Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (28 page)

McClellan called him forward. “Do you know,” the general said, “you’re just the young man I’ve been looking for, Mr. Custer. How would you like to come on my staff?” And so Custer got a promotion to captain and a place near the center of power.
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The next day McClellan began to cross the Chickahominy and he gave Custer the honor of leading a company in the van of a charge. “Why, that’s Armstrong Custer!” the men of Company A, 4th Michigan shouted when Custer took his place at the head of the column. The company had been recruited in Monroe, Michigan, Custer’s second home. Custer greeted the men cheerfully, shook hands all around, then straightened up in his saddle and shouted, “Come on, Monroe!” After leading the company across the river, Custer got involved in a fire fight with the rebel outposts. He had been scouting the area for more than a week and persuaded his immediate superior that by recrossing the river, riding downstream a mile, then crossing once again, he could bring Company A onto the enemy’s rear. Permission granted, Custer led the flanking expedition. When he had Company A in place he called out, “Go in, Wolverines! Give ‘em hell!” and led a charge that sent the rebels running. He was the first into the fight and the last man to leave the field. “Custer was simply a reckless, gallant boy, undeterred by fatigue, unconscious of fear,” McClellan wrote in his memoirs. “His head was always clear in danger
and he always brought me clear and intelligible Reports. …I became much attached to him.”
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Custer’s luck was a major factor in his success, but as both incidents (and dozens of others) illustrate, luck was not the only thing on his side. There was, to start with, the West Point Protective Association. West Pointers took care of their own, and West Pointers ran the Union Army. But in addition to his luck and the assistance of the WPPA, Custer had unique qualities that pushed him to the fore. He was always eager for action, ready to take any risk, willing to seize the initiative. When McClellan had trouble finding someone willing to go up in a balloon to observe Confederate positions, Custer volunteered for the dangerous duty and carried it out with success. Staff officers in the Civil War, unlike their successors in the twentieth century, did precious little paperwork, much less planning for future campaigns. Instead, they did errands for their generals, odd jobs that no one else could or would do. Custer, ever the man of action, served with credit on the staffs of some half dozen generals during the first two years of the war.

All the generals under whom Custer served liked having him around. It was not only that he could be relied upon to get a job done; Custer also appealed to his superiors because of his fun-loving nature and droll ways. Perpetually cheerful, always full of practical jokes, he made those around him happy, and all generals appreciate a good-humored staff and cheerful headquarters environment. Custer was something of a character, with his slouch hat, his practice of cutting his hair, then letting it grow out and smearing it with cinnamon hair oil, his hodgepodge uniform, forever in need of washing, and his oversize boots. Custer was a dandy in reverse, almost what the Sioux called a “contrary.” Amid all the glitter and polish of his fellow staff officers, especially around McClellan’s headquarters, Custer stood out because of his deliberately sloppy exterior. He took to wearing captured Confederate boots, the bigger the better, and his outlandish footwear provided a standing joke. So did his tight hussar jacket and black trousers trimmed with gold lace. He looked, another staff member remarked, “like a circus rider gone mad.”
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Another factor in Custer’s success was his amazingly good health and endurance. He was little bothered by disease—he took sick leave only twice in the four-year war—in an Army that was wracked by fatal illness. More men died in the Civil War of looseness of the bowels than fell on the field of combat; in the Army of the Potomac there were 57,000 deaths from diarrhea and dysentery as against 44,000 killed in battle. Thousands more died from other diseases and
it was not uncommon for new regiments to have two thirds of their strength on the sick list. But Custer came out of the war in perfect health, just as he had entered it.
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Over and above all his other qualities, Custer was firm in his principles and physically courageous. For his entire adult life Custer was on the unpopular side of the political fence, both in terms of national and Army politics. He was also willing to face death. It is easier to describe his courage than to account for it. He was at the head of every charge, never faltered, and always kept his head no matter how deadly the hail of bullets.

