The Real Custer (70 page)

40
.
    
Petroleum V. Nasby (David Ross Locke),
Ekkoes from Kentucky
(Boston: Lee and Shepard Publishers, 1888), 100.

41
.
    
“Nasby's Last,”
The (St. Alban's) Vermont Daily Gazette
, November 17, 1866.

CHAPTER 21

1
.
      
EBC to Rebecca Richmond, December 6, 1866, in “Mrs. General Custer at Fort Riley, 1866,” Minnie Dubbs Millbrook, ed.,
Kansas Historical Quarterly
40, no. 1, Spring 1974, 63–71.

2
.
      
Quoted in
Rutland Daily Globe
, April 21, 1876, 2. Maginnis served in the 11th Vermont Infantry regiment in the Civil War and later was a U.S. congressional delegate from the Montana Territory. He never actually fought Indians.

3
.
      
Gibbon in Sarf, 53.

4
.
      
“Gen. George A. Custer,”
New York Times,
December 31, 1867.

5
.
      
See generally, Edward M. Coffman, “Army Life on the Frontier 1865–1898,”
Military Affairs
, Winter 1956, 193–201; and Major E. A. Garlington, “The Seventh Regiment of Cavalry: The Army of the United States” in
Historical Sketches of Staff and Line with Portraits of Generals-in-Chief
, Theo F. Rodenbough and William L. Haskin, eds. (New York: Maynard, Merrill, 1896), 251–52.

6
.
      
“The Regular Army—Wanted, A Man,”
Burlington Hawkeye
, September 24, 1868.

7
.
      
Elizabeth B. Custer,
Tenting on the Plains or General Custer in Kansas and Texas
(New York: Charles L. Webster, 1887), 397.

8
.
      
Robert M. Utley,
Frontier Regulars
(New York: Macmillan, 1973), 23.

9
.
      
Theodore R. Davis, “A Summer on the Plains,”
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
, February 1868, 298. Interestingly, Davis notes that there was no desertion among the black “Buffalo Soldier” regiments (305).

10
.
    
In Stephen E. Ambrose,
Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), 270.

11
.
    
Pope to Sherman, August 25, 1865.

12
.
    
“Condition of Texas,”
New York Times
, March 5, 1866.

13
.
    
Albert and Jennie Barnitz,
Life in Custer's Cavalry: Diaries and Letters of Albert and Jennie Barnitz, 1867–1868
, Robert M. Utley, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 52–53.

14
.
    
Kenneth M. LaMaster,
Forth Leavenworth
(Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2010), 40.

15
.
    
For a useful narrative on the Fetterman massacre, see S. L. A. Marshall,
Cimsoned Prairie
(Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1972), 48–73.

16
.
    
Pope to Col. T. S. Bowers, June 3, 1865.

17
.
    
G. M. Dodge to Pope, August 2, 1865.

18
.
    
“Reported Massacre by Indians,”
Philadelphia Evening Telegraph
, December 27, 1866, 4.

19
.
    
GAC to EBC, May 2, 1867, 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), 199.

20
.
    
Anglo American Times,
May 18, 1867, 10.

21
.
    
Anglo American Times
, May 25, 1867, 5.

22
.
    
Davis, “A Summer on the Plains,” 295.

23
.
    
Barnitz and Barnitz,
Life in Custer's Cavalry
, 34.

24
.
    
GAC to EBC, May 2, 1867, in Merington,
The Custer Story
, 199.

25
.
    
Bedford (IA) Southwest
, May 4, 1867.

26
.
    
GAC to EBC, May 2, 1867, in Merington,
The Custer Story
, 199.

27
.
    
Davis, “A Summer on the Plains,” 298.

28
.
    
Barnitz and Barnitz,
Life in Custer's Cavalry
, 44.

29
.
    
Barnitz in Evan S. Connell,
Son of a Morning Star: Custer and Little Bighorn
(New York: North Point Press, 1984), 168.

30
.
    
Quoted in Utley,
Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier
(Norman: University of Oklahma Press, 1991), 50.

31
.
    
Barnitz and Barnitz,
Life in Custer's Cavalry
, 51.

32
.
    
Davis, “A Summer on the Plains,” 298.

33
.
    
GAC in Merington,
The Custer Story
, 205.

34
.
    
GAC in ibid., 206.

35
.
    
Davis, “A Summer on the Plains,” 301.

36
.
    
W. T. Sherman to John Sherman, in
The Sherman Letters
, Rachel Sherman Thorndike, ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1894), 289.

37
.
    
E. Custer,
My Life on the Plains
, 40.

38
.
    
Account in the
Boston Daily Globe
, April 15, 1873, p. 4.

39
.
    
Philadelphia Evening Telegraph
, July 8, 1867, 1; Davis, “A Summer on the Plains,” 303.

40
.
    
New York Tribune
, July 01, 1867, 4.

41
.
    
Anglo American Times
, July 20, 1867, 7.

