Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (30 page)

Custer did indeed keep his pledge. He would not even touch wine at formal dinner parties. He also took a pledge to refrain from cursing; on this point the evidence is not as clear as it was with regard to drinking, but most of Custer’s Army associates testify that after 1862 he seldom swore. It obviously took a man of strong character to keep either pledge, much less both, but Custer’s self-discipline was so strong that somehow he managed to do it.

The temptations not to do so were great throughout his life. The U. S. Army was hardly a teetotaling institution and Custer spent his adult years in close association with hard-drinking, hard-swearing officers. At no time was he more severely tested than during the first months of his pledge. According to Captain Charles Francis Adams of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, “During the winter [of 1862-63] … I can say from personal knowledge and experience, that the Headquarters of the Army of the Potomac was a place to which no self-respecting man liked to go, and no decent woman could go. It was a combination of barroom and brothel.” Custer nevertheless remained steadfast; his character was as solid as a rock.
³²

Libbie was soon enough ready to forget, or at least to forgive, Custer’s spree, but the judge was not. He had invited Custer to his home on one occasion, but it was a stiff, formal affair and he had told Libbie to stay upstairs, out of sight. The judge himself never introduced his daughter to Custer, nor did he allow her to meet other soldiers. “Oh, Wifey, Wifey!” he would cry out to the second Mrs. Bacon, “one of those mustached, gilt-striped and button critters will get our Libbie yet!” Custer had other disadvantages aside from his occupation—he came from a lower-class family and the judge could never forgive his drunken spectacle.

By this time Custer and Libbie were seeing each other regularly at social events, exchanging long looks in church, and otherwise flirting. The judge ordered his daughter never to see Custer again. To seal the matter, he told Libbie to go to Toledo, Ohio, until young Custer left town. A friend from Toledo, Annie Cotton, had
been visiting Libbie in Monroe, so a return visit was easily arranged. Custer came to the train station to see Libbie off. Judge Bacon watched, aghast, as Custer gallantly touched Libbie’s elbow to help her onto the train. The judge had not dreamed that their intimacy had gone so far. When he got home, he wrote his daughter a stern letter, deeply critical of her loose ways.

Libbie replied with some heat “You have never been a girl, Father,”
†
she began, “and you cannot tell how hard a trial this was for me. At the depot he assisted Annie Cotton just as much as he did me.” She informed her father that she had told Custer “never to meet me, and he has the sense to understand. But,” she added, refusing to give in to her father’s dictatorial orders, “I did not promise never to see him again.” Monroe people, she said, “will please mind their own business, and let me alone. If the whole world Oh’d and Ah’d it would not move me … Do not blame Captain Custer. He has many fine traits and Monroe will yet be proud of him.”
³³

Custer, meanwhile, did his best to please the judge. He made sure that Bacon knew of his temperance pledge, and in any case the judge, as a leading politician in town, could hardly ignore Monroe’s young war hero (though they were of different political parties). The two were thrown together often at Union rallies. After he returned to the war, Custer corresponded with the judge, keeping him abreast of the war news and doing all he could to impress the older man with his sincerity and maturity. At the same time, Custer was corresponding secretly with Libbie—he addressed his letters to Nettie Humphrey, one of Libbie’s Monroe friends, who read them to Libbie. He was desperate by this time to have Libbie for his own and he knew that could happen only if he married her. He also knew he could marry her only with the judge’s consent, and that consent would come only if he proved himself. In effect, the judge and the captain were dickering over Libbie as if she were a piece of property, but Libbie accepted the rules. Strong-willed as she was, she would never dream of marrying without her father’s blessing. So Custer went back to active duty more determined than ever to make a name for himself.

Throughout the spring of 1863, Custer shone. When General Robert E. Lee started his invasion of the North in early June, Pleasonton’s cavalry had the task of breaking through Confederate General J. E. B. (“Jeb”) Stuart’s cavalry, crossing the Blue Ridge
Mountains, and obtaining information on the size and direction of the Army of Northern Virginia. Custer fought in the various skirmishes and battles that resulted, frequently getting his name mentioned in dispatches. As McClellan’s aide, Custer had been a captain, but now that he was an aide to a corps commander (Pleasonton headed the Cavalry Corps) he reverted to his permanent rank of first lieutenant.

