Tenting on the Plains; or, General Custer in Kansas and Texas

by Elizabeth Bacon Custer

A MILITARY EXECUTION.

There was a great deal to do in those weeks of our detention at Alexandria, during the working hours of the day, in organizing the division of cavalry for the march. Troops that had been serving in the West during the war were brought together at that point from all directions, and an effort was made to form them into a disciplined body. This herculean task gave my husband great perplexity. He wrote to my father that he did not entirely blame the men for the restlessness and insubordination they exhibited, as their comrades, who had enlisted only for the war, had gone home, and, of course, wrote back letters to their friends of the pleasures of reunion with their families and kindred, and the welcome given them by their townspeople. The troops with us had not served out the time of their enlistment, and the Government, according to the strict letter of the law, had a right to the unexpired time for which the men were pledged. Some of the regiments had not known the smell of gunpowder during the entire war, having been stationed in and near Southern cities, and that duty is generally demoralizing. In the reorganizing of this material, every order issued was met with growls and grumbling. It seemed that it had been the custom with some of their officers to issue an order, and then go out and make a speech, explaining the whys and wherefores. One of the colonels came to the General one day at his own quarters, thinking it a better place than the office to make his request. He was a spectacle, and though General Custer was never in after years incautious enough to mention his name, he could not, with his keen sense of the ludicrous, resist a laughing description of the interview. The man was large and bulky in build. Over the breast of a long, loose, untidy linen duster he had spread the crimson sash, as he was officer of the day. A military sword-belt gathered in the voluminous folds of the coat, and from his side hung a parade sword. A slouch hat was crowded down on a shock of bushy hair. One trouser-leg was tucked into his boot, as if to represent one foot in the cavalry; the other, true to the infantry, was down in its proper place. He began his interview by praising his regiment, gave an account of the success with which he was drilling his men, and, leaning confidentially on the General's knee, told him he "would make them so——near like regglers you couldn't tell 'em apart." Two officers of the regular army were then in command of the two brigades, to one of which this man's regiment was assigned. But the object of the visit was not solely to praise his regiment; he went on to say that an order had been issued which the men did not like, and he had come up to expostulate. He did not ask to have the order rescinded, but told the General he would like to have him come down and give the reasons to the troops. He added that this was what they expected, and when he issued any command he went out and got upon a barrel and explained it to the boys. My husband listened patiently, but declined, as that manner of issuing orders was hardly in accordance with his ideas of discipline.

The soldiers did not confine their maledictions to the regular officers in command; they openly refused to obey their own officers. One of the colonels (I am glad I have forgotten his name) made a social call at our house. He was in great perturbation of mind, and evidently terrified, as in the preceding night his dissatisfied soldiers had riddled his tent with bullets, and but for his "lying low" he would have been perforated like a sieve. The men supposed they had ended his military career; but at daylight he crept out. The soldiers were punished; but there seemed to be little to expect in the way of obedience if, after four years, they ignored their superiors and took affairs into their own hands. Threats began to make their way to our house. The staff had their tents on the lawn in front of us, and even they tried to persuade the General to lock the doors and bolt the windows, which were left wide open day and night. Failing to gain his consent to take any precautions, they asked me to use my influence; but in such affairs I had little success in persuasion. The servants, and even the orderlies, came to me and solemnly warned me of the threats and the danger that menaced the General. Thoroughly frightened in his behalf, they prefaced their warnings with the old-fashioned sensational language: "This night, at 12 o'clock," etc. The fixing of the hour for the arrival of the assassin completely unnerved me, as I had not then escaped from the influence that the melodramatic has upon youth. I ran to the General the moment he came from his office duties, to tell him, with tears and agitation, of his peril. As usual, he soothed my fears, but, on this occasion, only temporarily. Still, seeing what I suffered from anxiety, he made one concession, and consented, after much imploring, to put a pistol under his pillow. A complete battery of artillery round our house could not have secured to me more peace of mind than that pistol; for I knew the accuracy of his aim, and I had known too much of his cool, resolute action, in moments of peril, not to be sure that the small weapon would do its work. Peace was restored to the head of our house; he had a respite from the whimpering and begging. I even grew so courageous as to be able to repeat to Eliza, when she came next morning to put the room in order, what the General had said to me, that "barking dogs do not bite." The mattress was proudly lifted, and the pistol, of which I stood in awe, in spite of my faith in its efficacy, was exhibited to her in triumph. I made wide détours around that side of the bed the rest of the time we remained at Alexandria, afraid of the very weapon to which I was indebted for tranquil hours. The cats, pigs and calves might charge at will under the house. If I mistook them for the approaching adversary I remembered the revolver and was calmed.

