Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (31 page)

The correspondence that ensued between Custer, Judge Bacon, Libbie, and Nettie Humphrey (who still acted as go-between for Custer and Libbie) is a priceless collection, providing a day-by-day account of the difficulties involved in getting married for respectable people of that era. Custer took forever to screw up his courage and write the judge; the judge sent an evasive reply; Custer pressed the point; the judge eventually gave in. Then began a long correspondence between the betrothed, page after page of it. Much of the material appears in Marguerite Merington’s loving memoir,
The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth,
so only a few examples need be quoted here.

Custer selling himself to the judge: “It is true that I have often committed errors of judgment, but as I grew older I learned the
necessity of propriety. I am aware of your fear of intemperance, but surely my conduct for the past two years—during which I have not violated the solemn promise I made my sister, with God to witness, should dispel that fear. [As usual, Custer exaggerated; he had stopped drinking less than a year earlier.] … I left home when but sixteen, and have been surrounded with temptation, but I have always had a purpose in life.”
⁴²

Custer selling himself to Libbie (via Nettie): “Often I think of the vast responsibility resting on me, of the many lives entrusted to my keeping … and to think that I am just leaving my boyhood makes the responsibility appear greater. This is not due to egotism, self-conceit. I try to make no unjust pretensions … I ask myself, ‘Is it right?’ Satisfied that it is so, I let nothing swerve me from my purpose.”
⁴³

Custer claiming that he would do anything for Libbie, which in practice meant anything that would not interfere with his career (again to Nettie): “However much I might wish to add a star to the one I wear, yet would one word of disapproval from Libbie check my aspiration. Yet I do not anticipate that she would wish me to lose that laudable ambition to which I already owe so much.”
⁴⁴

Libbie urging Custer to put off their wedding date (he kept pressing her to push it forward): “Ah, dear man, if I am worth having am I not worth waiting for? The very thought of marriage makes me tremble. Girls have so much fun. Marriage means trouble, and, never having had any … If you tease me I will go into a convent for a year. The very thought of leaving my home, my family, is painful to me. I implore you not even to mention it for at least a year.”
⁴⁵
… “Father accuses me of trifling, says ‘You must not keep Armstrong waiting.’ But neither you nor he can know what preparations are needed for such an Event, an Event it takes at least a year to prepare for.”
⁴⁶

Libbie told her stepmother that she was afraid that if she gave in and agreed to an early marriage, she would always have to give in to Custer’s whims. “No, No,” Mrs. Bacon replied. “For I consented to hasten my own wedding because my former husband Mr. Pitts insisted on it. … And I always had my own way afterwards, in Everything!”
⁴⁷
What she meant by “Everything,” of course, was control of household arrangements, probably what Mr. Pitts wore, and possibly their social life. But then Libbie’s ambition was limited, too—she wanted only security, an opportunity to run her loved one’s private life, and a famous husband.

In Monroe, class and social lines were so closely kept that Libbie
had not yet met Custer’s family, even though now they lived only one block from the Bacon home. (Custer’s mother and father had moved to Monroe to be with the Reeds; Custer helped support them on his general’s salary.)

Libbie to Custer: “Now I am going to surprise you. I know your family by sight. I stood near them at the Lilliputian Bazaar. I think they knew me. I could have kissed your little sister, she was so considerate of her mother.”
⁴⁸
Libbie did meet Custer’s parents before the marriage.

Libbie to Custer, describing herself: “My own faults are legion. I am susceptible to admiration. In church I saw a handsome young man looking at me, and I blushed furiously. Mother says I am the most sarcastic girl, and say the most
withering
things.”
⁴⁹

Libbie thinking about what she was getting herself into—and what it meant—in a letter to Custer: “Blessings brighten as they take their flight. How I love my name Libbie BACON. Libbie B-A-C-O-N. Bacon. Libbie Bacon.”
⁵⁰
(Libbie had no luck in holding onto her own name. In the index to the innumerable Custer books, she always appears under the name, “Custer, Mrs. George Armstrong.”)

And finally, Libbie telling Custer that in return for giving up her name, she expected to share his life with him: “I had rather live in a tent, outdoors with you than in a palace with another. There is no place I would not go to, gladly, live in, gladly, because … Because I love you.”
⁵¹

The wedding took place on February 9, 1864, at the First Presbyterian Church in Monroe. Custer wore his full-dress uniform and was surrounded by his aides, all resplendent Libbie wore a hoop-skirted, mist-green wedding dress, trimmed with yellow cavalry braid. She had her dark hair parted, rolled over each ear, and coiled in a knot on her neck under a green-silk wedding veil.
⁵²
There were hundreds of guests; some had to be turned away because the church was overflowing. It was said to be the most splendid wedding ever seen in Michigan.
⁵³

The couple spent their honeymoon visiting cities between Michigan and New York. They stopped off at West Point for a day. There Libbie learned that her husband could be just as jealous, protective, and possessive of her as her father. Custer was furious at the way she flirted with the cadets and because she had kissed one of the professors. Years later, Libbie described the aftermath: “In the train [going down to New York] I was amazed to see my blithe bridegroom turned into an incarnated thundercloud. ‘But,’ I tearfully protested, ‘the professor who claimed the privilege of kissing the
bride was a veritable Methuselah. And the cadets who showed me Lover’s Walk were like school-boys with their shy ways and nice, clean, friendly faces …’ Oh, I quite expected to be sent home to my parents, till I took courage to say, ‘Well, you left me with them, Autie!’”
⁵⁴

From West Point the couple went to New York, then on to Washington. Custer received orders to report to his brigade. He told Libbie to stay in a boardinghouse in the capital. Not on your life! Libbie was going with him to the front, no matter what he said. Autie caved in. Libbie went to be with him at his winter headquarters five miles south of Brandy Station, Virginia. For better or for worse, she was in the Army now. Custer made her as comfortable as he could in a tent, introduced her to his black cook, his other servants, his dogs and horses, and his fellow officers. Then he turned his attention back to making war.

