The Real Custer (62 page)

21
.
    
“Gen. Custer's Father,”
Lafayette (LA) Gazette
, April 22, 1893, 1.

22
.
    
EBC in Arlene Reynolds, ed.,
The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer: Reconstructed from Her Diaries and Notes
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 9.

23
.
    
The Opposition party (1854–58) was one of the political parties that bridged the disintegration of the Whig party after the passage of the compromise Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and the rise of the Republican party after 1856. The Oppositionists—the name referring to their opposition to the Democrats—controlled one hundred seats in the Thirty-fourth Congress, the largest party but lacking majority control. Bingham had been a lawyer in New Philadelphia, Ohio, and had served as district attorney for Tuscarawas County. He served eight nonconsecutive terms in Congress. Bingham was a special judge advocate during the trial of the Lincoln conspirators, helped manage the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, was principal author of the Fourteenth Amendment, and was U.S. minister to Japan, 1873–85.

24
.
    
“Gen. Custer's Father,” 1.

25
.
    
“How Custer Went to West Point,”
Hocking Sentinel (OH)
, August 16, 1900, 3.

26
.
    
“Some Reminiscences of the Boyhood Days of General Custer and Bishop Simpson,” 1.

CHAPTER 2

1
.
      
EBC in Arlene Reynolds, ed.,
The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer: Reconstructed from Her Diaries and Notes
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 20.

2
.
      
James S. Robbins,
Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett, and the Goats of West Point
(New York: Encounter Books, 2006), 1.

3
.
      
GAC, August 7, 1857.

4
.
      
Morris Schaff,
The Spirit of Old West Point, 1858
–
1862
(New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1907), 86. Schaff knew Custer well at West Point and afterward, and his memoir of his cadet days is an important source on West Point in the years before and during the outbreak of the Civil War.

5
.
      
See John Montgomery Wright, “West Point before the War,”
Southern Bivouac
, June 1885, 13.

6
.
      
Joseph Pearson Farley,
West Point in the Early Sixties
:
With Incidents of the War
(Troy, NY: Pafraets Book Company, 1902), 78.

7
.
      
George Custer, “War Memoirs,”
Galaxy
, April 1876, 450.

8
.
      
GAC, January 27, 1858.

9
.
      
GAC, June 30, 1858, from “Camp Jefferson Davis.”

10
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs”; and GAC, December 13, 1859.

11
.
    
Reverend J. William Jones, ed., “Generals in the Saddle,”
Southern Historical Society Papers
19, October 1891, 172.

12
.
    
Marguerite Merington, ed.,
The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth
(New York: Devin-Adair, 1950), 8.

13
.
    
Wright, “West Point before the War,” 18.

14
.
    
GAC, December 13, 1859.

15
.
    
McCrea letter, January 19, 1861.

16
.
    
Custer letter, August 7, 1857.

17
.
    
Quoted in W. Donal Horn, ed.,
“Skinned”: The Delinquency Record of Cadet George Armstrong Custer, U.S.M.A. Class of June 1861
, foreword by Blaine L. Beal (Short Hills, NJ: W. D. Horn, 1980), iii.

18
.
    
Schaff,
The Spirit of Old West Point
, 194.

19
.
    
McCrea letter, December 22, 1858.

20
.
    
Memoir of George A. Woodruff, unpublished manuscript, USMA Archives, 24.

21
.
    
Custer, West Point–era letter, date uncertain.

22
.
    
Letter from T. Rowland written in 1860, reprinted in “Hazing at West Point,”
Stevens Point Journal
, April 22, 1916.

23
.
    
EBC in Reynolds,
The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer
, 39.

24
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 454.

25
.
    
Edward C. Boynton,
History of West Point, and Its Military Importance during the American Revolution: And the Origin and Progress of the United States
Military Academy
(New York: Van Nostrand, 1863), 279. Some have said that the demerits Custer was forgiven at the end of his first year were “Custer's luck,” but in fact all cadets in his class were given the one-third reduction.

26
.
    
The one-third reduction explains Custer's comment about the 150-demerit limit. It was actually a one-hundred-demerit-per-semester limit, but plebes could go up another fifty since it would revert by one-third.

27
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 452.

28
.
    
McCrea letter, September 23, 1860.

29
.
    
McCrea letter, January 19, 1861. McCrea offered helpfully that a better idea would have been to take the whole notebook and replace it later by bribing an employee at the hotel.

30
.
    
McCrea letter, February 10, 1861.

31
.
    
EBC in Reynolds,
The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer
, 39.

32
.
    
Custer letter dated August 7, 1857.

33
.
    
