The Real Custer (63 page)

37
.
    
Wiley C. Howard,
Sketch of Cobb Legion Cavalry and Some Incidents and Scenes Remembered
(Atlanta, GA, 1901), 4–5.

38
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 452.

39
.
    
Ibid. Ball commanded the 8th Alabama Cavalry regiment during the war, and afterward he became an inventor. Kelly, in November 1863, became the youngest general in the Confederacy, a counterpart to his friend Custer, who achieved the same distinction in the Union Army six months earlier. Kelly was killed in 1864 during a raid near Franklin, Tennessee.

40
.
    
Parker,
The Life of Francis Henry Parker
, letter of April 7, 1861, 45–46.

41
.
    
Presidential order quoted in Schaff,
The Spirit of Old West Point
, 201–2.

42
.
    
Quoted in Schaff,
The Spirit of Old West Point
, 204.

43
.
    
Ibid., 208.

44
.
    
Custer letter, April 10, 1861, USMA archives.

45
.
    
Parker,
The Life of Francis Henry Parker
, letter of April 7, 1861, 44.

46
.
    
Custer letter, April 10, 1861, USMA archives.

47
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 453.

48
.
    
Rowland letter, April 14, 1861.

49
.
    
“Detention of West Point Cadets in Philadelphia,”
New York Times,
May 9, 1861. See also letter by Lieutenant William Anthony Elderkin (USMA May 1861), May 8, 1861, USMA Archives.

50
.
    
New York Times,
June 22, 1861. The Class of 1862 almost graduated early as well, but it was felt that there was nothing to be gained putting officers in the field who were little better trained than the militia officers already being commissioned in large numbers balanced against such a severe disruption of the Academy system.

51
.
    
Parker,
The Life of Francis Henry Parker
, letter of May 18, 1861, 47.

52
.
    
“The West Point Cadets,”
New York Times
, June 22, 1861.

53
.
    
GAC letter to his sister, May 31, 1861.

54
.
    
Quoted in James S. Robbins,
Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett, and the Goats of West Point
(New York: Encounter Books, 2006), x. The book remains the invaluable guide to the goats.

55
.
    
Boynton,
History of West
, 281.

56
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 454. Of the 330 serving West Point graduates appointed from the Southern states, 168 joined the rebellion, and 162 remained loyal to the Union. See Ellsworth Eliot Jr.,
West Point in the Confederacy
(New York: G.A. Baker, 1941).

57
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 454.

58
.
    
Two of them, Frank A. Reynolds and George Owen Watts, graduated and then resigned. Clarence Derrick, who graduated fourth in the class, also resigned after graduation.

59
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 455.

60
.
    
“Custer's Failure at West Point,”
Hamilton Examiner
, July 30, 1874, 2.

61
.
    
Ibid.

62
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 455.

63
.
    
Ibid.

64
.
    
Ibid.

65
.
    
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), 34.

66
.
    
Stephen Vincent Benét graduated third in the Class of 1849. He spent the Civil War at West Point as an instructor and testing experimental ordnance. In 1874 he became the chief of ordnance of the U.S. Army.

67
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” 455.

68
.
    
Ibid., 456.

69
.
    
Ibid.

70
.
    
Ibid.

71
.
    
Special Orders No. 187, July 15, 1861, 8–9. It is hard to understand Hazen's assessment of Custer's conduct, since he had been given fifty-two demerits in the twenty-three days between the end of term and the incident in question. It may have been a case of one immortal looking out for another.

72
.
    
Memoir of George A. Woodruff, unpublished manuscript, USMA Archives, 28.

73
.
    
GAC letter to his sister, May 31, 1861.

CHAPTER 4

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), 5. Of the eighty-nine graduates of the two classes of 1861, forty-three were present at Bull Run.

2
.
      
George A. Custer, “War Memoirs,”
Galaxy
, April 1876, 456.

3
.
      
Ibid., 457.

4
.
      
Custer, “War Memoirs,” September 1876, 19.

5
.
      
Custer, “War Memoirs,” April 1876, 624.

6
.
      
Custer, “War Memoirs,” May 1876, 629.

7
.
      
Ibid., 628.

8
.
      
Custer, “War Memoirs,” May 1876, 631; and June 1876, 811.

9
.
      
Custer, “War Memoirs,” May 1876, 624.

10
.
    
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), 13.

