July 21, 2025 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, George Armstrong Custer is often remembered for how his story ended at Little Bighorn, but the life he lived before that final charge was full of ambition, controversy, and consequence. Pulitzer Prize-winning author T.J. Stiles shares how Custer rose through the ranks during the Civil War, and why his name still stirs debate today.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories.
And we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including yours. Send them to Ouramerican Stories dot com. They're
some of our favorites.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
TJ.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Styles was awarded the twenty sixteen Pulitzer for History for
his biography on Cornelius Vanderbilt, a story featured here on
Our American Stories. In his biography on George Armstrong Custer,
Styles casts surprisingly new light on one of the best
known figures of American history, a subject of seemingly endless fascination.
(00:45):
Here's TJ. Styles with the story of George Custer.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Now.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Custer is one of the most controversial figures in American history.
People love him and they hate him. These days, they
tend to hate him more than love him. He was
in fact.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Notorious as well as a celebrity.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
During his own lifetime. But whether you love Custer or
hate him, or have no particular opinion, we all envision
him in a particular way, usually alone on a hilltop,
surrounded by his dead soldiers, as Cheyenne and Lakota warriors
circle around him as he fires off his last bullet
and is slaughtered along with more than two hundred of
(01:27):
his troops. This Custer is the one that lives in
our imagination. He's a man of the West. He's a
man who's eternally fighting Native Americans. He's someone who we
can't really imagine anywhere else. Custer is one of the
most researched people in American history, and I respect that research.
(01:48):
I tried to put together a picture of Custer's life
and his significance and his meaning for Americans at the
time before he got to the Little Bighorn, before that
enormous sun rises over his life and blinds us to
everything that came before that stunning death of his which
was indeed significant. Why that Custer was a celebrity before
(02:12):
he got there? Why was it that he was notorious
before he got there? What was the meaning that Americans
saw in him before he took on the meetings that
we put upon him. This was the mission that I
set for myself in writing this biography of Custer. There's
another aspect to Custer as well, one that's a little
bit more familiar. That's Custer is the army officer. Now
(02:34):
many of these are very well known. He was a
young boy from a poor background in Ohio who went
off to West Point. Very lucky he got an appointment
to West Point. There, as one of his classmates said,
when he realized he could not lead the class academically,
he decided to support it by providing a solid base.
He graduated last in his class, but first in demerits.
(02:58):
And what does that mean? But again, this is something
I have to do. I have to try to understand
the human meaning, the interior state that's reflected in the
outer actions. All those demerits are a reflection of his
acting out of his performing for an audience, and that
audience are his fellow cadets, trying to project an image
(03:20):
of himself. And this is an important fact about Custer,
something we have to understand about him. But also sepast,
which is the fact that he was always telling stories
about himself. He was telling stories to an audience, and
he was also telling those stories to himself. That this ego,
this grand performative nature, his elaborate costume he wore into battle,
(03:42):
the costumes he adopted when he went west, when he
wore buckskin instead of a black velvet uniform as he
had during the war. This is telling a story to
the public and it's also creating one for himself that
he's not that obscure boy that no one from nowhere,
that in fact, that he's someone who is great, who
is performing on a historical stage, a man who's an
(04:05):
antebellum romantic hero. That's the story he's telling, and he's
still performing for that audience. And just days after graduating,
he's the commander of the guard for the army encampment,
the training encampment for the cadets as they do their
military training in the summer, and an upper classman starts
a fistfight with an underclassman, a pleab and Custer's in charge,
(04:27):
he's captain of the guard. He's supposed to arrest them.
An army can't function with the soldiers fist fighting with
each other at will, and instead he says, stand back, boys,
let them have a fair fight.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Well, you know, nowadays that would.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Be handled administratively, But this was something that he was
core martialed for, convicted.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
But Custer's luck.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Came in something that saved him again and again. The
Civil War had broken out. He's terribly fearful that he'll
miss the entire thing, and so he pleads her mercy
and missus guilt pleads her mercy and they take pity
on him. They convict him. Marshall convicts him, but they
let him go off to war. There he finds a
new audience. He's performing now for his superiors. He finds
(05:09):
a mission, and suddenly the miscreant of West Point begins
to perform extremely well, and there's something charming about him,
something that's very hard to capture in the documents. He's
got charisma, and his superiors are susceptible to it. So
during the Peninsula Campaign he's actually plucked from obscurity when
he performs very well taking part in a raid on
(05:32):
a Confederate position that comes to the attention of General
McClellan puts him on his staff. Then now Custer is
performing for General McClellan. He performs very well, and interestingly,
he worships McLellan, a notoriously conservative general both politically and
in military operations.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Custer worships this.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Man who's so accomplished and so esteemed, even though his
own personality is so different. He's volunteering to go off
on raids. He wants to win in a way that
McClellan doesn't, and that's what actually saves him when McLellan falls,
the fact that he's a committed soldier who wants to win.
But the other thing that saves him is not just
as merit. It's the fact that he's trying to find
(06:15):
a new patron. And we have to remember the Civil
War was not fought primarily by the regular army, but
by an organization that was created for the duration of
the war, the US Volunteers. And this is a very
political army, with regiments raised by the states, with the
regimental officers appointed by governors, and it very much reflects
(06:35):
Antebellum America, a world of personal connections where there's very
few large institutions.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
And you've been listening to TJ. Styles and what's storytelling?
