Changing views of General Custer [Completely new thread title]

I don’t think you’ll find many people, even those who discredit Custer, saying he was particularly brutal or evil. He’s no Gen. Chivington, or anything. Most of Custer’s critics say he was a bad commander…that he was overambitious, impetuous, and didn’t pay attention to detail.

There always has been a split of opinion about Custer, back to the days he first came to prominence as a cavalry brigade commander with the Army of the Potomac. His career in the Civil War certainly was not free of controversy and it got more intense when the Seventh Cavalry was organized after the war and Custer, a temporary major general, appointed as its lieutenant colonel. He certainly was widely disliked among officers in other regiments and by some officers in his own regiment, notably Frederick Benteen who was a malignant and accomplished hater.

To a great extent the lack of criticism after the Little Big Horn was the consequence of two factors, maybe three. First there was a reluctance to criticize Custer to spare Mrs. Custer’s feelings. Apparently she was a sort of Jackie Kennedy type with a mean streak. There is some support for the idea that she was the principal author of many of the adulatory books and articles about Custer, whom she nearly worshiped. She pretty well devoted her life to magnifying Custer’s reputation. No body in the army was going to take her on. She lived into the 1930s and outlived most of the officers who served with Custer.

Second, there was a feeling that any criticism of Custer was a criticism of the army it’s self. Not something that serving officers were likely to do no mater how much they disliked Custer as a person, officer or commander.

Third, in the Seventh Cavalry there were other factors that suppressed candor about Custer. To a great extent Custer had officered the regiment with his followers. His brother, his brother-in-law, and a nephew were all killed at the Little Big Horn. A fair number of the surviving officers were his syncopates and those who were not, like Lieutenant Godwin, were driven into the Custer camp by their dislike of Major Reno—as between being a Custer booster or a Reno booster most opted to side with the Custer-as-noble-warrior-on-a-white-horse faction. Captain Benteen was an equal opportunity hater, he despised both of them, Custer as an egotistical fool and Reno as a coward. The result of all this was that the Army and the regiment kept its mouth shut.

This left Mrs. Custer and the popular press to shape Custer’s myth. Widows and newspapers seldom get it right and almost never promote dispassionate analysis.

As far as I’m concerned the best collection of first hand information is William Graham’s The Custer Myth. Graham was an Army lawyer who interviewed many of the survivors in the years between the two world wars. The best read is a book called Son of the Morning Star, the author of which I can’t recall. Of course, if you want facts, ignore movies.

While I would agree that he was not a Chivington, his campaign on the Washita highlighted negative aspects of his reputation.

The camp that he “brilliantly” overwhelmed with the same multiple-sided attack that he employed disastrously at the Little Bighorn was one of several villages in the river valley who were there at the insistance of the Army. They were not prepared for a fight, having already petitioned to move closer to Fort Cobb for protection. (Among the victims of the “battle” were the leader Black Kettle and his wife who had, ironically, barely survived Chivington’s Sand Creek massacre.) Custer claimed 103 “hostiles” slain, but most accounts indicate that only a dozen or so were warriors, the rest being women, children, and elderly.

In the same instance, he also chose to do nothing to relieve Major Elliott’s command of 19 men, even though the firefight in which that patrol was annihilated went on for over an hour and could be plainly heard by Custer and his unit.

Has your teacher recommended you read Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell?

If not, pick up a copy and enjoy.

Then we can debate some more.

:smiley:

Tell you one thing: if you retain and absorb only half of the information in this thread alone, you’re due for an “A” in that class. :slight_smile:

Well done, all; reading this has been an edifying and enjoyable experience for me.

NO my teacher has not, but i will be sure to pick it up somewtime next week and tell you what I think. Thankyou for the reconmendation on a book.

There’s obviously a tendency among academics to deal much more harshly with whites than with non-whites. This is due largely to the desire not to seem racist or prejudiced and in some cases due to actual prejudice against whites. However, it’s also due in some cases to prejudice in favor of whites which makes the doings of non-whites seem much less interesting or important.

I know that seems contradictory, even paradoxical, but people are entirely capable of having conflicting attitudes, ideas and prejudices.

imagine if you will president grant telling say , james garfield to terminate general custers command with extreme prejudice but getting there too late apocalypse then son of the morning star is a great book

To answer your question,

The actions of Heroes and villans are often re-interpreted over the years. We tend to view the actions of those people through our own filters and our own cultural biases. Some people who were heroes, become villians, and vice versa. It’s therefore important for accuracies sake to try and understand the culture that existed at the time of the events.

Viewing events in a vacuum doesn’t do that much for understanding those events, because you don’t understand the causes * behind * those events. And if if you know the historical backstory, you must always be sure to try and view the actions through the cultural filters of the time.

You may want to ask your teacher what it is exactly that makes today’s interpretation of Custers actions more valid than those of yesterday. After all, he wasn’t acting as a member of today’s culture or society.

Regards,
-Bouncer-