The Real Custer (53 page)

Custer had tried to see Grant two times before and been snubbed. He sought a third audience with Grant on May 1 and waited five hours at the White House. While he was waiting, Deputy Quartermaster General of the Army Rufus Ingalls, whom Custer had known in the war, happened by. After conferring with Grant, Ingalls informed Custer that Grant would not see him, and that he might as well leave. Ingalls probably meant that George should leave the White House, not leave town, but that is how Custer took it. He checked out at the War Department and hopped a train west.

George was in Chicago in a rail car readying to leave for St. Paul on May 4 when he was detained. “I am at this moment advised that General Custer started last night for St. Paul and Fort Abraham Lincoln,” Sherman had wired Sheridan. “He was not justified in leaving without seeing the President and myself. Please intercept him and await further orders; meantime let the expedition proceed without him.”
⁴⁹
Sherman had been trying to help Custer, but now George had pushed matters too far. He was charged with having left Washington without reporting to Grant or Sherman—though the former refused to see him and the latter was in New York City. That same day the
New York World
published a lengthy editorial entitled “Grant's Revenge,” castigating the president for an act of “miserable vengeance” against Custer. The article contained details that could only have come from Custer himself, and it hurt his relationship with Sherman and Taft by publicly implying they sided with Custer over Grant.

Custer reported to Sheridan, who dressed him down for getting involved with politics at the expense of his duties. Custer sent two contrite telegrams to Sherman but was simply told to report to Fort Lincoln, where he would remain while the expedition went forward. On
May 5, Grant recommended command of the 7th Cavalry during the expedition be given to Major Marcus Reno. “The Army,” Sherman said, “possesses hundreds of officers who are as competent for the command of any expedition as General Custer.”
⁵⁰

Custer's removal from the Sioux campaign was widely commented on. “Everybody that has any acquaintance with [Custer] will admit that a little ‘set down' will do him no harm,” the
Baltimore American
opined. “Gen. Grant is very unlike Custer in his method of doing things, but he knows how to administer an effective ‘snub' in a quiet way.”
⁵¹

But the anti-Grant papers were less measured. “The removal of General Custer from his command by the President is a scandalous performance,” the
Indiana Democrat
groused. Custer's testimony “was displeasing to the extortionate post traders in whose interest the President has been working; and Custer is removed to deter other officers from telling what they knew.”
⁵²

Custer went to see General Terry in St. Paul for one final try. According to Colonel Robert Hughes, Terry's brother-in-law, Custer begged Terry on his knees for help. Terry was sympathetic; he liked Custer and respected his experience in operations against the Indians. Terry, a graduate of Yale Law School, helped Custer draft a persuasive appeal to Grant,

“I appeal to you as a soldier to spare me the humiliation of seeing my regiment march to meet the enemy and I not share its dangers,” he wrote.
⁵³
Sheridan made his case, saying Custer's early return from suspension in 1868 had worked out well. And Terry cleared up the matter of the disputed corn shipment, saying there was no record of Custer's complaint because he had never passed it along to the War Department and instead authorized delivery himself.

On May 8, Grant relented. He allowed Custer to lead the 7th Cavalry on the campaign, but Terry remained in overall command of the mission. The Democratic press pounced. “General Custer goes in
disgrace, being permitted to fight only under punishment,” observed the
New York Herald
. “This last bit of news shows weakness and apology on the part of the President, but it does not wipe out the stain with which he has covered himself.”
⁵⁴
But the pro-Grant press pushed back, particularly noting the fickleness of papers that used to hold Custer in low regard. “No officer in the United States army has received more abuse from the democratic newspapers than the brilliant and dashing Custer,” the
Baltimore American
noted. “But now that the president has found it necessary to give him a gentle reminder that there are courtesies due to superior officers, which the bravest of the brave are not at liberty to neglect, these caustic critics have suddenly discovered that Custer is the most accomplished officer in the United States army [and] that he is the greatest Indian fighter on the continent.”
⁵⁵

Some papers had it right. “Gen. Custer, although he is a very garrulous man, and talks too much for his own good, is a gallant officer, whose past record ought to have spared him the humiliation from which he has so narrowly escaped,” the
Chicago Tribune
noted. “It should prove a warning to him, however, of the danger of being such a swift and willing witness in partisan investigations, especially when it eventuates that he has nothing to say of any value.”
⁵⁶

Custer was elated. He again was given a chance to salvage his career and reputation and find redemption on the battlefield. After Custer learned of Grant's decision, he ran into Captain William Ludlow and told him excitedly that once the campaign was under way he would “cut loose” at the first opportunity.
⁵⁷
He planned to go out among the Indians and find a battle he would be remembered for.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“DON'T BE GREEDY”

E
arly on May 17, 1876, the 7th Cavalry set off from their camp near Fort Lincoln with close to 1,000 men, 1,700 animals, and 200 wagons, in a column stretching two miles. Mists lay low in the cool, early-morning darkness, and the cavalrymen had the illusion of “riding in the sky.”
¹

The command passed the fort to cheers from the whites and wailing from the resident Indians, their traditional sendoff to warriors. The band struck up “Garryowen”; Tom Custer waved his hand toward the column and called to someone at the fort, “A single company of that can lick the whole Sioux nation!” He was perhaps unknowingly paraphrasing Fetterman's boast before he and his command were wiped out.
²

George Custer was his usual flamboyant self, wearing his frontier garb, his hair cropped short. Reporter Mark Kellogg wrote: “Gen. George A. Custer, dressed in a dashing suit of buckskin, is prominent everywhere.
Here, there, flitting to and fro. In his quick eager way, taking in everything connected with his command, as well as generally, with the keen, incisive manner for which he is so well known. The General is full of perfect readiness for a fray with the hostile red devils, and woe to the body of scalp-lifters that comes within reach of himself and brave companions in arms.”

