The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer (40 page)

While serving as commander of Fort Duchesne, Utah, in 1886, Benteen, who had a fondness for alcohol, faced a court-martial and was found guilty of various offenses ranging from drunkenness on duty to using obscene and profane language and exposing himself in public. His punishment, dismissal from the army, was later amended by President Grover Cleveland to a one-year suspension in respect for Benteen's long and honorable service.

Benteen established his residence in Atlanta and requested that he be retired on disability following his suspension, which took effect July 7, 1888. Two years later, he somehow was awarded a brevet of brigadier general for his actions at Little Bighorn and against the Nez Percé.

A portrait of Benteen's sarcastic and critical personality was revealed during his later years. Bitter and vindictive in his old age, Benteen literally blisters the pages of letters written to a number of people, most notably a former Seventh Cavalry private named Theodore Goldin, with hatred of Custer and contempt for most of his old comrades.

Goldin's company was part of Major Marcus Reno's battalion during the Little Bighorn battle. He was said to have been wounded twice while retreating from the valley across the river to the bluffs and during the two-day siege of the hilltop. Goldin participated in the 1877 Nez Percé Campaign until November, when he was discharged as a private of good character. He returned to Wisconsin, where he eventually practiced law with his brother-in-law. Goldin enlisted in May 1888 as a private in the Wisconsin Infantry and was soon promoted to sergeant major, then in January 1889 appointed colonel and aide-de-camp to the governor.

Between the fall of 1891 and the summer of 1896 Goldin and Frederick Benteen exchanged letters. Benteen, who addressed Goldin as “Colonel,” perhaps his National Guard rank, would not have remembered the former enlisted man and may not have corresponded with him had he known that Goldin had not been a former regular army officer. Nonetheless, these fascinating accounts bear further witness to the dark side of Benteen, who demonstrated a startling bitterness and sarcasm toward his former comrades, especially George Armstrong Custer.

Incidentally, Goldin applied for the Medal of Honor by claiming that he had been among the volunteers who had risked their lives to carry water to the wounded while trapped on the hilltop in June 1876. The medal was awarded on December 21, 1895—nineteen years after the battle—possibly with assistance from Benteen.

Benteen occasionally rattled his saber by alluding in these letters to great crimes or misdeeds committed by Custer but failed to provide any evidence whatsoever and instead merely repeated camp gossip spiced with his rancorous conjectures. (These letters were compiled into a fascinating book:
The Benteen-Goldin Letters on Custer and His Last Battle,
edited by John M. Carroll.)

Frederick Benteen died on June 22, 1898, from paralysis following a stroke. He was initially buried in Westview Cemetery in Atlanta but reinterred in November 1902 in Arlington National Cemetery.

After the famous battle, Major Marcus A. Reno was the subject of immediate and intense criticism, privately from the officers and men who had witnessed his actions as well as public condemnation from those who could recognize his cowardice.

He was soon assigned (or exiled) to Fort Abercrombie, known as the armpit of the Dakotas. Shortly after arriving, he was accused of cavorting with a fellow Seventh Cavalry officer's wife—Emeline Bell, the wife of Captain James M. Bell. Reno faced a general court-martial on March 8, 1877, on charges of “conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman” and being drunk on duty. Reno claimed that the charges were simply post politics and that Mrs. Bell had been the aggressor. He was found guilty as charged and sentenced to be dismissed from the service. President Rutherford B. Hayes stepped in to cite Reno's exemplary record, however, and commuted the punishment to two years' suspension, effective May 1, 1877.

At that time, other Seventh Cavalry officers, including McDougall, Moylan, DeRudio, and Bell, charged Reno with striking a junior officer and being drunk on duty, but the charges were eventually dropped.

Reno was restored to duty at Fort Meade and soon found himself in more trouble. A drunken Reno struck another officer over the head with a pool cue and, if that were not enough, while being confined to quarters was accused of a “Peeping Tom” incident. The subject was Ella Sturgis, the twenty-year-old daughter of Colonel Samuel Sturgis, in whom Reno was said to have had a one-sided romantic interest. While strolling on the parade ground on November 10, 1879, Reno inexplicably peeked into the window of the Sturgis parlor and then, upon seeing Ella, tapped on the window. Ella screamed bloody murder, and Colonel Sturgis left his bed to chase Reno with his cane.