Like Crazy Horse, Custer lived his life to the full; again like Crazy Horse, he was so involved with living that he did not have time to fear death. He was not suicidal. His life was precious to him, but only if he lived up to his own image of himself. He would rather die than ignore his duty or shirk danger. Many Civil War soldiers shared that attitude; Bell Wiley’s magnificent account of the common soldier of the Union Army,
The Life of Billy Yank,
is full of accounts of men whose dying words were, “Have I not always done my duty?” or similar statements.
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In a way, Custer’s courage sprang from the fear of looking bad in front of comrades. His account of his first combat experience illustrates the point Six days after leaving West Point, he was involved at Bull Run in his first cavalry charge. “I realized that I was in front of a company of old and experienced soldiers,” he later recalled, “all of whom would have an eye upon their new lieutenant to see how he comported himself when under fire.” Custer tried, more or less successfully, to appear calm. Riding beside him was another young lieutenant, Leicester Walker, fresh from civilian life and holding a political commission. As the column rode toward the enemy on the other side of a hill, Walker anxiously inquired, “Custer, what weapon are you going to use in the charge?”

“From my earliest notions of the true cavalryman,” Custer wrote later, “I had always pictured him in the charge bearing aloft his curved saber, and cleaving the skulls of all with whom he came in contact.” So he promptly replied, “The saber,” flashed his bright new blade from its scabbard, and rode forward, totally unconcerned. Walker, figuring that was the way it was done at West Point, also drew his saber. But then Custer began to have doubts. “I began arguing in my own mind as to the comparative merits of the saber and revolver as a weapon of attack. If I remember correctly, I reasoned
pro
and
con
about as follows: ‘Now the saber is a beautiful weapon; it produces an ugly wound; the term “saber charge” sounds well; and
above all the saber is sure; it never misses fire. It has this drawback, however; in order to be made effective, it is indispensable that you approach very close to your adversary … So much for the saber. Now as to the revolver, it has this advantage … one is not compelled to range himself alongside his adversary before beginning the attack … As this is my first battle, had I not better defer the use of the saber until after I have acquired a little more experience?’”

He returned his saber to its scabbard and drew his revolver. Walker, seeing Custer’s action, did the same. But Custer argued some more with himself, finally replacing the revolver and again drawing his saber. Walker did the same. So it went until they reached the top of the hill, to discover the enemy had already withdrawn.
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Custer knew how to overwhelm or at least overcome his fears, but there was more to his courage than that. He positively enjoyed combat. He would have understood perfectly the cavalryman who wrote after the battle of Brandy Station, “I never felt so gay in my life as I did when we charged with the Saber” or the artilleryman who remarked after Gettysburg, “I felt a joyous exaltation, a perfect indifference to circumstances through the whole of that three days fight, and have seldom enjoyed three days more in my life.”
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As much as any man who fought in the Civil War, Custer felt that exaltation that comes to some after a fight gets under way. “There is something grand about it—it is magnificent,” one rebel wrote. “I feel elated as borne along with the tide of battle.”
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In addition, as an officer at the head of a column of cavalry, Custer felt an awesome sense of power as he cried out, “Charge!”

Combat, for Custer, held some of the fascination of the hunt. In writing home about his battle experiences he used words like “the chase” or “the sport” and referred to his enemies as “the game.” In one of his early actions he was leading ten men in pursuit of a small body of Confederate cavalry. It was, Custer wrote home, “the most exciting sport I ever engaged in.” He saw a rebel officer mounted on a magnificent blooded bay horse. “I selected him as my game, and gave my black the spur and rein. … Seeing a stout rail fence in front of him, I concluded to try him at it. I reasoned that he might attempt to leap it and be thrown, or if he could clear it so could I. The chase was now exciting in the extreme.”