Custer was used to giving orders by this time, especially in a combat situation. Joseph Fought, a drummer boy who attached himself to Custer for most of the war (and wore oversize boots and long hair in emulation of his hero), described the situation that prevailed: “Genl. Pleasonton, a very active officer, was always anxious to be posted about what was doing in front of him. He himself could not be in front all the time, and in that respect his Trusties [aides] were more valuable to him than his brigade commanders. If Lt. Custer observed that it was important to make a movement or charge he would tell the commander to do it, and the commander would have to do it, would not dare question, because he knew Lt. Custer was working under Genl. Pleasonton who would confirm every one of his instructions and movements.”
³⁴

On the night before Pleasonton moved out to attack Stuart, June 8, 1863, Custer wrote a long letter to his sister Lydia. He described every detail of his duties, said he would wake Pleasonton at 2
A.M.
for a 4
A.M.
march, remarked that his health was excellent and that he never felt better in his life. But there was a good chance he would be killed in the campaign. “In case anything happens to me,” he wrote, “my trunk is to go to you. Burn all my letters.”
³⁵

The following day, just at daylight, Custer helped lead a charge into the midst of some rebel cavalry cooking breakfast, thus beginning the battle of Brandy Station. For the first time in the war, Union cavalry fought Stuart on even terms. Custer took command of the 8th New York Cavalry when its colonel was killed. He led a series of charges, got himself and his men surrounded and outnumbered, cut his way out, and was lucky enough to have Pleasonton observe some of the action. The general was pleased with the way his aide took over in a crisis.

On June 17, 1863, Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick, who had been a year ahead of Custer at West Point and who now commanded a brigade of three regiments (which fact made Lieutenant Custer burn with envy), attacked Stuart’s horsemen. Custer got into the fight but his horse, a favorite named Harry, bolted and carried him through the Confederate lines and into their rear. He described
what followed in a letter home: “I was surrounded by rebels, and cut off from my own men, but I made my way out safely, and all owing to my
hat,
which is a large broad brim [straw hat], exactly like that worn by the rebels. Every one tells me that I look like a rebel more than our own men. The rebels at first thought I was one of their own men, and did not attack me, except one, who rushed at me with his saber, but I struck him across the face with my saber, knocking him off his horse. I then put spurs to ‘Harry’ and made my escape.”
³⁶
Michigan newspapers played up the incident, making it appear that Custer saved the day by charging through the rebel lines.

On June 26 Pleasonton’s cavalry crossed the Potomac, close on Lee’s heels. The next day, when they were in Frederick, Maryland, the cavalrymen heard astonishing news. Lincoln had replaced Hooker with Major General George Gordon Meade as commander of the Army of the Potomac. The Cavalry Corps was being reorganized on the march: three new division commanders had been named, and new brigade commanders were expected to take over. (A Union cavalry division ordinarily had three brigades in it; each brigade contained three or four regiments. A regiment at full strength contained one thousand soldiers, but by 1863 the average size of a regiment was below five hundred. A cavalry brigade, then, contained between one thousand five hundred and two thousand troopers, while a division was five thousand to six thousand strong.) Kilpatrick, only a year older than Custer, became one of the division commanders, with a brigadier’s star on each shoulder to go with it Custer hid his jealousy, blurted out congratulations to Little Kil, then went off on the disagreeable task of inspecting the pickets in a pouring rain. His mood was hardly a good one when he returned to the aides’ tent, dripping wet, and threw back the flap.

Some wag called out, “Gentlemen, General Custer!” Custer cringed. He had told his fellow aides countless times that he was “determined to be a general before the war was over,” and he took a lot of ribbing because of the boast. “How are you, General Custer?” another voice taunted. “You’re looking well, General,” called out a third.

“You may laugh, boys,” Custer retorted. “Laugh as long as you please, but I
will
be a general yet, for all your chaff. You see if I don’t, that’s all.”

