Indian Fights and Fighters: The Soldier and the Sioux

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

And it goes without saying that such a man had enemies—men who were envious of his abilities, his achievements and his fame; men whom he never sought to placate, and who sought envy’s balm in detraction and hatred; men who could not measure him or be fair to him, but men who in a pinch would have turned to him with unhesitating trust, whether in his ability or his soldierly faith.

Did this man, this soldier, whose service throughout the Civil War and a long career of frontier warfare was for eighteen years unequaled for efficiency and brilliancy within the range of its opportunities and responsibilities, who never failed his commanders, who never disobeyed an order, nor disappointed an expectation, nor deceived a friend—did this man, at the last, deny his whole life history, his whole mental and moral habit, his whole character, and wilfully disobey an understood order, or fail of its right execution according to his best judgment, within the limits of his ability under the conditions of the event; and, what is worse—and this is what his detractors charge—did he not only disobey, but did he from the inception of the enterprise plan to disobey—to deceive his commander who trusted him, in order that he might get the opportunity to disobey?

To any man who knew Custer, except those who for any reason hold a brief against him, not only is the charge of premeditated, deliberate disobedience absurd, but it is a foul outrage on one of the memories that will never fail of inspiration while an American army carries and defends an American flag.

In one of Mrs. Custer’s letters to me, narrating what took place during the days of preparation for the General’s departure, she wrote:

“A day before the expedition started, General Terry was in our house alone with Autie (the General’s pet name). A.’s thoughts were calm, deliberate, and solemn. He had been terribly hurt in Washington. General Terry had applied for him to command the expedition. He was returned to his regiment because General Terry had applied for him. I know that he (Custer) felt tenderly and affectionately toward him. On that day he hunted me out in the house and brought me into the living-room, not telling me why. He shut the door, and very seriously and impressively said: ‘General Terry, a man usually means what he says when he brings his wife to listen to his statements. I want to say that reports are circulating that I do not want to go out to the campaign under you.’ (I supposed that he meant, having been given the command before, he was unwilling to be a subordinate.) ‘But I want you to know that I do want to go and serve under you, not only that I value you as a soldier, but as a friend and a man.’ The exact words were the strongest kind of a declaration that he wished him to know he wanted to serve under him.”

That was Custer all over. And to any one who knew him—to any one who can form a reasonable conception of the kind of a man he must needs have been to have done for eighteen years what he had done and as he had done it, and won the place and fame he had won—that statement ends debate. Whatever of chagrin, disappointment, or irritation he may have felt before, however unadvisedly the sore-hearted, high-spirited man may have spoken with his lips when all was undetermined, and his part and responsibility had not been assigned, this true soldier, knowing the gossip of the camp, conscious possibly it was not wholly without cause, however exaggerated, but facing now his known duty and touched by the confidence of his superior as Custer never failed to be touched, could not part from his commander with a possible shadow resting between them. He knew the speech of men might have carried to Terry’s mind the suggestion of a doubt. And yet Terry had trusted him. He could not bear to part without letting General Terry know that he was right to trust him. That statement to Terry was a recognition of whatever folly of words he might before have committed in his grief and anger; it was an open purging of an upright soldier’s soul as an act honorably due alike to superior and subordinate; it was, under the circumstances, the instinctive response of a true man to the confidence of one who had committed to him a trust involving the honor and fame of both. Disobedience, whether basely premeditated, or with equal baseness undertaken upon after-deliberation, is inconceivable, unless one imputes to Custer a character void of every soldierly and manly quality. With such an one discussion would be useless.

Upon the discussion itself, which is presented in the narrative and in the appendix, I have little to say. In the opening paragraph of the appendix, you say: “I presume the problem ... will never be authoritatively settled, and that men will continue to differ upon these questions until the end of time.”

In other words, the charge of disobedience can never be proved. The proof does not exist. The evidence in the case forever lacks the principal witness whose one and only definite order was to take his regiment and go “in pursuit of the Indians whose trail was discovered by Major Reno a few days since.” They were the objective; they were to be located and their escape prevented. That was Custer’s task. All the details were left, and necessarily left, to his discretion. All else in the order of June 22d conveys merely the “views” of the commander to be followed “unless you should see sufficient reasons for departing from them.” The argument that Custer disobeyed this order seems to resolve itself into two main forms. One is trying to read into the order a precision and a peremptory character which are not there and which no ingenuity can put there, and to empty it of a discretion which is there and is absolute; the other is in assuming or asserting that Custer departed from General Terry’s views without “sufficient reasons.” And this line of argument rests in part upon the imputation to Custer of a motive and intent which was evil throughout, and in part upon what his critic, in the light of later knowledge and the vain regrets of hindsight, thinks he ought to have done, and all in utter ignorance of Custer’s own views of the conditions in which, when he met them, he was to find his own reasons for whatever he did or did not do. Under that order, it was Custer’s views of the conditions when they confronted him that were to govern his actions, whether they contravened General Terry’s views or not. If in the presence of the actual conditions, in the light of his great experience and knowledge in handling Indians, he deemed it wise to follow the trail, knowing it would reach them, and deeming that so to locate them would be the best way to prevent their escape, then he obeyed that order just as exactly as if, thinking otherwise, he had gone scouting southward where they were not, and neither Terry nor he expected them to be.

To charge disobedience is to say that he wilfully and with a wrong motive and intent did that which his own military judgment forbade; for it was his own military judgment, right or wrong, that was to govern his own actions under the terms of that order. The quality of his judgment does not touch the question of obedience. If he disobeyed that order, it was by going contrary to his own judgment. That was the only way he could disobey it. If men differ as to whether he did that, they will differ.

Respectfully yours,