In my goodness, the storytelling about him at West Point,
last in his class on grades, first in demerits, acting
out for the cadets, acting out for himself, creating in
a sense, his own version of himself that he would
have to live up to. And that is a part
(07:02):
of the American dream. What is Gatsby all about? In
the end, the Great gats be one of the great
American pieces of fiction by Fitzgerald. When we come back
more of this remarkable self creation, a story of a
man we all know but don't. The story of George
Custer continues with TJ. Styles here on Our American Stories. Folks,
(07:31):
if you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith, are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
(07:53):
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
to learn more. And we continue here with our American
Stories and with TJ. Styles, a twenty sixteen polit Surprise
(08:15):
winner for History, on his biography on Cornelius Vanderbilt. Please,
by all means, go to Our American Stories and take
a listen. It's a terrific piece of storytelling. Let's get
back to TJ and the story of George Custer.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Lincoln himself was a self taught lawyer. Well, you know,
before the end of the nineteenth century. It's unimaginable to
think of a self taught lawyer representing the largest corporations
in America as Lincoln had. And this is the world, though,
that Custer came out of. So he's in the army,
one of the first great institutions of the upcoming America,
(08:50):
the organizational society, but he's operating very much as a
man of the past, looking for those personal patrons still current.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
It's not passed.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yet, but this is the world that is not looking
to the future, but rather one that reflects an older America.
And he finds a new patron. His patron is becomes
the commander of the Cavalry Corps of the Army of
the Potomac. And when Lee invades the North, General Pleasanton,
who picks Custer for his staff. It's a chance to
appoint new brigade commanders, and he takes this twenty three
(09:21):
year old lieutenant who graduated last in his class, and
makes him a brigadier general. And what happens. Custer performs
exceptionally well. He goes straight, practically straight to the Battle
of Gettysburg. His men see him in this black velvet
uniform with gold braid, winding from cuff to elbow, and
they think he's kind of ridiculous. I'd like to point
(09:42):
out there were other generals who dressed like that. They
were all Southern generals. And Custer himself is a product
of actually border state culture. At a Maryland born father,
he's from southern Ohio. He has very much Southern affinities.
And you know, this is kind of the Antebellum idea
of chivalry, kind of more Southern idea of culture, again
(10:03):
reflecting in older America, a more romantic ideal. And that's
the ideal that Custer represents. But an interesting thing about
that is that it served a practical purpose. And when
we see Custer's affectations, it's very easy to dismiss him
as merely an egoist, someone who was full of vanity
and simply wanted everyone to look at him. But on
(10:25):
the battlefield of the Civil War, a brigadier general is
in the mix, and by drawing attention to himself, he's
both inspiring his men. He's both giving them a rallying
point they know where their commander is, and he helps
to orient his men, especially when he leads them forward.
And it's also declaration about his own confidence in himself
(10:46):
as a fighter, a declaration of confidence in himself, in
his own personal courage. And this is something that we
have to remember when we see that grand performance that
Custer puts on, that when it comes.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
To battle, there's real substance there.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
This is a man who actually fought very well, and
he wasn't merely lucky, he wasn't merely impetuous. He actually
was a real professional. And in all of the chaos
of Custer's life, this is where we see him performing
with confidence, with self assurance, and with real professionalism. That's
where he's in control of himself is in battle. The
(11:22):
problem for him is that in the future of the
battles and fewer farther and farther apart, but in the
civil war that comes thick and fast, and his men
love him, they admire him. He may be the last
American general to kill someone in a sword fight, and
seeing their leader actually fighting and fighting well, not just bravely,
but with personal skill, this is something that his men
(11:44):
absolutely love. One of his soldiers says, I saw General
Custer plunge his saber into the belly of a rebel
who's trying to kill him. You can imagine how hard
men fight for a general who's that brave. So you
know this, this is something that can seem difficult, to
repugnant or ridiculous to modern mind, but to that mind
(12:07):
that comes out of Antebellum America in a world in
which the Civil War is crushing gallantry, it's crushing individual
heroics under the mass of firepower, custers in this little
slice of the Civil War, cavalrymen fighting other cavalrymen, in
which old fashioned gallantry.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Actually still serve as a practical purpose.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
In which that romantic image actually lives on and allows
him to succeed, and for that reason he becomes extremely popular.
He didn't just win battles, he did it in a
way that captures an older idea of America that people
felt was slipping away. At the same time that he's
leading a gallant charge against a Confederate charge on horseback
and fighting with a sword. At that very moment, Pickett
(12:50):
was leading the mass Confederate infantry attack on the third
day of the Battle of Gettysburg. And what happened masked
rifle fire and mass artillery fire wipe them out. They
died by the thousands and they went forward with all
the traditional martial values, and those traditional virtues neatly lined
up with their flags in front of them, and they
(13:12):
were crushed. Individual heroics are being wiped out. So the
Civil War gives rise to Ambrose Bierce, one of the
darkest American writers, who came out of the infantry fighting
of the Civil War convinced that death comes from everyone
at random, sometimes playing cruel, practical jokes on human beings.
