The Real Custer (29 page)

Custer's division was moving on the opposite side of the rebel line, and Pennington's dismounted brigade engaged the enemy in the front while Wells's and Capehart's brigades swung wide to the left, seeking a gap. They were thwarted by Rooney Lee's outnumbered but dogged cavalry. “The fighting was fearful I never yet heard such a terrific fire of musketry,” Federal trooper George E. Farmer wrote. “But every soldier said this is the ending of the war and we are bound to whip them.”
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In the center a desperate struggle was under way. Union Private Theodore Gerrish from Maine wrote, “It was hot work, and in many places it was a hand to hand fight. Men deliberately pointed their rifles in each other's faces and fired. Clubbed muskets came crushing down in deadly force upon human skulls. Men were bayoneted in cold blood. Feats of individual bravery were performed on that afternoon which, if recorded, would fill a volume.”
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The rebels fell back from their original line to a new position to consolidate their defense, but it was of little use. “Our left was turned,” Pickett wrote, “we were completely entrapped. Their cavalry, charging at a signal of musketry from the infantry, enveloped us front and right and, sweeping down upon our rear, held us as in a vise.”
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As the rebels fought desperately, Custer made a final, determined charge on the faltering right. The Confederates were “strung out in a single line three feet, or more, apart,” a rebel soldier recalled, “yet they repelled all the charges of Sheridan's picked horsemen, until Custer led. They all bear witness that his charge, which he led in person, was the most gallant and determined they ever saw, and that they were astonished to see Custer and his men ride on and over them, although the head of the charging column seemed to crumble and sink under their fire.”
¹⁹
“Bodies of cavalry fairly mounted their intrenchments, and charged down the parapet, slashing and trampling them, and producing
inextricable confusion,” one report read. “Close by fell the long yellow locks of Custer, saber extended, fighting like a Viking, though he was worn and haggard with much work.”
²⁰

The Confederates were “overpowered, defeated, cut to pieces, starving, [and] captured,” in Pickett's words.
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Rooney Lee's cavalry held back the Union pursuit long enough for some rebels to escape, but as evening drew on, Federal cavalrymen swept the surrounding countryside netting thousands of prisoners. In all, the Confederates lost nearly three thousand killed, wounded, and captured, against Union losses of just over eight hundred. But more important, the rebel right was broken, and the Richmond defenses compromised. Five Forks was later called the “Waterloo of the Confederacy.” Custer was on the verge of one of his finest weeks, harrying Lee's forces, harassing his baggage trains, reeling in prisoners, destroying whole regiments. And in the chaos of the pursuit, Custer was again reported killed.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“CUSTER AGAINST THE WORLD”

T
he Union victory at Five Forks spelled the end for Confederate Richmond. Rebel supply lines were cut, and Robert E. Lee informed Jefferson Davis that further defense of the city was untenable. The army and government fled west. Federal forces gave chase, trying to prevent the Army of Northern Virginia from linking up with Johnston's army, which was withdrawing before Sherman's forces in North Carolina. The Cavalry Corps rode hard, attempting to stay ahead of Lee's retreating troops, and Custer was in the van, skirting the Confederate left, anticipating the inevitable shift south toward Johnston. Colonel Newhall of Sheridan's staff penned a description of Custer in these final, frantic days:

            
At the head of the horsemen rode Custer of the golden locks, his broad sombrero turned up from his hard, bronzed face,
the ends of his crimson cravat floating over his shoulder, gold galore, spangling his jacket sleeves, a pistol in his boots, jangling spurs on his heels, and a ponderous claymore swinging at his side—a wild, dare-devil of a General and a prince of advance guards, quick to see and act. Seeing him pass by, a stranger might smile and say, “Who's that?” as he noticed his motley wear, his curls, and his quick impetuous way, but would wonder to see him in the thick of a fight; for Custer loves fighting, and hated his enemies then.
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Newhall described the general's war fighting during the pursuit as “Custer against the world.”

The men of Lee's once-lethal army were still ready to fight if they had to; but they were on their last legs, and the further they fled, the more hopeless their situation seemed. “No Confederate soldier who was on and of that fearful retreat can fail to recall it as one of the most trying experiences of his life,” Robert Stiles recalled. “Trying enough, in the mere fact that the Army of Northern Virginia was flying before its foes, but further trying, incomparably trying, in lack of food and rest and sleep, and because of the audacious pressure of the enemy's cavalry.”
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The retreating units were crowded onto a few muddy roads, short of food and ammunition, cold and tired. General John B. Gordon, who commanded at the leading edge of the Confederate flight, wrote: “Fighting all day, marching all night, with exhaustion and hunger claiming their victims at every mile of the march, with charges of infantry in rear and of cavalry on the flanks, it seemed the war god had turned loose all his furies to revel in havoc.”
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On April 5, Lee found his hoped-for route south along the Danville Railroad blocked by Crook's cavalry at Jetersville. His army continued west, in search of rations expected at Farmville, but the trains had been diverted to Appomattox Station by a Union ruse. En route to Farmville, two divisions under B. R. Johnson and George Pickett, and under overall
command of Richard Anderson, ran headlong into Union cavalry near a stream called Sailor's Creek.
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Custer's division came on the field moving toward a road junction, Marshall's Crossing. They first encountered skirmishers guarding some Confederate supply wagons, which had been put in the front of the column to protect it from Union forces harassing the rear. Custer drove the train and its escorts back toward a stone wall across an open field near the road, behind which crouched waiting rebel infantry from Pickett's division. Pickett wrote that his men were “weary, starving, [and] despairing” when they reached Sailor's Creek from Five Forks, and that for “forty-eight hours the man or officer who had a handful of parched corn in his pocket was most fortunate.”
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But Pickett's men still had some fight left in them. As the cavalry galloped near, the rebels opened fire in a fusillade that “made many a rider bite the dust, and sent the whole column staggering back,” Chaplain Humphreys recalled. Custer, however, was “not the kind of leader to be balked by a single defeat,” and “as soon as he could form his men again he made the assaulting column more solid by doubling it, and then sent it off up the slope on a gallop.”

