Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (27 page)

Most of all, Custer discovered that he loved the smells, sights, and sounds of the battlefield. For him, no thrill compared to the saber charge. He was most thoroughly himself when he stood in his stirrups, bullets whizzing all around him, drew his saber, turned his head, and called out to the thousands of men behind him, “Charge!” Like George S. Patton, Jr., and hundreds of other generals through the ages, Custer was disappointed when “his” war ended, and he hardly knew what to do with himself. Only twenty-five years
old at Appomattox, he had done it all, seen it all. Everything that followed, until the last week of his life, was anticlimactic.

Custer fought in innumerable battles in the Civil War. They have all been recorded. Incredibly small details are known about what he did, what his unit did, how a battle as a whole was fought. We know where Custer was on each day of the four-year war and what he was doing there. There is no need to go into such details here, fortunately, because Custer’s biography has been written, accurately and wisely, by Jay Monaghan. Indeed, Monaghan’s
Custer
is a model biography—scholarly, detailed, and lively. It cannot be surpassed and hardly needs to be summarized. General remarks about Custer’s Civil War, however, coupled with an attempt to understand why he did what he did, may help illuminate the man and his culture.

The first thing that stands out about Custer’s Civil War is that he was not engaged in a crusade. Custer shared his opponents’ assumptions and prejudices about the nature of the world, just as Crazy Horse did not object to the way the Crows lived but simply enjoyed fighting them. In politics, Custer was a War Democrat, loyal to the Union but opposed to the destruction of slavery or indeed any assault on the southern way of life. His proclivities in that direction, already pronounced when the war began, were immeasurably strengthened by service on the staff of General George B. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan gave Custer his first big break and Custer idolized him: “I have more confidence in General McClellan than in any man living,” he wrote in March 1862. “I would forsake everything and follow him to the ends of the earth. I would lay down my life for him.”
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The source of McClellan’s magnetism for Custer was obviously not “Little Mac’s” fighting style—McClellan avoided pitched battle whenever possible, while Custer embraced it. Custer did admire the way McClellan carried himself—he looked and acted like a soldier—but even more Custer responded to the atmosphere McClellan created around his headquarters. There were any number of French dukes and even princes there, and for Custer just being around royalty was a heady experience. In addition, prominent Democrats were always hanging around McClellan’s headquarters. They drank their whiskey straight and told rough, barrack room jokes about “niggers,” Lincoln, and the “Black Republicans.” Custer joined in the fun.

They also plotted against the government. In the summer of 1862 Fernando Wood, the recent mayor of New York City, visited McClellan’s headquarters. Wood was a leader of those northern Democrats who allowed their sympathy for the South, their hatred of
blacks, and their opposition to the Republican party to carry them to the brink of treason. Wood and his friends were grooming McClellan for the 1864 Democratic nomination for the Presidency—or possibly for a
coup d’état.
It was an improbable proposition at best and seems impossible today to take seriously, but Wood was serious, and McClellan may have been. The “Young Napoleon” felt that he had been stabbed in the back by the Republicans, who in his view had deliberately withheld reinforcements from him during his Peninsula campaign of 1862 in order to bring on a humiliating defeat and thus get rid of him.