You have Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose idealism bled out of
(13:32):
him through the bullethole through his neck at Antietam, who
comes out and becomes one of the great realists of
American law. You have people who didn't fight, like Mark
Twain and Henry Adams, who have a much darker, more
ironic sensibility, or Henry Adams's brother, who's now forgotten but
at the time very important nineteenth century intellectual who fought
(13:53):
in the cavalry and who developed a much darker and
more cynical.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Worldview as a result.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
But Custer is an outlier. He's a man who actually
has all of his illusions reinforced by the Civil War,
and yet by looking beyond just the battle records, we
see Custer in another role, which is the institutional man,
the organizational man, and the record is full of reprimands
from his superiors, especially General Kilpatrick. Custerer, for example, would
(14:24):
go over the head of his division commander to appeal
directly to pleasant and his patron and he's getting written
reprimand saying, you are supposed to go through the chain
of command. Don't go around your division commander. He loves
his old friends from West Point. He are now on
the other side, and he's constantly calling truces to go
socialize with his old friends from West Point. And you know,
(14:44):
kill Patrick is saying, you've been told before you are
not to fraternize with the enemy.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
We're having a war.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
And this is something Cusser is constantly, you know, you know,
being told not to do. And this is a theme
that runs throughout his life. His difficulty as functioning as
a member of a hierarchical organization in his sense as
a member of a bureaucracy or a large institution, dealing
with chains of command, dealing with the institutional requirements, being
(15:13):
able to manage subordinates, and being able to meet.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
His duties as they're required by superiors.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Now there's much more to it than that, but that
is the first point where we see it. Johnson, the
Democrats are defeated. Johnson loses his effort, and Custer goes west.
He enters into his first campaign against American Indians, and
it's fascinating in many ways. One having nothing to do
with Custer is the fact that he sits in on
(15:43):
councils that are being held between General Winfield Scott Hancock,
who leads this first Great Expedition that Custer joins on
the Great Plains, and he's conferring with Kiowa's and with
Cheyenne's and Lakota's on the Great Plains, and they're explicitly
telling him what the crisis is, even before settlers began
(16:06):
to move on to the Great Plains and occupy lands
that the High Plains nations counted as their own, because
you had the California gold Rush, you had the Great
Migration to Oregon, you had the Colorado gold Rush, and
you had thousands of migrants moving across the Great Plains,
and Custer himself doesn't quite grasp it. His first year
(16:27):
on the Great Plains is a disaster, and he goes
off and is humiliated by the Cheyennes and Lakotas on
the Great Plains, and he finally gives up the campaign.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
And rides back to meet his wife and is.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Court martialed and convicted. So you know, this is a
well known story. Custer is convicted, But something that people
don't realize is that Custer was nearly court martialed again.
He couldn't accept the fact that he'd been convicted. This
is not Custer luck, This is not the way that
he's used to being treated. Rules have always been broken
(16:59):
for him.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
And you've been listening to TJ. Styles tell a remarkable
story about well, let's face it, someone we think we
all know George Custer, but don't. And I'm a history
buff and I didn't know a lot of this twenty
three years old. He's a brigadier general and in black
velvet uniform, sort of regaling his sort of quasi southern
(17:20):
cultural roots parents from southern Ohio and Maryland. He had
a bit of that border state culture in him and
a bit of that rebel in him. It all served
a purpose. And the fact that he's the last American
general to kill an opposing soldier in a sword fight,
the fact that he would be in battle rallying his guys.
There was more here than just a showman. He was
(17:41):
a warrior and a soldier. When we come back, more
of the story of George Custer here on our American Story,
(18:08):
and we continue with TJ. Styles and the story of
George Custer here on our American Stories. Let's pick up
where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
He's always been able to avoid the usual institutional processes,
and when he's convicted quite rightly, even though he's only
suspended for a year, he can't take it, and he
writes a letter to the press saying it's a trumped
up prosecution and that everybody agrees that he should never
been convicted. And so we find in the records of
the National Archives the Judge Afficate General writing to General
(18:39):
Grant saying everybody believes that he should be court martialed.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Again.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
He's refusing to accept the validity of the institutional process
of military justice within the army, and he's lashing out.
He's brittle, he's defensive. It's that insecurity and Custer that
always makes a crisis worse, and so shared in and intervenes.
He says, I know what he did is wrong. It
really offends me too. Please don't do that. I actually
(19:06):
want him back in duty. And finally Custer gets called
back into duty to do what to fight a battle,
a battle that's very controversial with the Washitah and succeeding campaign.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
But as far as Sheridan's concerned.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Custer fights well, and he fights this battle well, and
that's what saves him from himself, his ability to fight
the thing that we think of him as being so
bad at.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Now Custer engages in a lot of other areas that
I talk about in my book. He goes to Wall Street.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
He spends a total of about two years in New
York after the Civil War. He loves the Cosmopolitan Center, he.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Loves the theater, he loves literature.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
He loves fine art. He tries to float a silver
mine that he had invested in Colorado on Wall Street.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
He has no interest in running the mind.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
He just wants to float the stock and sell out,
make a killing, and he does a terrible job of it.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
So he's a celebrity.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
He sees the world. He's celebrated on Wall Street. He's
treated to fancy dinners. He sees the wealth that the
new financial markets are creating. He wants to take part
in the new corporate economy, but he doesn't grasp it,
he can't master it. And that's Custer, living on this
frontier in time, wanting to engage with the new world,
yet very much a man of an older world that's
(20:21):
beginning to disappear, unable to master the way the world's changing.