The Confederate cleared the fence. So did Custer. By avoiding a swamp, Custer gained on his quarry and called on him to surrender. When the rebel rode on, Custer fired his pistol. He missed. Again Custer called on him to surrender, but the man rode on. Taking careful
aim, or as careful as he could from the back of a galloping horse, Custer fired again. A hit, right in the head. Custer kept the Confederate’s horse for himself, as well as his handsome saddle, fancy sword, and double-barreled shotgun. In reporting on his experience to his family, Custer concluded: “It was his own fault; I told him twice to surrender, but was compelled to shoot him.”
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For all of his sportsman’s attitude toward combat, however, Custer could get as sentimental about death as the most romantic Civil War soldier. In early 1862, when he was all of twenty-two years old, Custer told of burying a few dead Union soldiers. “Some were quite young and boyish,” he wrote, “and looking at their faces, I could not but think of my own younger brother. One, shot through the heart, had been married the day before he left Vermont. Just as his comrades were about to consign his body to the earth, I thought of his wife, and, not wishing to put my hands in his pockets, cut them open with my knife, and found knife, porte-monnaie and ring. I then cut off a lock of his hair and gave them to a friend of his from the same town who promised to send them to his wife. As he lay there I thought of that poem: ‘Let me kiss him for his mother …’ and wished his mother were there to smooth his hair.”
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In early spring 1863 Custer became an aide to Brigadier General Alfred Pleasonton, who commanded one of the three cavalry divisions in the Army of the Potomac, now commanded by General Joseph Hooker. Pleasonton was a tough old regular, a West Point graduate with twenty years’ service. He had fought with General Harney in the attack on Little Thunder’s camp of Brulés on the Bluewater River in 1855. It is easy enough to imagine the general and his young West Point aides sitting around the campfire eight years later, Pleasonton regaling his staff with stories of fighting against the Sioux. It was Custer’s first close contact with a real Indian fighter and he probably was fascinated by Pleasonton’s anecdotes.

Custer reveled in his new position, especially the daily rides through the command with his chief. He idolized Pleasonton, who in turn had a high opinion of the eager young staff officer. They lived well. Pleasonton sent to Baltimore daily for vegetables and other delicacies. “We have onions, radishes, and
ripe tomatoes,”
Custer told the home folks, plus “asparagus, fresh fish, mackeral, beef, mutton, veal,
Bacon,
pound cake, oranges, ginger snaps, candies,
peas,
warm biscuits (instead of hard bread), fresh milk, butter, cheese, & everything.”
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He was always a man of extremes. In the field, Custer
often went three or four days with virtually no food or sleep, but in camp he lived the good life to the full.

The enlisted men hated all staff officers, especially young squirts like Custer fresh out of West Point and full of airs, and they bitterly resented the privileges the staffers enjoyed. The men could be disarmingly frank in making their feelings known. “You are God damned trash,” a Michigan private told his captain. “You think you can do just as you God damn please. … I’ll be God damned if I will [obey your orders]. I’ll see you in hell before I will.” An Irish soldier, when ordered by a headquarters aide to keep quiet while serving a term in a guardhouse, replied, “I will not keep quiet for you, you God damned low-lived son of a bitch, you shit-house adjutant.” “You order me!” an Ohio recruit snapped at another aide. “You ain’t worth a pinch of shit!” Staff officers were dubbed “buggers,” “dogs,” “green-horns,” “whore-house pimps,” and more frequently the time-honored “son of a bitch.”
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Clearly there was something of a gap between the leaders and the led in the Union Army—a situation totally foreign to Crazy Horse and the Oglalas—but Custer did not mind. Army discipline ensured that the men would do what they were told, and West Point had taught him that as an officer he was entitled to special privileges. Like other Union officers, he indulged himself in every comfort he could. By early 1863 Custer had a black woman cook, a teen-aged white boy who followed him everywhere and did all his cleaning and took care of his personal needs, two dogs, and a great pile of souvenirs. He was hardly alone; as a Massachusetts soldier pointed out, “Every private wants & Every officer has his colored servant whom he feeds scantily, clothes shabbily, works cruelly & curses soundly & in his curses includes the whole race.”
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