The aides slapped their sides and roared with laughter. Custer looked ready to fight. His Monroe friend, Lieutenant Yates, came to his rescue.

“
Look on the table
” Yates told Custer.

There was a large official envelope addressed to “Brigadier General George A. Custer, U.S. Vols.” Custer took one look and sank into a chair. He was afraid he might cry.
³⁷

It was a volunteer rank, of course—in the regular Army Custer remained a first lieutenant—but still, at twenty-three years of age, Custer was a brigadier general, responsible for the lives and successes of a brigade of cavalry. How had it been done? How could it be done?

First and foremost, there was Custer’s record. Pleasonton, who had made the recommendation, had seen Custer in action and come to trust him. The man and the youth had a close relationship. Custer wrote later, “I do not believe a father could love his son more than Genl. Pleasonton loves me. He is as solicitous about me and my safety as a mother about her only child.”
³⁸
Pleasonton desperately needed to shake up the Cavalry Corps, which had not been doing well in its battles with Stuart, and he wanted fresh young men at the top. Politics played no role in Custer’s remarkable promotion. Pleasonton was a Republican and Custer’s intimate contacts with the McClellan Democrats hurt rather than helped him. Pleasonton simply wanted the hardest driving, most ambitious young officers to give his cavalry some spirit, and Custer was an obvious choice.

It should be recalled that the Civil War was fought by very young men, at all levels. Three out of every four soldiers in the Union Army were under thirty years of age, and half had not celebrated their twenty-fifth birthday.
³⁹
At the start of the war the officers tended to be somewhat older, but as the battles became fiercer and the political appointees began to drop out, their places were taken by young West Pointers. In 1860 and 1861 the Academy graduated a total of one hundred twenty cadets; of this number, fourteen became general officers in the Union Army, three in the Confederate service. Custer was by no means the only “boy general” of the war, although at age twenty-three he was the youngest man in the history of United States Armed Forces to ever wear stars on his shoulders.

Custer took charge of the 2nd Brigade in Kilpatrick’s 3rd Division of the Cavalry Corps. The 2nd Brigade included the 1st, 5th, 6th, and 7th Michigan Cavalry Regiments, along with a battery of artillery. The 5th Michigan was the regiment Custer had asked to command as a colonel, only to be turned down by Governor Blair—oh, sweet is revenge! Custer led his brigade recklessly and with great success in the Gettysburg campaign, gaining wide publicity and becoming something of a national pet “The Boy General with his
flowing yellow curls,” a New York
Herald
correspondent called him.
⁴⁰

In September 1863 Custer led his brigade on a brilliant saber charge against some Confederate cannon at Brandy Station. He captured some of Jeb Stuart’s artillery, in itself a glorious feat, and added to the glory by taking Stuart’s headquarters, including the rebel general’s dinner. In so doing, Custer had his horse shot from under him (one of a dozen horses killed under him in combat in the war). Pleasonton had seen it all, accompanied by Colonel Theodore Lyman, a Harvard graduate serving as an observer for General Meade. After the battle, Custer came galloping up to Pleasonton and Lyman. “His aspect though highly amusing,” Lyman wrote, referring to Custer’s outlandish costume, “is also pleasing, as he has a very merry blue eye, and a devil-may-care style. His first greeting to General Pleasonton, as he rode up, was: ‘How are you, fifteen-days’-leave-of-absence? They have spoiled my boots but they didn’t gain much there, for I stole ‘em from a Reb.’” Custer stuck out his foot to show the boot leg torn by the shell that killed his horse. Pleasonton gave Custer his requested fifteen days’ leave and added ten more.
⁴¹

So Custer returned to Monroe in late September 1863, now a national hero with his picture in
Harper’s Weekly.
Custer met Libbie at once, and after he explained that he had been carrying on with Fanny Fifield and other Monroe girls only to stop gossip about himself and Libbie, she accepted his proposal of marriage. Custer promised to ask Judge Bacon’s consent, but could not muster the courage—he would rather charge a division of Stuart’s cavalry. He returned to active duty without becoming formally engaged.