He finds some.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Success as a popular writer.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Actually, he goes on to write articles for one of
the new national magazines, and he tries to project himself
as a public intellectual, writing about the great planes, it's
natural history and peoples. And then writes his memoir. But
it's a very romantic style. It's very, very different from
Henry Adams, who takes over the North American Review and
gives orders that sound like something an editor would say today.
(20:49):
Henry Adams says, you know, cut out all unnecessary words,
especially adjectives. You know, it's like straight out of you know,
your creative writing. One oh one meanwhile, is trying to
cram in as many unnecessary words as possible. This is
a man with a gambling addiction, he writes in his
official report in responding to an inquiry, exactly what meaning
(21:11):
is intended to apply to the word gambling, which is
construed differently by different persons. Yes, I am at a
loss to understand if by gambling the act of betting
money or risking it on games of chance or contests
of speed between horses, and if among games of chants
are included that usually known as poker and similar games.
My answer is that, so far as my knowledge and
(21:34):
belief extend, none of the officers of this command have
an addiction to gambling except the commanding officer.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
This is an official report, and it's sarcastic as hell.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Well, lucky for him, he goes off on the Yelson
Expedition of eighteen seventy three. But again going through the
national archives, not just looking at the sort of high
profile events, you see that Custer is seen now as
a problem officer within the institution of the army. They
talk about him as someone who can't they can't get
along with him. There's a dispute that blows up over
(22:06):
really nothing. But people are writing about how we can't
work with this guy. They don't trust anything he says.
It's about whether they need more supply wagons or whatnot.
But nobody believes Custer because he's such a problem officer
in the view of the army, the institutional opinion of
the army. He goes off on the Yellowstone Expedition, escorting
a surveying party for the Northern Pacific Railroad, one of
(22:29):
the second wave of transcontinental railways, through a Lakota country,
and he's got a brewing fight with his commanding officer,
Colonel Stanley, and Stanley's writing about Custer's reputation, how he's
living up to his reputation as a problem officer, and
there's obviously the tension between the two is brewing to
a boiling point. But what happens. He has two battles
(22:50):
with the Sioux, and he actually performs very well. Something
we have to remember when we get to the Little
Big Horn. He's not impetuous. He reads an ambush of
the kind that led to the Fetterman defeat by the
Sue during Red Cloud's War, he reads it and avoids it.
He keeps his men well in hand. He's not reckless
and impetuous. And suddenly Stanley is writing about how proud
(23:10):
he is of Custer, and so once again Custer has
created a crisis for himself, Unable to work within the
institution of the army, unable to catch on to the
changing times. But he has a chance to fight, and
that's what saves him from himself. Well, he plunges himself
after the also an expedition into one more great crisis.
(23:32):
When there is a revolutionary election in eighteen seventy four,
the Democrats come into control of the House of Representatives
and they do something which may be familiar to you.
They launch a wave of investigations of the administration and
they call on Custer to testify. Now, as I point out,
you know, prosecutors or committee chairmen don't call witnesses unless
(23:55):
they know what they're going to say. Somehow Custer's been
in touch with them. And mister testifies about corruption the
Grant ministration, which he doesn't know about. Personally, a high
profile regular army officer openly allying himself with the political
opposition to the commander in chief, something the army would
not tolerate today.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
The Custer does it. And guess what.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
President Grant is a little upset about this, and I
think justifiably actually, and so he says Custer cannot be
the field commander of the seventh Cavalry and an upcoming
campaign to drive in the sue so that the government
can seize control of the Black Hills. And again Custer
sees a chance to fight is escaping him, and he
(24:38):
becomes desperate, and he pleads, and he manages to get
General Terry, his immediate superior, to plead for him, and finally, reluctantly,
Grant allows him to be put back in command.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Of his troops and to go off to fight.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
In an attempt to save himself one last time from
a crisis that he's created for himself. But that time
the situation had changed. The Lakotas and Cheyennes, they are
the ones I think that deserve the credit for that victory.
In dismissing Custer as an arrogant fool, we can diminish
the magnitude of that victory, not simply in numbers, but
(25:14):
fighting skill and the most amazing combination of tactical leadership
among the Lakotas, especially they defeat. Custer lost. He made mistakes,
but they won. And Custer rode into something he couldn't
luck his way out of, and he couldn't fight his
way out of. And Custer's luck finally ran out at
(25:34):
the Little Bighorn. And the reason that was such an
event for Americans is not simply the scale they defeat,
That's very true.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Not simply that the cream of the American army.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Such as it was, was wiped out by a bunch
of pre industrial nomads, but that it was led by
this great, loved, notorious celebrity whom Americans had put so
much meaning on, still as controversial as ever, yet in
that bright sunlight of the little bitcore, we can forget
all of the great crises that ran through his life,
(26:06):
and all of the meaning he had for his fellow Americans,
and how much his life tells us about the way
our country as it exists now came into being.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
And a superb job on the storytelling in production by
Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to TJ. Styles, a
remarkable storytelling on the life of George Custer. His book
Custer's Trials, A Life on the Frontier of a New
America is available on Amazon and all the usual suspects. Heck,
go to a bookstore and buy it again. TJ. Styles
(26:38):
Custer's Trials. What a life, multiple court martials, and somehow
his fighting ability and his connections always saved the day,
of course, until it didn't, as PJ said, until one
day his luck ran out at Little Bighorn. The story
of General George Custer, the side of his life that
(26:58):
you probably didn't know. We love doing that here on
this show, here on our American Stories,
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories.
