So soon as this appendix as above was in type, I sent printed proofs of it to Generals Hughes, Woodruff, and Carrington, and to Colonel Godfrey for final revision and correction before the matter was plated. In returning the proof, General Carrington and Colonel Godfrey both add further communications, which I insert below.
I also sent the same proof to Mrs. Elizabeth B. Custer, widow of General Custer, and to Mrs. John H. Maugham, his sister, with an expression of my willingness—nay, my earnest desire—to print any comment they or either of them might wish to make upon the question under discussion.
At Mrs. Custer’s request I sent the appendix to Lieutenant-Colonel Jacob L. Greene, U. S. V., now president of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, who was Custer’s adjutant-general during the war and his life-long friend thereafter. His able defense of his old commander is printed as the last of this interesting series of historic documents.
Desiring that Custer, through his friends, may have the final word, I print it without comment, save to say that I fully join Colonel Greene in his admiration for the many brilliant qualities and achievements of his old commander.
General Carrington’s Letter
Hyde Park, Mass., Sept. 25, 1904.
Dear Dr. Brady:
I appreciate the favor of reading the proof-sheets of the appendix to your papers upon the Custer massacre. When it occurred I was greatly shocked by an event so similar in its horrors to that of the Phil Kearney massacre, in 1866. A previous interview with General Custer came to mind, and I attended the sessions of the court of inquiry at Chicago, taking with me, for reference, a map which I had carefully prepared of that country, with the assistance of James Bridger, my chief guide, and his associates.
The evidence indicated that when Custer reached the “Little Big Horn” (so known upon that map) and sent Benteen up stream, with orders that, “if he saw any Indians, to give them hell,” ordering Reno to follow the trail across the river and move down toward the Indian camps, while he moved down the right bank, detaching himself from the other commands, he practically cut the Indians off from retreat to the mountains, which was part of his special mission; but, in the flush of immediate battle, lost thought of the combined movement from the Big Horn, which had for its purpose the destruction of the entire Indian force by overwhelming and concentrated numbers.
Indeed, the court of inquiry did not so much discredit the conduct of Reno as reveal the fact that he faced a vastly superior force with no assurance that he could have immediate support from the other battalions, so vital in a sudden collision with desperate and hard-pressed enemies. The succeeding fight, on the defensive, protracted as it was, with no information of Custer’s position, or possible support from him, was a grave commentary upon the whole affair.