The campaign was very much a family affair; Tom was there, of course, and brother-in-law James Calhoun. Along for the adventure was Custer's eighteen-year-old nephew, Armstrong “Autie” Reed, listed officially as a herder but really just out for the summer with his uncle. Boston Custer was there too, as a “guide.” Nevin Custer said that they had “gone back with [George] after his last visit home, just to see the country and be along with him as leader of the expedition.”

Libbie accompanied the column for a day before riding back to the fort, and the couple had an emotional leave-taking. In light of later events, some took this as a premonition, but it was not unusual for them. While he was in Washington, George showed some of Libbie's love-laden letters to a woman who said, “Your sweetheart sent them. Never your wife.”

“Both are one,” George replied.

“What?” she said. “How long have you been married?”

“Twelve years.”

“And haven't gotten over that?”

“No,” George said. “And never shall.”
³

The Sioux campaign was relaunched with an almost identical plan to the one partially implemented weeks earlier.
⁴
Again it was a three-pronged operation. Crook was to move north from Fort Fetterman with 1,350 men, the largest of the three columns. Gibbon with five hundred men from the 2nd Cavalry and 7th Infantry would move east down the
Yellowstone River from Fort Ellis, and Terry would move west from Fort Lincoln with over nine hundred men, predominately the 7th Cavalry, under Custer, and including a small unit with three Gatling guns. Supply points were set along the Yellowstone where the steamers
Far West
and
Josephine
would periodically meet them. Libbie declined an invitation to accompany the ships to meet the column.

While the campaign plan was little changed, the facts on the ground had been in flux since Secretary Chandler's December 1875 ultimatum. It was no longer winter, and all the relative advantages the Army enjoyed in the colder months were lost. With the approach of summer, and the accompanying warmer weather, abundant grass, and better hunting, there were significantly more Indians in the area of operations. Besides, four months had passed since the January deadline to return to the reservations, with no dire consequences. If the Indians ever took Sheridan's threats seriously, they didn't now.

Meanwhile, the rationale for the campaign had been overcome by events. The Black Hills were not turning out to be the El Dorado that rumors and reporters had promised. Around the time Crook and Gibbon launched the first, failed Sioux expedition, a prospector named George Drake wrote to the
Kansas City Times
, “Tell the people in the States that the people who have a means of making a living had better remain there.”
⁵
A reporter from the
Times
spoke to miners in the area, and while opinions on the prospects ranged from enthusiasm to disgust, most concluded there was not gold enough to justify the rush. He called this a “secret [that] has been jealously and closely guarded by those interested in mining claims and town property in Custer.”
⁶
With interest waning, land values in Custer City had collapsed; lots that had sold for five hundred dollars dropped to two dollars. “As far as mining went,” a reporter concluded, “Custer City was a delusion.”
⁷

James A. Tomlinson wrote to friends in Chicago, “I wish I was home. The Black Hills is a fraud of the first water. Be kind enough to advise any
and all my friends to keep out of this corridor of hell, as nothing has really been found here to warrant them coming. There is more suffering than gold here. Oh God! how cold and hungry I am.”
⁸
The
New York Times
reported that “the only lively business in the region is that of whiskey selling.” The paper alleged that there was a “systematic attempt to mislead” and the entire story of gold was a “monstrous delusion.” Miners were grossing an average fifty-five dollars per month, and “men who are willing to live on starvation diet in the wilderness, and in daily terror of death by violence, for that income, are crazy.”
⁹
The
Times
called the notion of gold in the Black Hills “the champion swindle of the Centennial year.”
¹⁰

Some blamed Custer, accusing him of boosterism at best, and at worst collusion in fraud. But there was no evidence he ever profited personally from the gold rush, and the
Bismarck Tribune
mounted a vociferous and exaggerated defense. If Custer was guilty, the paper said, he was “guilty of causing at least fifty thousand people to get rich out of the ground the noble red man has no use for” and “opening the richest and most extensive gold fields the world ever knew.”
¹¹
It was an improbable claim, but history bore it out. In September 1874, Custer said that he was “satisfied that a rich mining region will be found in the northeastern portion of the Hills.”
¹²
A year and a half later, four miners discovered the Homestake deposit fifty-six miles north of Custer City. Homestake became the largest and deepest gold mine in North America, and by the time it closed in 2002 it had produced over 2.7 million pounds of gold.