And we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including yours. Send them to Ouramerican Stories dot com. They're
some of our favorites.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
TJ.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Styles was awarded the twenty sixteen Pulitzer for History for
his biography on Cornelius Vanderbilt, a story featured here on
Our American Stories. In his biography on George Armstrong Custer,
Styles casts surprisingly new light on one of the best
known figures of American history, a subject of seemingly endless fascination.
(00:45):
Here's TJ. Styles with the story of George Custer.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Now.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Custer is one of the most controversial figures in American history.
People love him and they hate him. These days, they
tend to hate him more than love him. He was
in fact.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Notorious as well as a celebrity.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
During his own lifetime. But whether you love Custer or
hate him, or have no particular opinion, we all envision
him in a particular way, usually alone on a hilltop,
surrounded by his dead soldiers, as Cheyenne and Lakota warriors
circle around him as he fires off his last bullet
and is slaughtered along with more than two hundred of
(01:27):
his troops. This Custer is the one that lives in
our imagination. He's a man of the West. He's a
man who's eternally fighting Native Americans. He's someone who we
can't really imagine anywhere else. Custer is one of the
most researched people in American history, and I respect that research.
(01:48):
I tried to put together a picture of Custer's life
and his significance and his meaning for Americans at the
time before he got to the Little Bighorn, before that
enormous sun rises over his life and blinds us to
everything that came before that stunning death of his which
was indeed significant. Why that Custer was a celebrity before
(02:12):
he got there? Why was it that he was notorious
before he got there? What was the meaning that Americans
saw in him before he took on the meetings that
we put upon him. This was the mission that I
set for myself in writing this biography of Custer. There's
another aspect to Custer as well, one that's a little
bit more familiar. That's Custer is the army officer. Now
(02:34):
many of these are very well known. He was a
young boy from a poor background in Ohio who went
off to West Point. Very lucky he got an appointment
to West Point. There, as one of his classmates said,
when he realized he could not lead the class academically,
he decided to support it by providing a solid base.
He graduated last in his class, but first in demerits.
(02:58):
And what does that mean? But again, this is something
I have to do. I have to try to understand
the human meaning, the interior state that's reflected in the
outer actions. All those demerits are a reflection of his
acting out of his performing for an audience, and that
audience are his fellow cadets, trying to project an image
(03:20):
of himself. And this is an important fact about Custer,
something we have to understand about him. But also sepast,
which is the fact that he was always telling stories
about himself. He was telling stories to an audience, and
he was also telling those stories to himself. That this ego,
this grand performative nature, his elaborate costume he wore into battle,
(03:42):
the costumes he adopted when he went west, when he
wore buckskin instead of a black velvet uniform as he
had during the war. This is telling a story to
the public and it's also creating one for himself that
he's not that obscure boy that no one from nowhere,
that in fact, that he's someone who is great, who
is performing on a historical stage, a man who's an
(04:05):
antebellum romantic hero. That's the story he's telling, and he's
still performing for that audience. And just days after graduating,
he's the commander of the guard for the army encampment,
the training encampment for the cadets as they do their
military training in the summer, and an upper classman starts
a fistfight with an underclassman, a pleab and Custer's in charge,
(04:27):
he's captain of the guard. He's supposed to arrest them.
An army can't function with the soldiers fist fighting with
each other at will, and instead he says, stand back, boys,
let them have a fair fight.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Well, you know, nowadays that would.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Be handled administratively, But this was something that he was
core martialed for, convicted.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
But Custer's luck.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Came in something that saved him again and again. The
Civil War had broken out. He's terribly fearful that he'll
miss the entire thing, and so he pleads her mercy
and missus guilt pleads her mercy and they take pity
on him. They convict him. Marshall convicts him, but they
let him go off to war. There he finds a
new audience. He's performing now for his superiors. He finds
(05:09):
a mission, and suddenly the miscreant of West Point begins
to perform extremely well, and there's something charming about him,
something that's very hard to capture in the documents. He's
got charisma, and his superiors are susceptible to it. So
during the Peninsula Campaign he's actually plucked from obscurity when
he performs very well taking part in a raid on
(05:32):
a Confederate position that comes to the attention of General
McClellan puts him on his staff. Then now Custer is
performing for General McClellan. He performs very well, and interestingly,
he worships McLellan, a notoriously conservative general both politically and
in military operations.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Custer worships this.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Man who's so accomplished and so esteemed, even though his
own personality is so different. He's volunteering to go off
on raids. He wants to win in a way that
McClellan doesn't, and that's what actually saves him when McLellan falls,
the fact that he's a committed soldier who wants to win.
But the other thing that saves him is not just
as merit. It's the fact that he's trying to find
(06:15):
a new patron. And we have to remember the Civil
War was not fought primarily by the regular army, but
by an organization that was created for the duration of
the war, the US Volunteers. And this is a very
political army, with regiments raised by the states, with the
regimental officers appointed by governors, and it very much reflects
(06:35):
Antebellum America, a world of personal connections where there's very
few large institutions.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
And you've been listening to TJ. Styles and what's storytelling?