Reno's court-martial convened on November 28, and he was once again found guilty and sentenced to be dismissed from the service. This time President Hayes refused to commute the sentence—in spite of a petition for clemency filed by Generals Terry and Sherman. Reno was dishonorably discharged on April 1, 1880, after twenty-three years in the army.

Marcus Reno, who for the rest of his life tried unsuccessfully to clear his name, fell on hard times as a civilian. He married for a second time, but his wife left him after only a few months. Newspaper and magazine editors were not interested in his accounts of the famous battle. He even lacked expenses to travel to his son's wedding. Reno eventually landed a job as a clerk with the Bureau of Pensions in Washington, but that apparently did not last long.

Reno was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue and developed complications following surgery. He died on March 30, 1889, at Providence Hospital in Washington. His brief obituary in
The Washington Star
read: “Reno—In this city died, Marcus A. Reno, late major and Brevet Lt. Col., U.S. Army.”

In the mid-1960s, Reno's great-nephew, backed by the American Legion, asked the army to reexamine the final court-martial charges. The judge advocate general's office concluded that Reno had been improperly dismissed from the service, and his records were corrected to reflect an honorable discharge.

On September 9, 1967, Reno was reinterred with full military honors in the Custer National Cemetery at Little Bighorn. Thus, Marcus A. Reno, the officer who had committed the ultimate betrayal of failing to carry out his orders in the face of the enemy and thereby contributed to the loss of hundreds of lives, became the only battle participant honored with such pomp and circumstance at that site.

Custer and Reno's enemy that day, the Lakota Sioux, had merely been doing what came naturally—fighting. The tribe had prevailed at the Little Bighorn, but that victory was the beginning of the end for them. They subscribed to a culture that thrived on warfare, and had taken and held their territory by force. After Little Bighorn, however, they ran into a more powerful enemy in the inspired United States Army and lost this land by force—which the Sioux by their actions had chosen as the only arbiter they respected.

The United States had every right to expand its boundaries to include the Great Plains West. Oddly enough, many modern scholars believe there was something honorable about the Sioux fighting to defend their right to roam free. It is apparent, however, that the great thinkers of today have not been able to develop a practical policy that would have solved the “Indian problem” back then any more than could their counterparts of the nineteenth century.

The West was becoming too small and populated to allow a group advocating violence to close off thousands of square miles, with its resources and potential, and stand in the way of settlers who wanted to work the land, build towns and lives, and raise their families. Peace entreaties had been made and were dismissed. It was indeed unfortunate that a peaceful solution could not have been reached. In the end, the only response to violence was violence—a circumstance that sends American servicemen into battle with regularity right up to this day.

Although the leadership by the officers of Reno's command left much to be desired—other than Benteen on the hilltop—the enlisted soldiers were truly men of courage. It was not their fault that their commander, Major Marcus Reno, had placed them in one precarious situation after another—from a gallant charge of the village to setting up the skirmish line on to the timber and finally that disastrous retreat to the hilltop. None of them panicked as the horror show was being performed in the village during that first night, and they were prepared to fight to the death should the Sioux press the issue.

The volunteers' risking their lives and journeying to the river for water must go down as one of the most heroic acts under fire imaginable. Anyone who has stood overlooking that steep ravine on the battlefield can only marvel at the courage of those men. For their bravery, twenty-four Seventh Cavalry troopers—water carriers and sharpshooters—would be awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest number cited on any one day in United States history.

With respect to the legacy of George Armstrong Custer, fair-minded people should reject the traditional fixation with trying to place the blame for the Little Bighorn debacle on him and allow the evidence to lead them to practical and logical answers. In addition, the portrayal of Custer as the poster boy for the destruction of Indian culture has been based on nothing more than misguided prejudice caused by lack of knowledge and a recent pseudo-revisionist inclination to tarnish heroes.

