appealed to him. His major difficulty was securing an appointment, for the local congressman, John A. Bingham, was a Whig turned Republican, and appointments to West Point were
in the hands of the district representative. The Custers were notorious Democrats and Americans of the period took their politics seriously.