In addition, McClellan had basic policy differences with the Lincoln Administration. The general wanted a “soft” war, while Lincoln was inclining to the view that it would have to be a “hard” war, much of the difference between the hards and the softs centering around the problem of slavery. Lincoln was moving closer to abolishing it, and just before Wood arrived at McClellan’s headquarters, the latter had written to Lincoln, telling the President to change policy “or our cause will be lost. … Neither confiscation of property, political executions of persons, territorial organization of states or forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment.” McClellan showed Wood a similar, although apparently more inflammatory note. When Brigadier General William F. Smith, one of McClellan’s closest friends, saw the second document, his hair stood on end and he mumbled, “It looks like treason.” On Smith’s advice, McClellan destroyed the document, but he certainly discussed the gist of it with Wood.
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McClellan’s staff, of course, knew what was going on and gossiped about it constantly. Since to Custer, McClellan’s views were so close to those of his father Emmanuel, his West Point friends, and his own, he felt himself to be a patriot when he joined in campfire talk about marching on Washington and putting Little Mac at the head of the government. On November 7, 1862, when Lincoln finally removed McClellan from his command of the Army of the Potomac, replacing him with Major General Ambrose E. Burnside, Custer and his fellow aides—all West Pointers, save for the foreigners—began drinking and swaggering around the headquarters tents. They were “talking both loudly and disloyally,” according to young Lieutenant James H. Wilson, and there was whiskey talk about “changing front on Washington” and setting McClellan up as a dictator. McClellan put such talk to rest when he took his leave of the Army, ordering it to “stand by General Burnside as you have stood by me,” but the
attitude lingered, poisoning the Army of the Potomac throughout its existence.
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On leaving the Army, McClellan went to New York to write his final report. Custer went with him. Little Mac was as much drawn to Custer as Custer was to him, and had requested his services in preparing his report. For Custer, then almost twenty-three years old, the experience of working with McClellan on the report reinforced all his prejudices. There was, first of all, McClellan’s disdain for civilians generally and politicians especially. In the report, McClellan declared, “A statesman may, perhaps, be more competent than a soldier to determine the political objects and direction of a campaign; but those once decided upon, everything should be left to the responsible military head, without interference from civilians.” That “may, perhaps,” is priceless, but neither McClellan nor Custer thought it in any way remarkable.
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While he was in New York, Custer met more Democratic politicians, who seemed always to gather around McClellan, and indulged in more silly talk about the “treason” of the Republicans. Custer would later cultivate his contacts with the leading East Coast Democrats. He could not help but be impressed, young as he was, by the rich and powerful men he saw and talked with, and he was awed by the social life of New York’s upper crust. McClellan’s Democratic admirers in New York had presented the general with a house; Custer told his sister he had never seen such a palatial residence. Monaghan points out that the experience of helping McClellan prepare his report also taught Custer that no commander ever admits defeat, especially in his reports. In a number of instances, Custer knew that McClellan was indulging in plain and simple lies, most of all in his statements on enemy numbers.
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But Custer never wavered in his loyalty to McClellan, not even when it became obvious that being known as a “McClellan man” was a positive detriment to his career. Custer fought his way to the top; he earned his general officer rank despite, rather than as a result of, his politics. He stuck with his principles and never signed on for a crusade against slavery, but he also stuck with the Army and the Union.

One reason, perhaps, was that war was so much fun. An aspect of Custer’s joyful response to combat may have been that he did not hate his enemy. Few men were as effective in making war on the Confederacy as Custer, but no Union officer exceeded him in admiration for the southern way of life or in friendship for individual Confederate officers. The war had some of the aspects of a game about it,
at least to Custer; it was as if he were a modern college football player, congratulating his opponents at the end of a hard-fought game. “I rejoice, dear Pelham, in your success,” he wrote West Point classmate John Pelham, who was making a name for himself in the Confederate artillery. After one of the early battles, Custer went to see “Gimlet” Lea, a West Point friend who had been captured. Tears welled in Lea’s eyes as he embraced “Fanny.” Custer brought him a meal and they chatted into the night, exchanging news of classmates on both sides. When Custer left he gave Lea some clothes and money. Bystanders wondered if they were brothers.
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And at the end of the war, while Grant and Lee were signing the surrender terms at Appomattox, Custer was fraternizing with his rebel friends, as he had done at every opportunity throughout the past four years.
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Custer was really a very young man, and nothing reminds us more forcibly of his youth than an incident of the Peninsula campaign. While McClellan was disembarking his massive Army from the Peninsula (a time when there were tasks aplenty for his staff), Custer prevailed on his commander for a two-week furlough. He spent it visiting with Gimlet Lea, who was on parole and about to be married. At the Tidewater house where Lea was staying, Custer made himself at home. Lea’s bride-to-be was there, along with her cousin. “What do you think of the girls?” Lea whispered in Custer’s ear the first evening.

“Beautiful, both of them. Beautiful.”

Lea had pushed forward the date of his wedding so that Custer could be there. It was an Episcopalian service, highly dignified. After the ceremony, Lea noticed that his Cousin Maggie was crying.