“Affairs at West Point,”
New York Times
, August 9, 1860.

34
.
    
“West Point and Newport,”
New York Times
, September 11, 1860, 2.

35
.
    
“West Point,”
New York Times
, September 13, 1860, 2.

36
.
    
R. W. Johnson,
A Soldier's Reminiscences in Peace and War
(Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1886), 25–27. Johnson graduated thirtieth of forty-three in his class and was a brevet major general in the Civil War.

37
.
    
Custer letter, August 7, 1857.

38
.
    
Custer letter, December 13, 1859.

39
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 454.

40
.
    
Robbins,
Last in Their Class
, 21.

41
.
    
Edward K. Eckert and Nicholas J. Amato, eds.,
Ten Years in the Saddle: The Memoir of William Woods Averell
(San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978), 38.

42
.
    
EBC in Reynolds,
The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer
, 23.

CHAPTER 3

1
.
      
“The West Point Troubles,”
New York Times
, October 21, 1871.

2
.
      
George Custer, “War Memoirs,”
Galaxy
, April 1876, 449.

3
.
      
Quoted in George C. Strong,
Cadet Life at West Point
(Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1962), 297.

4
.
      
See Elizabeth D. J. Waugh, “Brothers at War,” chapter 9 in
West Point
(New York: Macmillan, 1944).

5
.
      
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 449.

6
.
      
John M. Parker III, “The Life of Francis Henry Parker, 1838–1897, A U.S. Army Ordinance Officer” (unpublished manuscript), USMA Archives, 32–33.

7
.
      
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 449.

8
.
      
See Waugh,
West Point
, 115–16.

9
.
      
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 449.

10
.
    
Jacob B. Rawles, “General Rawles Tells Stories of West Point's Famous Class of '61,”
San Francisco Call
, March 20, 1910, 4.

11
.
    
Morris Schaff,
The Spirit of Old West Point, 1858
–
1862
(New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1907), 145.

12
.
    
“The West Point Troubles.”

13
.
    
Schaff,
The Spirit of Old West Point
, 147. Rodgers was an artillery officer during the first years of the Civil War and taught mathematics at West Point in 1864–65. He was a brigadier general and chief of artillery during the Spanish-American War.

14
.
    
Schaff,
The Spirit of Old West Point
, 144. Schaff believed that the Northern temperament, which withstood insults, tended to encourage the Southerners, who misconstrued taciturnity for lack of courage. “It took Gettysburg and the Wilderness and Chickamauga to prove them their fatal error,” he wrote (see
The Spirit of Old West Point
, 83).

15
.
    
Lane resigned February 16, 1861, and became a Confederate artilleryman. He was in all the major battles in the East, serving under Pendleton at Gettysburg in the Sumter Artillery, Hill's Corps, Anderson's Division. He was probably at Appomattox as a lieutenant colonel.

16
.
    
Rawles, “General Rawles Tells Stories of West Point's Famous Class of '61,” 4.

17
.
    
Ibid. Rawles confusingly says that Gibbes was present during this incident, but since he had graduated in July 1860, it was unlikely unless the straw poll was held before the 1860 graduation.

18
.
    
Schaff,
The Spirit of Old West Point
, 165. Lincoln was elected with just under 40 percent of the popular vote.

19
.
    
Schaff,
The Spirit of Old West Point
, 165.

20
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 449.

21
.
    
McCrea letter, November 10, 1860.

22
.
    
William A. Elderkin letter, November 14, 1860, USMA Archives.

23
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 449–50.

24
.
    
Letter from T Rowland dated November 11, 1860, in
Southern Atlantic Quarterly
15, no. 1 (January 1916), 148.

25
.
    
Quoted in Peter S. Michie,
The Life and Letters of Emory Upton, Colonel of the Fourth Regiment of Artillery, and Brevet Major-General, U.S. Army
(New York: D. Appleton, 1885), 28.

26
.
    
Janesville (WI) Gazette
, December 3, 1860, 1.

27
.
    
Edward C. Boynton,
History of West Point, and Its Military Importance during the American Revolution: And the Origin and Progress of the United States Military Academy
(New York: Van Nostrand, 1863), 281.

28
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 451.

29
.
    
Rowland letter, December 27, 1860.

30
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 450.

31
.
    
Rowland letter, December 27, 1860.

32
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 450.

33
.
    
After the war, Young was a congressman, minister to Guatemala, and consul-general to Russia.

34
.
    
Schaff,
The Spirit of Old West Point
, 149.

35
.
    
Lynwood M. Holland,
Pierce M. B. Young: The Warwick of the South
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1964), 27.

36
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 451.