Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (41 page)

Custer’s worst problems were with his own troops. The men in the cavalry division were Westerners, unused to the heavy discipline of the Army of the Potomac. In addition, they wanted to go home, not serve on occupation duty in Texas. One regiment, the 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry, staged a mutiny. A mob of enlisted men, with the help of several of their junior officers, attacked the regimental commander, demanding his resignation or his life. Custer put an end to the mutiny by arresting sixteen of the officers and reducing seventy-six noncommissioned officers to the ranks. Another problem was with troops who assailed civilians, pillaged their houses, insulted their women, and in general stole everything not nailed down. Custer adopted drastic measures to bring these marauders into line, including this order: “Every enlisted man committing depredations on the persons or property of citizens will have his head shaved, and, in addition, will receive twenty-five lashes on his back, well laid on.” He was denounced by the Radical Republican press for “flogging men who had fought for their country, while favoring those who had turned traitor to it,” but he stuck to his hard line.
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Desertion was another major concern. Civil War volunteers were no more anxious to sweat in Texas than they were to fight Crazy Horse in Wyoming, and they deserted in droves. Custer had at least one deserter shot, and although it evidently lowered the desertion rate, the action got him into further trouble. As reported in the northern press, here was Custer hobnobbing with former rebels, engaging in horse races and trades with former Confederate generals, enjoying the supposed luxuries of southern plantation living, and meanwhile flogging or shooting the brave boys who had saved the Union.

Custer’s politics were not helping him any, either. His new-found opposition to slavery did not cause him to change his views about blacks in any significant way. “I am in favor of elevating the negro to the extent of his capacity and intelligence,” he wrote, using the code words so common to nineteenth-century American racists, “and of our doing everything in our power to advance the race, … but I am opposed to making this advance by correspondingly debasing
any portion of the white race. As to trusting the negro with the most sacred and responsible privilege—the right of suffrage—I should as soon think of elevating an Indian Chief to the Popedom of Rome.”
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As usual, Custer’s political sentiments were derivative, a reflection of the commonplace judgments he heard daily from his southern friends. He hardly thought about what he was saying, and his impulsiveness, so necessary to his battlefield success, was beginning to damage his career. By taking the stand that he did he was placing himself in direct opposition to the most powerful political party in the country on the key political issue of the day, the freedman’s right to vote.

Sheridan had recommended Custer for a permanent two-star rank in the regular Army, and throughout the second half of 1865 argued his case hard. But the Republicans controlling Congress were suspicious of pro-South officers, with good reason, as they were sabotaging national policy and undermining basic programs of elementary justice for freedmen and southern unionists. On January 31, 1866, Custer received the bad news—his volunteer commission had expired and he was reduced to his regular Army rank of captain in the 5th U. S. Cavalry and transferred to the east. He sold most of his horses, more than half of his dogs, disbanded his beloved staff, and started on the long road back to Monroe. He arrived in April, moved into Judge Bacon’s house, received a thirty-day leave of absence, and began to think about the future.

The possibilities were glittering. Michigan Democrats, eager to have a war hero bear their party’s standard, sought him out—would he be interested in political office? That was a path many of his fellow officers, including Judson Kilpatrick, had already trod. Custer put the politicians off, telling them he could not decide. There were also business possibilities—several firms figured Custer’s name as vice president would be an asset and offered him a job, but he put them off too. Sitting in an office had no appeal to Custer. Much perplexed, he finally decided to go to Washington to see what Secretary of War Stanton, General Grant, or others of his war-time friends might have to offer. In order to save money he left Libbie in Monroe. He had been earning $8,000 a year as a major general, but now his salary was down to $2,000 a year and he and Libbie had no savings. Libbie, much put off by that fact, lamented the injustice of seeing her Autie go away as poor as when he left Monroe to go off to the Civil War.
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She was learning that a man could fall as fast in America as he rose, but still she could hope. Custer may have been poor in money but
he was rich in reputation, and that might prove to be worth something in postwar Washington.