“What are you crying for?” he asked. “Oh, I know. You are crying because you are not married; well, here is the minister and here is Captain Custer, who I know would be glad to carry off such a pretty bride from the Southern Confederacy.”

“Captain Lea,” the girl said between sobs, “you are just as mean as you can be.” Going in to dinner that evening, Custer took Maggie’s arm and whispered, “I don’t see how such a strong Secessionist can take the arm of a Union officer.”

“You
ought
to be in
our
army,” she snapped back.

It was a gay two weeks for the four young people. They sang songs in the evening around the piano (“For Southern Rights, Hurrah!” “Dixie,” and other southern favorites), played cards, or just chatted merrily, teasing each other. Custer stayed in the delightful surroundings so long that he was the last Union officer to leave the Peninsula. The Army of the Potomac was gone before Custer had even said
his good-byes to his rebel friends, and he had to book passage on a private steamer to get back to Washington.
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McClellan never asked Custer where he had been—Little Mac had enough problems at the time, since Lincoln at the end of August 1862 had taken much of his Army from him and given it to General John Pope for the second Bull Run campaign—so Custer’s luck held. Indeed, as mentioned above, it was always good. His Civil War record is replete with incidents in which he was in the right place at the right time. When Custer left West Point to take up his duties in Washington, for example, his classmates had a two-week jump on him. They had been where the action was while he had sat in the guardhouse at West Point. On the train to Washington, Custer probably fretted that his friends had taken all the choice assignments and that he would get off to a poor start on his Army career.

He arrived in Washington on the eve of the first battle of Bull Run. Reporting to the Adjutant-General’s office, he had to wait a few hours before finding an officer with time enough to accept his papers. The officer glanced at them, looked at some records, and informed Custer that he had been assigned to the 2nd Cavalry. Then, almost as an afterthought, the officer casually inquired, “Perhaps you would like to be presented to General Scott, Mr. Custer?” Then, according to Monaghan, “Young Armstrong stood dumfounded [sic]. He had glimpsed the grand figure of Winfield Scott when that dignitary visited the Academy for reviews, but the general had been as untouchable as the upper social set back in Monroe. He stammered assent …” (Winfield Scott, an old man by this time and soon to be retired, made something of pets of the West Point cadets and was always willing to do something special for them.)

After an exchange of greetings, Scott told Custer that his classmates were drilling recruits. “Now, what can I do for you? Would you prefer to be ordered to report to General Mansfield to aid in this work, or is your desire for something more active?”

What a choice! Custer indicated that he wanted to go into the line.

“A very commendable resolution, young man,” Scott replied. “Go and provide yourself with a horse, if possible, and call here at seven o’clock this evening. I desire to send some dispatches to General McDowell at Centerville, and you can be the bearer of them. You are not afraid of a night ride, are you?” (Brigadier General Irvin McDowell was in command of the Union troops in northeastern Virginia.)

“No, sir,” Custer replied, snapping into a salute. His luck continued to hold. He found a horse by great good fortune, made the ride to McDowell’s headquarters, handed over Scott’s dispatches, got to
meet McDowell’s chief staff officers, joined his regiment, participated in the battle of Bull Run, got himself mentioned in the reports on the engagement, and had a quiet laugh at his classmates who had missed the battle. And it all happened because he had been court-martialed at West Point and was thus late in reporting for duty.
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A second example of Custer’s penchant for being where it counted came the following year during the Peninsula campaign, the occasion of his first meeting with McClellan. One day McClellan rode to the south bank of the Chickahominy River, attended by his usual retinue of princes, counts, rich Democrats, and distinguished regular Army officers. Custer, a fresh second lieutenant attached to a division staff, was at the rear of the column. When McClellan got to the riverbank he stopped, looked up- and downstream, and then said reflectively: “I wish I knew how deep it is.” No one stirred, but his question was passed down the line. Custer rode out from his place in the ranks, trotted up to the bank, put his spurs to his horse, and plunged into the river with the remark, “I’ll damn soon show how deep it is.” He quickly reached the other shore, turned around and forded the river again, came ashore, and called out, “That’s how deep it is, General.” Then he quietly rode back to his place in line.