42
.
    
St. Cloud Journal
, July 18, 1867, 2.

43
.
    
Philadelphia Evening Telegraph
, July 24, 1867, 8.

44
.
    
Philadelphia Evening Telegraph
, July 22, 1867, 8.

45
.
    
E. Custer,
Tenting on the Plains
, 699, 702.

46
.
    
Parsons left the service in 1870 to become an Episcopal Minister. He died in 1878 in Memphis during a Yellow Fever epidemic after ministering to the dying and is recognized by the church as one of the “Martyrs of Memphis.”

47
.
    
See General Court Martial of General George Armstrong Custer, 1867. Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army), Record Group 153, Publication Number T1103; National Archives, Washington.

48
.
    
“Gen. Hancock and the Indians,”
Burlington Weekly Free Press
, September 6, 1867, 2.

49
.
    
GAC, September 26, 1867, USMA Special Collections.

50
.
    
“Soldiers have been sentenced to be branded, as well as marked, with D, both for desertion and for drunkenness. The mark has commonly been placed on the hip, but sentences to be branded on the check and on the forehead have been adjudged. Other markings imposed by our courts have been H D for Habitual drunkard, M for mutineer, W for worthlessness, C for cowardice, I for insubordination, R for robbery, T for thief. Sometimes also entire words were required to be marked as ‘Deserter,' ‘Habitual Drunkard,' ‘Mutineer,' or ‘Swindler.' The branding was done with a hot iron; the marking with India ink or gunpowder, usually pricked into the skin or tattooed.” See Colonel William Winthrop,
Military Law and Precedents
, 2nd ed. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1920), chapter 20, section 6.

51
.
    
“The Defence of Gen. Custer,”
New York Times,
December 28, 1867, 1.

52
.
    
GAC, September 26, 1867, USMA Special Collections.

53
.
    
EBC to Rebecca Richmond, November 20, 1867, in Merington,
The Custer Story
, 214.

CHAPTER 22

1
.
      
GAC, December 2, 1867, USMA Special Collections.

2
.
      
Quoted in Shirley A. Leckie,
Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 105.

3
.
      
Editorial from the
Adrian Michigan Times
, quoted in the
Defiance (OH) Democrat
, December 28, 1867.

4
.
      
GAC, December 2, 1867, USMA Special Collections.

5
.
      
See Minnie Dubbs Millbrook, “Rebecca Visits Kansas and the Custers: The Diary of Rebecca Richmond,”
Kansas Historical Quarterly
, Winter 1976, 366–402.

6
.
      
Ibid.

7
.
      
Harrisonburg Rockingham Register and Advertiser
, January 23, 1868, 3.

8
.
      
Trial coverage in “Gen. Custer Accused of Murder,”
Fairfield Herald
(SC), January 29, 1868, 2.

9
.
      
Harney built a reputation as a fierce Indian fighter in the Second Seminole War and on the Plains. But he was an honest and fair man, and after his death in 1889 the Sioux bestowed on Harney the name “Man-Who-Always-Kept-His-Word.”

10
.
    
“The New Indian War on the Plains,”
Philadelphia Evening Telegraph
, August 29, 1868, 4.

11
.
    
Theodore R. Davis, “A Summer on the Plains,”
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
, February 1868, 298.

12
.
    
“Letter from a Female Captive among the Indians,”
Fremont (OH) Weekly Journal
, January 8, 1869, 1.

13
.
    
Theodore R. Davis, “A Summer on the Plains,”
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
, February 1868, 307.

14
.
    
D. A. Kinsley,
Favor the Bold
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967–68), 78.

15
.
    
In some respects it was similar to special operations successfully conducted during the Second Seminole War.

16
.
    
Forsyth's account of the fight is in his memoir,
Thrilling Days in Army Life
(New York: Harper Brothers, 1900).

17
.
    
Addison Erwin Sheldon,
History and Stories of Nebraska
(Chicago: University Publishing, 1914), 135.

18
.
    
Dodge to Pope, August 2, 1865.

19
.
    
Theodore R. Davis, “A Summer on the Plains,”
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
, February 1868, 293–94.

20
.
    
Philip Henry Sheridan,
Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan
, vol. 2 (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1888), 307, 297–98.

21
.
    
W. T. Sherman to Grenville M. Dodge, September 24, 1868, quoted in Robert G. Athearn,
William Tecumseh Sherman and the Settlement of the West
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), 224.

22
.
    
Robert Utley,
Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier
(Norman: University of Oklahma Press, 1991), 61.

23
.
    
GAC letter, October 8, [1868], USMA Special Collections.

24
.
    
Sherman to Hazen, September 26, 1868.

25
.
    
Sherman to General W. A. Nichols, October 9, 1868.

26
.
    
Quoted in Vincent Coyler, “Notes among the Indians II,”
Putnam's Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Science and Art
, October 1869, 474–81.

27
.
    
Hazen to Sherman, November 22, 1868.