The Real Custer (52 page)

Hedrick testified with Custer sitting beside Clymer, prompting the congressman with questions.
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Hedrick denied that there were any bribes paid for the tradership and claimed he had made no money on his investment. In a newspaper column, Hedrick pointed out that if Belknap
was receiving illicit payments from the Fort Lincoln trading post, it was “somewhat remarkable” that he left Custer, a known enemy, in command there. He also said that policy provided for a board to be appointed at each Army post to oversee prices, so if there was price gouging, it was Custer's fault for not stopping it.
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Custer raised a number of other issues, such as traders putting advanced weapons and rum in the hands of the Indians for profit, grain being stolen from Army stores and resold, and Belknap allegedly seeking ways to have whiskey smuggled from Canada at reduced rates, implicitly hinting at a Whiskey Ring connection. He also said that a presidential proclamation of January 1875 extending the boundary of the Great Sioux Reservation to include the east bank of the Missouri enhanced the value of the official traderships “by making them a more perfect monopoly, by removing all opposition and rivalry” from private traders.
¹⁷

Custer was asked why he had never previously reported the many abuses he alleged. He cited a March 1873 War Department order that “no officer should suggest or recommend any action by members of congress in regard to military affairs” and mandating that “all petitions on these subjects be forwarded through the General of the Army and the Secretary of War.” In addition, any officer visiting Washington while Congress was in session was required to register with the adjutant general and explain why he was in the city, under whose authority, and how long he was staying. Custer said this order “closed the mouths of all army officers with regard to the abuses that existed on the frontier” since they knew if they sent a complaint to Congress through the secretary of war's office, the complaints “would be pigeon-holed and the officers would probably be pigeon-holed, too.”
¹⁸

Custer incensed Belknap, who called his testimony “a collection of falsehoods, mean insinuations, and gossipy lies.”
¹⁹
There were rumors that
Belknap's allies would find a way to court-martial Custer. George A. Forsyth, normally friendly to Custer, said that “he has yet to meet a single officer of the army who approves of the action of either Custer or [General Alexander] McCook as to their testimony, which they declare to be nothing but hearsay, and made up largely of frontier gossip and stories.”
²⁰

“Custer testified like one spurred by a grievance,” one report observed.
²¹
And he did seem to be out to settle some old scores. He privately gave damning information to investigators on the Banning Committee against 7th Cavalry Major Lewis Merrill regarding an alleged bribe Merrill had taken in 1870 as a judge advocate to arrange quartermaster Samuel B. Lauffer's acquittal during a court-martial. Merrill was also being looked at for accepting a $21,400 reward from the governor of South Carolina for his efforts in apprehending and convicting members of the Ku Klux Klan. The reward was not illegal, but since Merrill was acting in an official capacity, some considered it unprofessional. Merrill responded angrily in the
Army Navy Journal
, and one paper called the covert bribery charge a “vile slander” from the “immaculate Custer.”
²²

Custer ignored his critics and spent much of his time meeting with important people in office calls, at official functions, and at dinners and receptions. “I cannot tell you how overwhelmed I am with engagements,” he wrote Libbie.
²³
Senator Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware, a leading Democrat and potential presidential contender, held a dinner in Custer's honor attended by Clymer and other political luminaries, including some former Confederates with whom Custer had battled. New York Democratic congressman Robert Roosevelt, uncle to the future president Theodore Roosevelt, invited Custer to a dinner at the Manhattan Club—“
the
Democratic Club of New York,” he gushed to Libbie, though noting his duties in Washington conflicted.
²⁴

People speculated that Custer was seeking a brigadier's star under a future Democrat president, or appointment as secretary of war. Helping
expose Belknap's corruption would have made him an attractive candidate for that post, in addition to his record of service. Democrats quoted Custer's congressional testimony extensively in their 1876 national campaign briefing book, which supported their key anti-corruption theme.
²⁵

There is a popular belief that George Custer was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. At the time he predicted “some western man and a civilian will most likely be the Democratic nominee,” but “the thing is in such a mix it is hard to say.”
²⁶
One of Custer's Arikara scouts, Red Star, stated thirty years after Little Bighorn that Custer had told them during the Sioux campaign that “no matter how small a victory he could win, even though it were only against five tents of Dakotas, it would make him President, Great Father, and he must turn back as soon as he was victorious.”
²⁷

Even if Custer said this, it is unlikely he was actually seeking the nomination.
²⁸
One reason was timing; the Democratic Convention was set for June 27, and even had Custer hurried off to victory, he would not have had time to translate that success into a nomination. He would also have had to overcome New York governor Samuel J. Tilden, who had a strong enough political machine to win the nod after two ballots.
²⁹
Speculation beyond Tilden focused on Governor Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana, who had almost captured the nomination in 1868.
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“I think Hendricks has the best show of any of them,” Custer said in a March 1876 interview.
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If the Democrats had wanted a war hero, they already had one in Winfield Scott Hancock. Hancock was very active in Democratic politics and a presidential hopeful in 1868 and 1876, finally securing the nomination in 1880, but losing to James A. Garfield.
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So far as military men went, Custer thought nominating General Sherman was a “Capital suggestion” and that he would “run like a steer.”
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Sherman, famously disgusted with politics, wasn't interested.