11
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” June 1876, 814.

12
.
    
John McClelland Bulkley,
History of Monroe County Michigan: A Narrative Account of Its Historical Progress, Its People, and Its Principal Interests
, vol. 1 (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1913), 234.

13
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” September 1876, 299.

14
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” November 1876, 685.

15
.
    
Ibid.

16
.
    
See the account in “The Fighting Begins,” chapter 5 of Tom Carhart,
Sacred Ties: From West Point Brothers to Battlefield Rivals
(New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2010).

17
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” November 1876, 685–86.

18
.
    
Ibid., 692.

19
.
    
Ibid., 693.

20
.
    
Ibid., 694.

21
.
    
Ibid.

22
.
    
Francois Joinville to Edward Everett, Wednesday, November 9, 1864, Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress. Joinville acted as chaperon for his two nephews, who were on McClellan's staff and later wrote a book about his experiences.

23
.
    
Reports of Brigadier General John G. Barnard, U.S. Army, chief engineer of operations from May 23, 1861, to August 15, 1862.

24
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” October 1876, 455.

25
.
    
See the account by M. A. Luce, “Custer's First Battle,”
Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine
, vol. 21 (March 1898), 280–81. Luce participated in the engagement as a member of the 4th Michigan.

26
.
    
Report of Lieutenant Nicolas Bowen, topographical engineers, U.S. Army, May 23–24, 1862; and “Skirmishes at Ellison's Mill, New Bridge, and Mechanicsville, Va.,” May 25, 1862.

27
.
    
Reports of Brigadier General John G. Barnard, U.S. Army, chief engineer of operations from May 23, 1861, to August 15, 1862.

28
.
    
McClellan to Stanton, May 24, 1862, 9 p.m.

29
.
    
Willard Glazier,
Ocean to Ocean on Horseback
(Philadelphia: Edgewood, 1899), 278.

CHAPTER 5

1
.
      
George Brinton McClellan and William Cowper Prime,
McClellan's Own Story
(New York: C. L. Webster, 1887), 365.

2
.
      
George A. Custer, “War Memoirs,”
Galaxy
, June 1876, 813.

3
.
      
Reports of Colonel William W. Averell, Third Pennsylvania Cavalry, commanding First Cavalry Brigade, of skirmish at White Oak Swamp Bridge, August 5–6, 1862.

4
.
      
GAC in Reynolds,
The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer
, 27–28.

5
.
      
D. S. Freeman,
Lee's Lieutenants
, vol. 1
, Manassas to Malvern Hill
(New York: Scribner's, 1942), 233.

6
.
      
From an account by Mrs. E. B. Washington reprinted in “Amenities of War,”
Louisiana Democrat
, February 13, 1878.

7
.
      
EBC in Reynolds,
The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer,
28.

8
.
      
E. B. Washington's account in “Amenities of War.” Washington was sent to Fort Delaware in June 1862 and was exchanged that September for First Lieutenant James S. Blair of the First Maryland Volunteers. He went back to Johnston's staff.

9
.
      
EBC in Reynolds,
The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer,
30.

10
.
    
Custer letter of May 15, 1862, in Marguerite Merington,
The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth
(New York: Devin-Adair, 1950), 30.

11
.
    
Cf. Morris Schaff,
The Spirit of Old West Point, 1858–1862
(New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1907), 179–182. Schaff incorrectly gives the family name as Durfee. Schaff suggested that Lea should be buried next to Custer at West Point, “in memory of the love of two cadets whose West Point friendship the bitterness of war could not destroy” (183). Bassett Hall, the site of the wedding, is currently a museum at Colonial Williamsburg.

12
.
    
Merington,
The Custer Story
, 35.

13
.
    
Custer, “War Memoirs,” June 1876, 812–13.

14
.
    
D. H. Strother, “Personal Recollections of the War by a Virginian,”
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
, April 1868, 581. Entry of November 9, 1862.

15
.
    
Ibid., 577. Entry of November 1, 1862.

CHAPTER 6

1
.
      
John McClelland Bulkley,
History of Monroe County Michigan
, vol. I (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1913), 219–20.

2
.
      
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), 4.

3
.
      
Ibid.

4
.
      
EBC to GAC, August 14, 1864, in 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), 47.

5
.
      
EBC in Reynolds,
The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer
, 5.

6
.
      
Ibid.