In my goodness, the storytelling about him at West Point,
last in his class on grades, first in demerits, acting
out for the cadets, acting out for himself, creating in
a sense, his own version of himself that he would
have to live up to. And that is a part
(07:02):
of the American dream. What is Gatsby all about? In
the end, the Great gats be one of the great
American pieces of fiction by Fitzgerald. When we come back
more of this remarkable self creation, a story of a
man we all know but don't. The story of George
Custer continues with TJ. Styles here on Our American Stories. Folks,
(07:31):
if you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith, are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
(07:53):
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
to learn more. And we continue here with our American
Stories and with TJ. Styles, a twenty sixteen polit Surprise
(08:15):
winner for History, on his biography on Cornelius Vanderbilt. Please,
by all means, go to Our American Stories and take
a listen. It's a terrific piece of storytelling. Let's get
back to TJ and the story of George Custer.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Lincoln himself was a self taught lawyer. Well, you know,
before the end of the nineteenth century. It's unimaginable to
think of a self taught lawyer representing the largest corporations
in America as Lincoln had. And this is the world, though,
that Custer came out of. So he's in the army,
one of the first great institutions of the upcoming America,
(08:50):
the organizational society, but he's operating very much as a
man of the past, looking for those personal patrons still current.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
It's not passed.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yet, but this is the world that is not looking
to the future, but rather one that reflects an older America.
And he finds a new patron. His patron is becomes
the commander of the Cavalry Corps of the Army of
the Potomac. And when Lee invades the North, General Pleasanton,
who picks Custer for his staff. It's a chance to
appoint new brigade commanders, and he takes this twenty three
(09:21):
year old lieutenant who graduated last in his class, and
makes him a brigadier general. And what happens. Custer performs
exceptionally well. He goes straight, practically straight to the Battle
of Gettysburg. His men see him in this black velvet
uniform with gold braid, winding from cuff to elbow, and
they think he's kind of ridiculous. I'd like to point
(09:42):
out there were other generals who dressed like that. They
were all Southern generals. And Custer himself is a product
of actually border state culture. At a Maryland born father,
he's from southern Ohio. He has very much Southern affinities.
And you know, this is kind of the Antebellum idea
of chivalry, kind of more Southern idea of culture, again
(10:03):
reflecting in older America, a more romantic ideal. And that's
the ideal that Custer represents. But an interesting thing about
that is that it served a practical purpose. And when
we see Custer's affectations, it's very easy to dismiss him
as merely an egoist, someone who was full of vanity
and simply wanted everyone to look at him. But on
(10:25):
the battlefield of the Civil War, a brigadier general is
in the mix, and by drawing attention to himself, he's
both inspiring his men. He's both giving them a rallying
point they know where their commander is, and he helps
to orient his men, especially when he leads them forward.
And it's also declaration about his own confidence in himself
(10:46):
as a fighter, a declaration of confidence in himself, in
his own personal courage. And this is something that we
have to remember when we see that grand performance that
Custer puts on, that when it comes.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
To battle, there's real substance there.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
This is a man who actually fought very well, and
he wasn't merely lucky, he wasn't merely impetuous. He actually
was a real professional. And in all of the chaos
of Custer's life, this is where we see him performing
with confidence, with self assurance, and with real professionalism. That's
where he's in control of himself is in battle. The
(11:22):
problem for him is that in the future of the
battles and fewer farther and farther apart, but in the
civil war that comes thick and fast, and his men
love him, they admire him. He may be the last
American general to kill someone in a sword fight, and
seeing their leader actually fighting and fighting well, not just bravely,
but with personal skill, this is something that his men
(11:44):
absolutely love. One of his soldiers says, I saw General
Custer plunge his saber into the belly of a rebel
who's trying to kill him. You can imagine how hard
men fight for a general who's that brave. So you
know this, this is something that can seem difficult, to
repugnant or ridiculous to modern mind, but to that mind
(12:07):
that comes out of Antebellum America in a world in
which the Civil War is crushing gallantry, it's crushing individual
heroics under the mass of firepower, custers in this little
slice of the Civil War, cavalrymen fighting other cavalrymen, in
which old fashioned gallantry.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Actually still serve as a practical purpose.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
In which that romantic image actually lives on and allows
him to succeed, and for that reason he becomes extremely popular.
He didn't just win battles, he did it in a
way that captures an older idea of America that people
felt was slipping away. At the same time that he's
leading a gallant charge against a Confederate charge on horseback
and fighting with a sword. At that very moment, Pickett
(12:50):
was leading the mass Confederate infantry attack on the third
day of the Battle of Gettysburg. And what happened masked
rifle fire and mass artillery fire wipe them out. They
died by the thousands and they went forward with all
the traditional martial values, and those traditional virtues neatly lined
up with their flags in front of them, and they
(13:12):
were crushed. Individual heroics are being wiped out. So the
Civil War gives rise to Ambrose Bierce, one of the
darkest American writers, who came out of the infantry fighting
of the Civil War convinced that death comes from everyone
at random, sometimes playing cruel, practical jokes on human beings.