“Away we went,” wrote E. G. Marsh of the 15th New York Cavalry, “with our sabres swinging at our wrists, ready to grasp at a moment's warning, and our carbines at an advance, ready for use. We had not gone more than forty rods, when the rebels opened fire upon us from three points, with grape and canister, solid shot, and shell, and musketry.”
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This charge, too, was futile; the assault withered as it reached the wall, the men “flung back in forceless fragments of defeated valor, and the earth . . . strewn with death.” But the enemy was before Custer and he meant to break him. He again doubled his force, lined them up across the field, and rode the length of the line to show his men he was with them.

“Drawing his sword and putting spurs to his steed, he dashed along the front of the whole line of serried soldiery,” Chaplain Humphreys wrote, “his brown sombrero turning up its broad brim from his bronzed
forehead, his long yellow curls floating on the wind, the ends of his crimson cravat flying like tongues of fire over his shoulders, his face aflame with the eager joy of battle. He seemed utterly oblivious to danger and to bear a charmed life amid the shower of bullets, and gave us an inspiring example of death-defying valor.”
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He bade the band play “Yankee Doodle” and led the massed cavalry toward the rebel redoubt.

“There had been no cavalry charge during the war which has surpassed that of Custer's in this attack, in energy and power,” one news report read. “It was terrible to the foe. With sabers drawn, with horses upon the run, goaded by spur and quickened by shouts til they caught the wild enthusiasm of their riders; til, horses and men became fiery centaurs, the line swept on.” The rebels loosed more grapeshot and musket fire on the rushing line of cavalry, inflicting more damage, but the mass of the attack was too great. Custer's men reached the rebel line and “leapt the intrenchments, shooting and sabering all who resisted.”
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George's brother Captain Tom Custer rode with him in the charge. Tom had enlisted as a private in the 21st Ohio regiment in September 1861, at age seventeen. Nevin Custer had also joined up but was discharged for rheumatism. Tom campaigned in the West in the first years of the war, participating in some of the major battles and serving briefly as an escort for General Grant. In October 1864, George petitioned to have Tom transferred to his command, and he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 6th Michigan Cavalry, joining George in November. He had fought by his brother's side since, having a horse shot out from under him at Five Forks and capturing a rebel standard three days earlier at the Battle of Namozine Church. Now he thundered across the field, heading for the enemy works.

“Tom led the assault on the enemy's breastworks, mounted,” George wrote to Libbie. He was “first to leap his horse over the works on top of the enemy while they were pouring a volley of musketry into our ranks.”
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Colonel Capehart, who was a few feet away, saw the rebel color-bearer of the 2nd Virginia Reserve Battalion raise a pistol and shoot Tom in the
face at close range. The shot “knocked him back on his horse,” Capehart recalled, “but in a moment he was upright in his saddle.”
¹⁰
Tom grabbed the flag while drawing his revolver and shot the enemy infantryman in the chest, killing him. Tom rode back through continuing fire seeking his brother. The side of Tom's face was bloody and spotted with burned powder. An officer he had served with in the West saw Tom and exclaimed, “Why you're wounded, man!”

“Not much,” Tom replied, spitting out blood. He found George, who had been unhorsed in the charge.

“Armstrong,” Tom said as he came up, “the damned rebels have shot me, but I've got my flag.”
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George told Tom to go to the rear to have a surgeon attend to his wound. “Damn it, there isn't any rear!” Tom exclaimed, readying to charge back into the fight. George shouted at him to halt and gave him a direct order to seek assistance before he bled to death.
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For this fight and for his valor at Namozine Church, Tom Custer was awarded two Medals of Honor, the only soldier in the war to receive the medal twice for separate actions.
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By that point in the conflict, it had become a convention that soldiers who captured enemy flags would be so recognized, though it was the type of thing that George had done as a junior officer—without receiving any medals. But George never begrudged his brother the honor. “Do you know what I think of him?” he wrote Libbie after the fight. “Tom should have been the General and I the Lieutenant.”
¹⁴

While Custer's cavalry was breaking the front of the Confederate column, Wright's VI Corps was battering the rebel rear, facing two divisions under Custis Lee and Joseph B. Kershaw, commanded by Richard Ewell. “The 6th Corps, changing direction, followed like hounds,” a reporter wrote, “until the enemy, finding he could not get past Custer, turned on them again.”
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It was a brutal fight. “We were attacked simultaneously, front and rear, by overwhelming numbers,” Stiles remembered, “and quicker than I can tell it the battle degenerated into a
butchery and a confused mêlée of brutal personal conflicts. I saw numbers of men kill each other with bayonets and the butts of muskets, and even bite each others' throats and ears and noses, rolling the ground like wild beasts.”
¹⁶
A quarter of Lee's remaining force was lost, along with most of their supplies, and those who escaped death or capture were “broken down, nearly famished, and mostly without arms.”
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Observing the rout of his troops from a high point to the west, Robert E. Lee said to Major General William “Little Billy” Mahone, “My God! Has the army dissolved?” On the side of one of the captured Confederate wagons a rebel had written, “We uns has found the last ditch.”