The Real Custer (34 page)

Before the execution was carried out, Custer ordered the mutinous Lancaster taken out of the line.
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Lieutenant Colonel Dale had interceded on his behalf for his “little drunken wordy mutiny.” But another story had it that Custer was responding to threats from the 2nd Wisconsin that if the sentence was carried out, he and his staff “would be slaughtered.”
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Lancaster's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on the island of Dry Tortugas, west of the Florida Keys, and he was later pardoned by Andrew Johnson. The deserters were executed as planned.

The march into Texas in August hardly improved matters. The column left Alexandria on the morning of August 8, arriving on the twenty-sixth in Hempstead, Texas, 240 miles distant, “with rations exhausted, many of the soldiers barefooted, almost naked and without blankets, and with no supplies provided.” One member of the division said that “the march from Alexandria to this place [Hempstead] was the most severe and uncomfortable, and attended with more suffering than any the regiment has experienced during its four years service in the field.”
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Philip E. Francis summed up the ordeal: “We had gone through the war; had camped in Missouri with a foot of snow on the ground; had lain down in the mud in Arkansas at night to find ourselves frozen to the
earth in the morning; we had wrestled with vermin in Southern trenches, and doubled up on the discomforts of cold and the pangs of hunger—but, until after the war had closed and we entered Custer's division, the real hardships of camp life had never stared us in our faces.”
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“We left the valley of the Red River, with its fertile plantations, and entered a pine forest on the table-land, through which our route lay for a hundred and fifty miles,” Libbie wrote. “A great portion of the higher ground was sterile, and the forest much of the way was thinly inhabited.”
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This was not verdant Virginia, where Custer had spent most of the war campaigning. He was used to different climate, forage, and weather, and more reliable supplies. General Order 15, Custer's order for the movement through Texas, stressed keeping the command in tight order, to dissuade desertion and be prepared for action should the need arise. “Soldiers were ordered to report in ranks with coats buttoned, and to carry carbine, revolver, seventy rounds of cartridges, and saber,” Philip E. Francis recalled. “The temperature was about 120 degrees, and there wasn't a rebel in the land.”
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The men were miserable, riding with full kit bunched together over dry, dusty trails. One angry trooper called Custer's order “another monument to the supreme ignorance and stupidity of the commanding General.”
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Lieutenant Colonel McQueen of the 1st Iowa Cavalry said, “I never saw troops so badly managed and provided for, both in regard to outfit and rations, as this division of cavalry was while it remained under the command of General Custer, or such a lack of common sense in orders and in the exercise of discipline, as was displayed by its commander.”
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Custer attempted to mitigate the heat of the march by setting out in the cool before dawn. “The General had reveillé sounded at 2 o'clock in the morning,” Libbie wrote. “It was absolutely necessary to move before dawn, as the moment the sun came in sight the heat was suffocating. It was so dark when we set out that it was with difficulty we reached the main road, from our night's camp, in safety.”
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The horses sometimes
wanted for forage and water, and their guide, a local named Stillman, would promise ahead a “bold flowin' stream,” which inevitably would be “the bed of a dried creek, nothing but pools of muddy water, with a coating of green mold on the surface.”
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The command also had to deal with annoyances like mosquitoes, centipedes, pine ticks, and scorpions, one of which killed a teamster. Sheridan, who had served in the area before the war, said, “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.”
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Libbie bore the hardships with her usual pluck. She rode a horse named Custis Lee, which had been captured from one of Robert E. Lee's general staff officers, and other times she rode in a wagon. “My life in a wagon soon became such an old story that I could hardly believe I had ever had a room,” she wrote. She recalled her father's early opposition to her becoming an army wife; he said that “after the charm and dazzle of the epaulet had passed, I might have to travel ‘in a covered wagon like an emigrant.'” It became a matter of mirth for the young couple, and when Libbie was “lifted from my rather lofty apartment, and set down in the tent in the dark . . . the candle revealed a twinkle in the eye of a man who could joke before breakfast, ‘I wonder what your father would say now.'”
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Some griped that Custer was playing favorites rather than seeing to the welfare of his men. “The best ambulance teams were taken to transport the General's camp equipage, staff and hunting dogs,” M. P. Hanson recalled, “while sick men were transported on unloaded provision wagons without springs.”
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Custer's eccentric flair was also on full display, which did not go over as well with men who had not seen his fury in battle. “One afternoon while on the march we espied a man sitting on his horse,” George W. Stover of the 7th Indiana said. “When we came up I saw it was Custer. He was dressed in cow-boy style, broad rimmed grey hat, linen duster, and a double-barreled shotgun across the pommel of
his saddle, and the boys took him for a Texan.”
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George took offense when the men, not recognizing him, greeted him disrespectfully, but Libbie talked him out of punishing them.