Custer arrived in Washington in time to be caught up in the political tornado that left in its wake the Gilded Age of American politics. Everyone was on the make, it seemed, from President Andrew Johnson down to the lowest clerk or Army officer begging to retain his commission. And they all wanted Custer’s support. He had by no means lost his position with the Radical Republicans, who wanted the war heroes on their side in the struggle for control of Reconstruction policy. Representative John A. Bingham of Ohio, who had appointed Custer to West Point and supported him throughout the war, and Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, another leading Radical Republican, showered young Custer with attention. So did Secretary of War Stanton, another Radical soon to be at the center of a presidential impeachment struggle. When Custer first went to Stanton’s office to inquire about possible future assignments, Stanton looked at him and declared, “Custer, stand up. I want to see you all over once more. It does me good to look at you again!” Custer asked for, and got, regular Army commissions for his brother Tom and for George Yates. “I tell you, Custer,” Stanton said, “there is nothing in my power to grant I would not do, if you would ask me.” Custer remarked that this was offering a great deal. Stanton replied, “Well, I mean it.”
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But Custer’s real friends were the McClellan Democrats, who also descended upon him, urging him to support President Andrew Johnson in the fight between the President and Congress over Reconstruction. Johnson’s friends offered Custer a diplomatic post, possibly an ambassadorship, and he considered accepting. Eventually, Custer turned it down because it would mean resigning his commission. That commission he regarded as his most valuable possession, an attitude reinforced by the number of ex-volunteer officers he met hanging around Washington hoping for regular Army appointments. And, as had happened in Michigan, Democratic politicians beguiled him with political possibilities—he could be a representative from Michigan, they said, or a senator or governor. “Political combinations,” he wrote Libbie. “I dare not write all that goes on underhand … I never knew political excitement to run so high. Even the ladies are excited and engaged in these matters.”
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Custer put off the political offers, just as he toyed with and then turned down an opportunity to take a position in the Mexican Army at $10,000 per year. But he could not help discussing politics daily
as he made the social rounds in Washington, where he still was much sought after. He had not taken open sides in the controversies agitating Washington, but he naturally drifted closer to the Democrats, as the major issue separating them and the President from the Radicals in Congress was civil rights. He did not believe that blacks were the equal of whites and he did not want them to have legal equality. Further, like Johnson, he wanted the South brought back into the Union immediately, with no strings attached. “My confidence in the strength of the Constitution is increasing daily,” he wrote Libbie, “while Andy [Johnson] is as firm and upright as a tombstone.”
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Late in March 1866 Custer went to New York, where he met with more McClellan Democrats and dined at the Manhattan Club. “Oh, these New York people are so kind to me,” he told Libbie. They offered him attractive business positions and continued to whisper in his ear about his bright political future. Custer was again tempted by a business career, naturally enough, as he had expensive tastes and was broke. “I would like to become wealthy in order to make my permanent home here,” he wrote Libbie from New York. McClellan’s friends took him driving through Central Park behind the finest horses he had ever seen. He visited Wall Street, and the Brokers’ Board adjourned to give him three cheers. At a breakfast arranged for him, Custer met the historian George Bancroft, the poet William Cullen Bryant, and other celebrities, experiences all very heady for a twenty-six-year-old Army captain making $2,000 a year.
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Back in Washington, Custer dined with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase at his home, while Senator Chandler took Custer to meet his family. Custer testified before a Congressional Reconstruction committee about conditions in Texas—his dim view of the prospects for the freed blacks did not endear him to the Radicals. Nor did a public statement he made about the necessity of returning to former Confederates their rights, including the right to vote and hold office.
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In May 1866 Libbie’s father, Judge Bacon, died. After settling his estate, which left her with a modest income, Libbie joined Custer in Washington. In July Custer received an appointment as lieutenant colonel in the 7th U. S. Cavalry, one of the new regiments being formed to fight the Indian wars. He had hoped for something better and continued to hope, but meanwhile accepted the position as second-in-command of the 7th Cavalry (in the event, the commander was always on detached duty, so Custer became the
de facto
commander of the regiment).

But for the moment Custer’s time was taken up with politics, in which he was becoming more deeply involved with each passing day.
On August 9 he went to Detroit for a mass meeting to endorse the National Union party (the label under which Lincoln and Johnson had run in 1864 against McClellan and the Democrats) and was elected one of the four delegates to the national convention in Philadelphia. He possibly thought that supporting Johnson would garner him something better than a lieutenant colonelcy. At the convention, which began on August 14, delegates from South Carolina and Massachusetts walked into the opening session arm in arm. Custer heartily approved of this show of national unity and he mingled freely with his old southern friends, some of whom had already been elected to Congress from the former Confederate states. Custer also signed a call for all former soldiers and sailors, northern and southern, to attend a grand National Union rally in Cleveland on September 17, 1866, the anniversary of McClellan’s battle at Antietam.
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After firmly establishing his credentials as a National Union man and, not incidentally, lending his prestige to the party, Custer wrote to the President, applying for a full colonelcy, even a colonelcy of infantry, he said, so long as it was not with a black regiment.
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But Johnson needed Custer for more important work and in reply invited the boy general and his wife to join the presidential party on “a swing around the circle.” Custer accepted.

The ostensible purpose of the swing was to place the cornerstone for a monument being erected to Stephen A. Douglas in Chicago and to visit Lincoln’s grave in Springfield, but Johnson’s real motive was to campaign for the fall congressional elections. The President was breaking openly with the Radical Republicans and wanted National Union men or Democrats (the two parties were becoming indistinguishable) elected to Congress. He intended to use Custer, in other words, for partisan political purposes. General Grant and Admiral Farragut were also along on the swing to provide luster.

From start to finish, Johnson’s “swing around the circle” was a disaster. One problem was the President’s intemperate speech making; he engaged in the lowest kind of name-calling and fell into the trap of trying to outshout Republican hecklers in his audiences. Grant was so disgusted that he took to drinking whiskey at every stop, thus providing an excuse for not appearing on the platform with Johnson. But the bigger problem was the President’s politics. The North was by no means ready to forgive and forget, to welcome former Confederates back into Congress, to hand control of the southern states back to the men who had run affairs there before 1861 and had then made war on the government. Nor was the North
willing to abandon the newly freed blacks to the tender mercies of their former masters.

Johnson wanted to build a strong National Union party, which would take the place of the Democratic party. Economic differences between Johnson and the Republicans were minimal, and economics did not become an issue in that critical congressional election of 1866.
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The real issues, which were interconnected, were civil rights, the status of former Confederates, and the question of white supremacy. Most northern voters held prejudices against blacks, obviously, but few were willing to go so far in abandoning them as Johnson and his supporters wanted to do.
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Johnson and the National Union party stood for white supremacy. “No man can advocate an amalgamation of the white & black races and so create a mongrel nation,” as Frank Blair, one of Johnson’s more important allies, put it. Blair thought it important that the states have the right to send black convicts to penal colonies outside the country, for example, and that the South be allowed to induce manufacturing companies to come into Dixie by educating poor whites while restricting the blacks “to the ruder trades and to the producing of the raw material.” Above all, Blair and the National Union party stood for racial segregation: “The policy of the country must therefore be a gradual segregation of the Races.”
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Having just paid an awful price to free the slaves, the northern public was not ready to accept such a policy.