* Custer had seen Libbie often as a child but had never been properly introduced because of the social gap between them.

† This classic line, so typical of Libbie, would fit well on the mantelpiece of every man who has a daughter.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Boy General and the Glorious War

“Fighting for fun is rare. Only such men as … Custer and some others, attacked whenever they got a chance, and of their own accord.” Colonel Theodore Lyman, member of General Meade’s staff

“In the excitement of a charge, or in the enthusiasm of approaching victory, there is a sense of pleasure which no one should attempt to underrate.” General Horace Porter, aide-decamp to General Grant

Custer rode to the top of his profession over the backs of his fallen soldiers. As a general, Custer had one basic instinct, to charge the enemy wherever he might be, no matter how strong his position or numbers. Throughout his military career he indulged that instinct whenever he faced opposition. Neither a thinker nor a planner, Custer scorned maneuvering, reconnaissance, and all other subtleties of warfare. He was a good, if often reckless, small-unit combat commander, no more and no less. But his charges, although by no means always successful, made him a favorite of the national press and one of the superstars of the day. He and Libbie came to rank high on the Washington social list of sought-after couples.

Gleefully accepting every risk himself, Custer personally earned his reputation as the most daring, gallant, courageous, and successful Union cavalry general of the war, but the real price for his reputation was the lives of the hundreds of men who fell following his flag. Most Civil War generals were remarkably spendthrift about their men’s lives, of course, and Custer can hardly be censured for emulating older and presumably wiser generals. Of the tens of thousands of men who died in combat in the war, possibly as many as half lost their lives in vain. Lee’s charges at Malvern Hill and Gettysburg, Burnside’s at Fredericksburg, Grant’s at Vicksburg, and many others left the dead strewn everywhere for no discernible military gain. The
Sioux would never have followed men who led such bloody, futile assaults, but the Americans made heroes out of these generals—and the higher a general’s losses, it seemed, the greater the hero he became. Of all the division commanders in the war (Custer became a major general in September 1864, and at that time took command of the 3rd Cavalry Division, Army of the Potomac), Custer was the most famous.

He almost certainly suffered the highest losses. At Gettysburg in July 1863, where he had a brigade of approximately 1,700 men under his command, he lost 481 in killed, wounded, and missing. He personally led the 1st Michigan Cavalry regiment, about 400 strong, in a saber charge against an entire enemy division. The charge did halt a Confederate advance, although that probably could have been done with less bloodshed by placing his men in a defensive position and throwing up breastworks. As Custer did the job, however, he lost 86 men in a few brief moments. But he also drew attention to himself and received high praise from his superiors for his boldness and willingness to seize the initiative.
¹
The previous Army of the Potomac commander, General Hooker, had supposedly once complained that his cavalry would not fight and that he had never seen a dead cavalryman. Custer gave him plenty to look at.

In the Wilderness campaign of May 1864, Custer lost more than a third of his brigade (98 killed, 330 wounded, 348 missing, a total of 776 casualties in a force of 1,700).
²
Again, however, it must be pointed out that he was only doing what all the other generals were also doing, only he was doing it better. After General Ulysses S. Grant took command of the Union Armies in early March 1864, the sole idea the Union Army had was to kill as many Confederates as possible, no matter what the cost to the North. It was a strategy of annihilation, if annihilation can be called a strategy.
³

Custer was only a small cog in Grant’s killing machine. But Union generalship was at a low point during most of the Civil War, which provided an ideal opportunity for Custer, whose limited skills and talents were well suited to Grant’s purpose. As the Army of the Potomac heavily outnumbered Lee’s force, Grant wanted action, all the time, all across the front. Custer was one of those who gave it to him.

Custer was lucky to become a general officer when he did. By the time he took over his brigade and even more after he became a division commander, the Confederate cavalry was worn out, run-down, badly outnumbered, and absolutely incapable of meeting the Union cavalry on even terms. Custer’s opponents in his most successful
battles were poorly equipped in weapons and horses, exhausted, half starved, suffering the agonies of dysentery and other enervating diseases, while Custer’s men, newly conscripted and in good health, had fresh, strong mounts, repeating rifles, and plenty of artillery and infantry to support them. Still, the rebel units he defeated were veteran outfits, fighting desperately under proven leaders, so Custer did not have every advantage. Even in the last campaign, around Appomattox, the Confederate cavalry put 377 men out of commission in Custer’s division of 4,800. That loss cannot be regarded as excessive, however, for in return Custer captured thousands of prisoners and stopped Lee’s flight to the West, forcing Lee to call off his retreat and surrender the Army of Northern Virginia.
⁴

Only at Appomattox, however, did Custer get a decent return on the investment of his men’s lives. One reads his battle reports today (and those of other generals) with a sense of wonderment. Heavy casualties were almost a point of pride with the Union generals, something to brag about, as they proved that the general had not shirked his duty, that he was willing, nay anxious, to get out there and fight. One hundred killed, three hundred wounded, two hundred missing, for no conceivable military advantage, but what did it matter, as long as a superior officer saw the charge or the newspapers reported on it? The reality behind the figures escapes us today, but it was there—farm boys without an arm or a leg, dragging out their existence, unable to work or support themselves or their families, men whose minds as well as their bodies were permanently scarred, young wives who never saw their husbands again, teen-age boys whose lives were cut short. The Union cause was about as just as men are ever likely to find in any war, certainly more noble and inspiring than most, but the price the North paid for victory was far higher than it should have been. And clearly, Custer was one of the leading spendthrifts.