Rations were the biggest problem on the march. “The full rations of fresh beef were generally issued at this time,” Lieutenant Colonel McQueen recalled, “but not any more than the legal ration of beef, while all other rations were damaged and unfit for use, especially the hard bread, which was full of worms and bugs.”
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Soldiers boiled horse fodder to try to give substance to their dinners. A trooper from the 7th Indiana recalled, “There was a cynical child in our regiment, who declared that he had fresh meat every meal.” Responding to the incredulous men, he got a piece of hard tack, “broke it, and counted us
eleven maggots
and fourteen
small
red bugs, very fresh and lively.”
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Foraging was frowned on; the same general who helped lay waste to the Shenandoah and took delight in capturing enemy supply trains now had to enforce orders intended to conciliate the locals and reduce the footprint of the Federal occupation. Nevertheless, the men, driven by hunger and boredom, occasionally went out in parties to see what they could rustle up in the countryside. “Search of camp was made every morning,” trooper Francis recalled, “and woe to the unlucky regiment which left evidences of foraging.”
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In one case, a calf was stolen from a herd owned by Doctor R. R. Peebles, collector of the Port of Galveston. It was killed and made into soup for a sick soldier. This led to an incident that would haunt Custer for years afterward. Back in Alexandria, Custer had issued General Order 2, urging all officers and soldiers “to use every exertion to prevent the committal of acts of lawlessness, which, if permitted to pass unpunished, will bring discredit upon the command.” Owing to the impracticability of formal courts-martial under the circumstances, he ordered that “any enlisted man violating the above order, or committing depredations
upon the persons or property of citizens, will have his head shaved, and in addition will receive twenty-five lashes upon his back, well laid on.”
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This became known as “the whipping order.”

Custer later explained that he “never found it necessary or desirable to issue such orders . . . simply because I have never been in command of troops whose conduct, both as regards officers and men, so nearly resembled that of a mob as was the conduct of these troops when I assumed command of them.”
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And orders of this type were not unprecedented. Ambrose Burnside, when he was commanding the Army of the Ohio, ordered that anyone caught looting be “stripped of his uniform, his head shaved, then branded on the left cheek with the letter T as a thief, and drummed out of the service.”
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Nevertheless, Custer's order transformed the “Boy General of the golden locks” into the “long-haired hero of the lash.”

Private Horace C. Cure, Company M, 1st Iowa Cavalry, was arrested for having information about Dr. Peebles's stolen calf and not divulging it. In accordance with General Order 2, his head was shaved and he was given twenty-five lashes “by command of the author of the slave driver order,” according to another member of the regiment. After Cure was whipped, “the men gathered in squads with carbines in hand, determined to avenge the ignominious insult thus offered to the old regiment.” Lieutenant Colonel McQueen calmed them down but said that he would not tolerate any further violence against his men. “I will here say his hide will not hold corn, by God!”
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Seven men of the 12th Illinois Cavalry and five of the 7th Indiana were given the same treatment. George Stover of the latter unit said that afterward, “It was a common occurrence to see soldiers at any time in the day draw up and shoot at Custer and staff” from a distance. “One time in particular they made him turn back. I was officer of the day at the time and saw the whole transaction. General Custer asked, ‘Who in the h-ll was doing that shooting?'”
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A correspondent from the
New York Times
wrote that Custer had “tried every humane way to save his army from going to pieces, but failed” before resorting to flogging. “I leave it to everyone if Custer didn't do right.” The flogging “had the desired effect, but brought down the friends of these soldiers upon him, who charge him with being disloyal, inhuman, and everything that is bad.”
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Inspector General Forsyth had a more jaundiced view of the events. “With reference to General Custer's order whilst I was with the command, I have simply to say that he made a great mistake,” he wrote. “Instead of whipping he should have shot.”
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Problems decreased when the cavalry encamped at Hempstead. The troops no longer had the rigors of the daily march, and supplies became more regular. Occupation duty was less taxing than expected; there were no major uprisings among the Texans, and the crisis on the Rio Grande never escalated to the point of war.

Sheridan came up by way of Galveston, bringing along George's father. But Father Custer soon came down with malarial fever, and George did too, though he was loath to show it. Libbie was amazed by his powers of endurance. George “seemed to have set his strong will against yielding to climatic influences,” she wrote, “but after two days of this fighting he gave in and tossed himself on our borrowed lounge, a vanquished man. He was very sick. Break-bone fever had waited to do its worst with its last victim. Everything looked very gloomy to me.” George eventually consented to taking doses of quinine and was “so racked and tormented by pain, and burnt up with fiery heat, that he hardly made the feeblest fight about the medicine.” But he bid Libbie take a taste, “to be sure that I knew how bitter it was.”
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Life for the Custers became more settled, and George got to know the local plantation owners. Even though he was a Yankee general, his charm won most of them over, and he and his officers were invited to society events and hunting excursions. Horse racing was a daily pastime
in Custer's command, particularly among his father, his brother, and members of his staff. “General Custer himself always appeared on the race track as chief manager,” Lieutenant Colonel McQueen recalled, “and generally dressed in the uniform of a private soldier or citizen acting (pardon the expression) the ‘bohoy' among the boys.”
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“We are running out to the stables half our time,” Libbie wrote. “Armstrong has the horses exercised on a quarter-of-a-mile track, holds the watch and times them, as we sit round and enjoy their speed.”
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They became attached to a stable boy, “a tiny mulatto, a handsome little fellow, weighing about eighty pounds,” whom George thought was “the finest rider he has ever seen.” Libbie made him a “tight-fitting red jacket and a red-white-and-blue skull cap, to ride in at races.”
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On October 21 there was a run between Custer's racehorse, Jack Rucker, and a steed belonging to the 1st Iowa. Large sums were bet on the contest, and when the Iowa horse lost, it was blamed on the Mexican rider, Private Nicholas LaCosta, who was openly alleged to have received “a liberal compensation from General Custer or his friends.”
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Custer and his staff were so elated at the outcome that they visited the regiment's camp that night to indulge in some celebratory poker, but in the process they lost most of the money they had won in the allegedly fixed race. Later, Custer had the Iowa horse transferred to the quartermaster general of his staff.