Custer is an American hero—a man who rose from meager beginnings to attain greatness by his own abilities and talents—and that same resentment that fueled inferior people with weak character like Frederick Benteen to disparage him, sadly enough, continues to this day.

Custer's military career from Bull Run to the Little Bighorn was by any measurement one of the finest in American history. Many military icons immortalized to this day cannot come close to matching the accomplishments of Custer. Yet his image has been sullied by unfair portrayals in silly, historically embarrassing movies and books, and especially in classrooms and textbooks where social and political agendas have supplanted truth.

Heroes and villains? The Battle of the Little Bighorn has no lack of either—but too often the villains have been portrayed as heroes and vice versa. It is time to balance the account, set the record straight, and restore and pay tribute to heroes who have fallen prey to the academic and pop-culture bullies who cannot accept the premise that everyone throughout history has not been equal and that great men have actually walked this earth—and their accomplishments attest to that fact.

Finally, thank God for the bravery and sacrifices of the American military, which has responded without question to their country's call and performed their duty with honor throughout history.

 

Appendix

Table of Organization and Casualty Report of the Seventh Cavalry Little Bighorn Campaign

Nearly every source about the battle differs in estimated casualty totals. This Table of Organization and Casualty Report was compiled as best as possible from the official Seventh Cavalry Muster Rolls dated June 30, 1876. Those troopers from companies attached to Custer's battalion listed as wounded in action or who died of wounds were serving with either another company or the pack train at the time of the battle. Consequently, it is extremely difficult to calculate exact strength numbers for individual companies.

Although identification was impossible in some cases due to mutilation, 208 or 210 bodies—accounts vary—were said to have been found and buried on June 27, 1876, on the Custer battlefield. This figure may not account for an undetermined number that may have been missing from the field—excluding Lieutenants Henry M. Harrington, James E. Porter, and James G. Sturgis, who were presumed to have been killed but their bodies never found.

Code:
(KIA): Killed In Action; (WIA): Wounded In Action; (DOW): Died Of Wounds; (MIA): Missing In Action.

HEADQUARTERS

Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, commanding (KIA)

First Lieutenant William W. Cooke, adjutant (KIA)

Lieutenant George E. Lord, assistant surgeon (KIA)

Mitch Bouyer, interpreter (KIA)

Marcus H. Kellogg, correspondent (KIA)

Harry Armstrong Reed, attached civilian (KIA)

Boston Custer, forage master (KIA)

(3 officers KIA; 2 enlisted KIA; 4 staff KIA)

CUSTER'S BATTALION

Company C

Captain Thomas W. Custer (KIA)

Second Lieutenant Henry M. Harrington (MIA)

(1 officer KIA; 1 officer MIA; 36 enlisted KIA; 4 enlisted WIA; 1 enlisted DOW)

Company E

First Lieutenant Algernon E. Smith (KIA)

Second Lieutenant James G. Sturgis (MIA)

(2 officers KIA; 37 enlisted KIA; 2 enlisted WIA)

Company F

Captain George W. Yates (KIA)

Second Lieutenant William V. W. Reily (KIA)

(2 officers KIA; 36 enlisted KIA)

Company I

Captain Myles W. Keogh (KIA)

First Lieutenant James E. Porter (MIA)

(2 officers KIA; 36 enlisted KIA; 1 enlisted WIA; 1 enlisted DOW)

Company L

First Lieutenant James Calhoun (KIA)

Second Lieutenant John J. Crittenden (KIA)

(2 officers KIA; 44 enlisted KIA; 1 enlisted WIA)

RENO'S BATTALION

Major Marcus A. Reno, commanding

Second Lieutenant Benjamin H. Hodgson, adjutant (KIA)

Company A

Captain Myles Moylan

First Lieutenant Charles DeRudio

(8 enlisted KIA; 7 enlisted WIA; 1 enlisted DOW)

Company G

First Lieutenant Donald McIntosh (KIA)

Second Lieutenant George D. Wallace

(1 officer KIA; 13 enlisted KIA; 6 enlisted WIA)

Company M

Captain Thomas H. French