You have Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose idealism bled out of
(13:32):
him through the bullethole through his neck at Antietam, who
comes out and becomes one of the great realists of
American law. You have people who didn't fight, like Mark
Twain and Henry Adams, who have a much darker, more
ironic sensibility, or Henry Adams's brother, who's now forgotten but
at the time very important nineteenth century intellectual who fought
(13:53):
in the cavalry and who developed a much darker and
more cynical.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Worldview as a result.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
But Custer is an outlier. He's a man who actually
has all of his illusions reinforced by the Civil War,
and yet by looking beyond just the battle records, we
see Custer in another role, which is the institutional man,
the organizational man, and the record is full of reprimands
from his superiors, especially General Kilpatrick. Custerer, for example, would
(14:24):
go over the head of his division commander to appeal
directly to pleasant and his patron and he's getting written
reprimand saying, you are supposed to go through the chain
of command. Don't go around your division commander. He loves
his old friends from West Point. He are now on
the other side, and he's constantly calling truces to go
socialize with his old friends from West Point. And you know,
(14:44):
kill Patrick is saying, you've been told before you are
not to fraternize with the enemy.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
We're having a war.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
And this is something Cusser is constantly, you know, you know,
being told not to do. And this is a theme
that runs throughout his life. His difficulty as functioning as
a member of a hierarchical organization in his sense as
a member of a bureaucracy or a large institution, dealing
with chains of command, dealing with the institutional requirements, being
(15:13):
able to manage subordinates, and being able to meet.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
His duties as they're required by superiors.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Now there's much more to it than that, but that
is the first point where we see it. Johnson, the
Democrats are defeated. Johnson loses his effort, and Custer goes west.
He enters into his first campaign against American Indians, and
it's fascinating in many ways. One having nothing to do
with Custer is the fact that he sits in on
(15:43):
councils that are being held between General Winfield Scott Hancock,
who leads this first Great Expedition that Custer joins on
the Great Plains, and he's conferring with Kiowa's and with
Cheyenne's and Lakota's on the Great Plains, and they're explicitly
telling him what the crisis is, even before settlers began
(16:06):
to move on to the Great Plains and occupy lands
that the High Plains nations counted as their own, because
you had the California gold Rush, you had the Great
Migration to Oregon, you had the Colorado gold Rush, and
you had thousands of migrants moving across the Great Plains,
and Custer himself doesn't quite grasp it. His first year
(16:27):
on the Great Plains is a disaster, and he goes
off and is humiliated by the Cheyennes and Lakotas on
the Great Plains, and he finally gives up the campaign.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
And rides back to meet his wife and is.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Court martialed and convicted. So you know, this is a
well known story. Custer is convicted, But something that people
don't realize is that Custer was nearly court martialed again.
He couldn't accept the fact that he'd been convicted. This
is not Custer luck, This is not the way that
he's used to being treated. Rules have always been broken
(16:59):
for him.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
And you've been listening to TJ. Styles tell a remarkable
story about well, let's face it, someone we think we
all know George Custer, but don't. And I'm a history
buff and I didn't know a lot of this twenty
three years old. He's a brigadier general and in black
velvet uniform, sort of regaling his sort of quasi southern
(17:20):
cultural roots parents from southern Ohio and Maryland. He had
a bit of that border state culture in him and
a bit of that rebel in him. It all served
a purpose. And the fact that he's the last American
general to kill an opposing soldier in a sword fight,
the fact that he would be in battle rallying his guys.
There was more here than just a showman. He was
(17:41):
a warrior and a soldier. When we come back, more
of the story of George Custer here on our American Story,
(18:08):
and we continue with TJ. Styles and the story of
George Custer here on our American Stories. Let's pick up
where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
He's always been able to avoid the usual institutional processes,
and when he's convicted quite rightly, even though he's only
suspended for a year, he can't take it, and he
writes a letter to the press saying it's a trumped
up prosecution and that everybody agrees that he should never
been convicted. And so we find in the records of
the National Archives the Judge Afficate General writing to General
(18:39):
Grant saying everybody believes that he should be court martialed.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Again.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
He's refusing to accept the validity of the institutional process
of military justice within the army, and he's lashing out.
He's brittle, he's defensive. It's that insecurity and Custer that
always makes a crisis worse, and so shared in and intervenes.
He says, I know what he did is wrong. It
really offends me too. Please don't do that. I actually
(19:06):
want him back in duty. And finally Custer gets called
back into duty to do what to fight a battle,
a battle that's very controversial with the Washitah and succeeding campaign.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
But as far as Sheridan's concerned.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Custer fights well, and he fights this battle well, and
that's what saves him from himself, his ability to fight
the thing that we think of him as being so
bad at.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Now Custer engages in a lot of other areas that
I talk about in my book. He goes to Wall Street.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
He spends a total of about two years in New
York after the Civil War. He loves the Cosmopolitan Center, he.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Loves the theater, he loves literature.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
He loves fine art. He tries to float a silver
mine that he had invested in Colorado on Wall Street.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
He has no interest in running the mind.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
He just wants to float the stock and sell out,
make a killing, and he does a terrible job of it.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
So he's a celebrity.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
He sees the world. He's celebrated on Wall Street. He's
treated to fancy dinners. He sees the wealth that the
new financial markets are creating. He wants to take part
in the new corporate economy, but he doesn't grasp it,
he can't master it. And that's Custer, living on this
frontier in time, wanting to engage with the new world,
yet very much a man of an older world that's
(20:21):
beginning to disappear, unable to master the way the world's changing.
He finds some.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Success as a popular writer.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Actually, he goes on to write articles for one of
the new national magazines, and he tries to project himself
as a public intellectual, writing about the great planes, it's
natural history and peoples. And then writes his memoir. But
it's a very romantic style. It's very, very different from
Henry Adams, who takes over the North American Review and
gives orders that sound like something an editor would say today.