Custer's name did not come up in public discussions of candidates for the 1876 race. Perhaps a victorious Custer could have been a vice presidential pick that year, but nothing more. However if Custer, the young, dashing, articulate Northerner and war hero, had been nominated, and had taken all the states Tilden won in the hotly contested and controversial 1876 race against Ohio Republican governor Rutherford B. Hayes, as well as his adopted home state of Michigan, the Boy General would have become, at age thirty-seven, the youngest man elected to the nation's highest office—the Boy President.

But even Custer knew this was not going to happen. And not all Democrats were Custer fans. New York congressman Samuel S. “Sunset” Cox, a known wit among the members, gave a lively speech on the Indian question with Custer present (George had been granted the privilege of the floor during his visit), with pointed references to Washita. Afterward, he came over and said, “Well, Custer, I guess I have taken your scalp.”

“Wait till I get you on the Plains,” George replied dryly. “Then I will turn you over to those gentle friends of yours.”
³⁴

After a few weeks in Washington, Custer faced an even chillier climate. According to his testimony, in September 1875 he refused a delivery of eight thousand bushels of corn at Fort Lincoln, which he believed had been stolen from the Indian Bureau. He claimed he reported this through channels to the War Department, but word came back signed by the secretary of war to accept the corn.
³⁵
Custer told the committee that food supplies at the Standing Rock Agency had run out that winter, with rapacious merchants selling scarce grain at extortionate prices, forcing some Indians to eat their ponies.

But when Chairman Clymer asked for a copy of Custer's original report, it could not be located. “No report of that character can be found,” the War Department reported, “nor is there any record of the
receipt of such report, or of any directions to General Custer from the War Department or any of its bureaus respecting this subject.”
³⁶
Close review of his testimony showed that most of it was not verifiable.

“General Custer is losing something of his prestige before the investigating committee,” the
New York Times
reported. “He is full of information as an egg is of meat, but somehow it is only hearsay and gossip, and no witnesses appear to corroborate it. If this sort of thing goes too far, the Democrats, if they should have control of the next Administration, may not, after all, make him a Brigadier General.”
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Custer happily left Washington on April 20, stopping off at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia before continuing to New York. But on April 24, the Senate managers of the Belknap impeachment called him back. Custer was growing anxious. The Sioux campaign awaited, and he sensed he had overplayed his hand in Washington. Ironically, in an effort to be released, he admitted what most of his detractors had already pointed out, that his evidence was mostly hearsay.
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George wrote to Libbie that he was being “called on to do more than I desire. . . . I care not to abuse what influence I have.”
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He said he sought to “follow a moderate and prudent course, avoiding prominence.”
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But it is hard to see how he could have been any more in the spotlight.

Sherman then stepped in to help. There was no love lost between Sherman and Belknap. Belknap has “acted badly by me ever since he reached Washington,” Sherman wrote to his brother, Senator John Sherman.
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Belknap had systematically undermined Sherman's power as commanding general. Sherman actually moved his headquarters to St. Louis in 1874 to escape Washington and the “ornamental part of the army” and to be with “the real working army.”
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Sherman liked Custer and had no particular problem with his role in taking Belknap down. The general had taken Custer to meet the interim war secretary, Alonzo Taft (father of the future president William Howard Taft), when he came to Washington, and George wrote Libbie that Taft “received me with
great cordiality.”
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Seeing Custer's difficulty Sherman requested Taft write a letter authorizing him to go back to Dakota to prepare for the Sioux campaign.

Unfortunately, Grant “was not pleased with General Custer, and . . . he wanted the expedition started out from Fort Lincoln without him.”
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Custer had done much to antagonize Grant, and his testimony compounded Grant's embarrassment. Custer, who was habitually sensitive to the political winds, seemed to be “trying to brow-beat the President,” as Belknap wrote his sister. “He
may
succeed. Anything seems possible nowadays.”
⁴⁵

Custer's motives are unclear. During the war he had enjoyed a good relationship with Grant, and he was very solicitous of Fred Grant.
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He may have resented that Grant had not stepped in to stop the 1867 court-martial and had not helped him achieve the rank and station he felt he deserved. Perhaps he also secretly resented that young Fred wore the same rank he did, with no wartime experience and little record of accomplishment.

Custer criticized Grant's Indian policy in
My Life on the Plains
and worked behind the scenes with Democratic-leaning papers to defame the administration. That Grant would seek to remind him who was commander in chief is hardly surprising. Custer should have considered himself lucky to still be wearing the uniform. S. L. A. Marshall wrote that in Custer's postwar career he “proved to be both erratic and intractable, a source of worry to his military superiors, so impulsive that his actions several times shocked and embarrassed the President. . . . The wonder is that he was not bounced out of the Army.”
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On April 28 Sherman telegraphed Sheridan that Grant had instructed to “send some one else than General Custer in command of that force from Fort Abe Lincoln.”
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On April 29 Sheridan suggested General Alfred Howe Terry, which was approved. Custer was frantic when Sheridan shared this information with him. The Belknap impeachment managers
had released him the same day, but Sherman advised Custer not to leave Washington until he could get an audience with the president the following Monday. Sherman then left for New York.