(20:49):
Henry Adams says, you know, cut out all unnecessary words,
especially adjectives. You know, it's like straight out of you know,
your creative writing. One oh one meanwhile, is trying to
cram in as many unnecessary words as possible. This is
a man with a gambling addiction, he writes in his
official report in responding to an inquiry, exactly what meaning
(21:11):
is intended to apply to the word gambling, which is
construed differently by different persons. Yes, I am at a
loss to understand if by gambling the act of betting
money or risking it on games of chance or contests
of speed between horses, and if among games of chants
are included that usually known as poker and similar games.
My answer is that, so far as my knowledge and
(21:34):
belief extend, none of the officers of this command have
an addiction to gambling except the commanding officer.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
This is an official report, and it's sarcastic as hell.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Well, lucky for him, he goes off on the Yelson
Expedition of eighteen seventy three. But again going through the
national archives, not just looking at the sort of high
profile events, you see that Custer is seen now as
a problem officer within the institution of the army. They
talk about him as someone who can't they can't get
along with him. There's a dispute that blows up over
(22:06):
really nothing. But people are writing about how we can't
work with this guy. They don't trust anything he says.
It's about whether they need more supply wagons or whatnot.
But nobody believes Custer because he's such a problem officer
in the view of the army, the institutional opinion of
the army. He goes off on the Yellowstone Expedition, escorting
a surveying party for the Northern Pacific Railroad, one of
(22:29):
the second wave of transcontinental railways, through a Lakota country,
and he's got a brewing fight with his commanding officer,
Colonel Stanley, and Stanley's writing about Custer's reputation, how he's
living up to his reputation as a problem officer, and
there's obviously the tension between the two is brewing to
a boiling point. But what happens. He has two battles
(22:50):
with the Sioux, and he actually performs very well. Something
we have to remember when we get to the Little
Big Horn. He's not impetuous. He reads an ambush of
the kind that led to the Fetterman defeat by the
Sue during Red Cloud's War, he reads it and avoids it.
He keeps his men well in hand. He's not reckless
and impetuous. And suddenly Stanley is writing about how proud
(23:10):
he is of Custer, and so once again Custer has
created a crisis for himself, Unable to work within the
institution of the army, unable to catch on to the
changing times. But he has a chance to fight, and
that's what saves him from himself. Well, he plunges himself
after the also an expedition into one more great crisis.
(23:32):
When there is a revolutionary election in eighteen seventy four,
the Democrats come into control of the House of Representatives
and they do something which may be familiar to you.
They launch a wave of investigations of the administration and
they call on Custer to testify. Now, as I point out,
you know, prosecutors or committee chairmen don't call witnesses unless
(23:55):
they know what they're going to say. Somehow Custer's been
in touch with them. And mister testifies about corruption the
Grant ministration, which he doesn't know about. Personally, a high
profile regular army officer openly allying himself with the political
opposition to the commander in chief, something the army would
not tolerate today.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
The Custer does it. And guess what.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
President Grant is a little upset about this, and I
think justifiably actually, and so he says Custer cannot be
the field commander of the seventh Cavalry and an upcoming
campaign to drive in the sue so that the government
can seize control of the Black Hills. And again Custer
sees a chance to fight is escaping him, and he
(24:38):
becomes desperate, and he pleads, and he manages to get
General Terry, his immediate superior, to plead for him, and finally, reluctantly,
Grant allows him to be put back in command.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Of his troops and to go off to fight.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
In an attempt to save himself one last time from
a crisis that he's created for himself. But that time
the situation had changed. The Lakotas and Cheyennes, they are
the ones I think that deserve the credit for that victory.
In dismissing Custer as an arrogant fool, we can diminish
the magnitude of that victory, not simply in numbers, but
(25:14):
fighting skill and the most amazing combination of tactical leadership
among the Lakotas, especially they defeat. Custer lost. He made mistakes,
but they won. And Custer rode into something he couldn't
luck his way out of, and he couldn't fight his
way out of. And Custer's luck finally ran out at
(25:34):
the Little Bighorn. And the reason that was such an
event for Americans is not simply the scale they defeat,
That's very true.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Not simply that the cream of the American army.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Such as it was, was wiped out by a bunch
of pre industrial nomads, but that it was led by
this great, loved, notorious celebrity whom Americans had put so
much meaning on, still as controversial as ever, yet in
that bright sunlight of the little bitcore, we can forget
all of the great crises that ran through his life,
(26:06):
and all of the meaning he had for his fellow Americans,
and how much his life tells us about the way
our country as it exists now came into being.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
And a superb job on the storytelling in production by
Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to TJ. Styles, a
remarkable storytelling on the life of George Custer. His book
Custer's Trials, A Life on the Frontier of a New
America is available on Amazon and all the usual suspects. Heck,
go to a bookstore and buy it again. TJ. Styles
(26:38):
Custer's Trials. What a life, multiple court martials, and somehow
his fighting ability and his connections always saved the day,
of course, until it didn't, as PJ said, until one
day his luck ran out at Little Bighorn. The story
of General George Custer, the side of his life that
(26:58):
you probably didn't know. We love doing that here on
this show, here on our American Stories,
Host
Lee Habeeb
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