Long afterward, during our winter in Texas, my husband began one day to appear mysterious, and assume the suppressed air that invariably prefaced a season of tormenting, when a siege of questions only brought out deeper and obscurer answers to me. Pouting, tossing of the head, and reiterated announcements that I didn't care a rap, I didn't want to know, etc., were met by chuckles of triumph and wild juba patting and dancing around the victim, unrestrained by my saying that such was the custom of the savage while torturing his prisoner. Still, he persisted that he had such a good joke on me. And it certainly was: there had not been a round of ammunition in the house that we occupied at Alexandria, neither had that old pistol been loaded during the entire summer!

The soldiers became bolder in their rebellion; insubordination reached a point where it was almost uncontrollable. Reports were sent to General Sheridan, in command of the Department, and he replied to my husband, "Use such summary measures as you deem proper to overcome the mutinous disposition of the individuals in your command." A Western officer, a stranger to us up to that time, published an account of one of the regiments, which explains what was not clear to us then, as we had come directly from the Army of the Potomac:

"One regiment had suffered somewhat from indifferent field officers, but more from the bad fortune that overtook so many Western regiments in the shape of garrison duty in small squads or squadrons, so scattered as to make each a sort of independent command, which in the end resulted in a loss of discipline, and the ruin of those bonds of sympathy that bound most regiments together. To lead such a regiment into a hotly contested fight would be a blessing, and would effectually set at rest all such trouble; but their fighting had been altogether of the guerrilla kind, and there was no regimental pride of character, simply because there had been no regimental deed of valor. Tired out with the long service, weary with an uncomfortable journey by river from Memphis, sweltering under a Gulf-coast sun, under orders to go farther and farther from home when the war was over, the one desire was to be mustered out and released from a service that became irksome and baleful when a prospect of crushing the enemy no longer existed. All these, added to the dissatisfaction among the officers, rendered the situation truly deplorable. The command had hardly pitched their tents at Alexandria before the spirit of reckless disregard of authority began to manifest itself. The men, singly or in squads, began to go on extemporaneous raids through the adjoining country, robbing and plundering indiscriminately in every direction. They seemed to have no idea that a conquered and subdued people could possibly have any rights that the conquerors were bound to respect. But General Custer was under orders to treat the people kindly and considerately, and he obeyed orders with the same punctiliousness with which he exacted obedience from his command." The anger and hatred of these troops toward one especial officer culminated in their peremptory demand that he should resign. They drew up a paper, and signed their names. He had not a friend, and sought the commanding officer for protection. This was too pronounced a case of mutiny to be treated with any but the promptest, severest measures, and all who had put their names to the document were placed under arrest. The paper was in reality but a small part of the incessant persecution, which included threats of all kinds against the life of the hated man; but it was written proof that his statements regarding his danger were true.

All but one of those that were implicated apologized, and were restored to duty. A sergeant held out, and refused to acknowledge himself in the wrong. A court-martial tried him and he was sentenced to death. Those who had been associated in the rebellion against their officer were thoroughly frightened, and seriously grieved at the fate to which their comrade had been consigned by their uncontrollable rage, and began to speak among themselves of the wife and children at home. The wife was unconscious that the heartbreaking revelations were on their way; that the saddest of woman's sorrows, widowhood, was hers to endure, and that her children must bear a tainted name. It came to be whispered about that the doomed man wore on his heart a curl of baby's hair, that had been cut from his child's head when he went out to serve his imperiled country. Finally, the wretched, conscience-stricken soldiers sued for pardon for their condemned companion, and the very man against whom the enmity had been cherished, and who owed his life to an accident, busied himself in collecting the name of every man in the command, begging clemency for the imperiled sergeant. Six days passed, and there was increased misery among the men, who felt themselves responsible for their comrade's life. The prayer for pardon, with its long roll of names, had been met by the General with the reply that the matter would be considered.

The men now prepared for vengeance. They lay around the camp-fires, or grouped themselves in tents, saying that the commanding officer would not dare to execute the sentence of the court-martial, while messages of this kind reached my husband in cowardly, roundabout ways, and threats and menaces seemed to fill the air. The preparation for the sergeant's execution was ordered, and directions given that a deserter, tried by court-martial and condemned, should be shot on the same day. This man, a vagabond and criminal before his enlistment, had deserted three or four times, and his sentence drew little pity from his comrades. At last dawned in the lovely valley that dreadful day, which I recall now with a shudder. It was impossible to keep me from knowing that an execution was to occur. There was no place to send me. The subterfuges by which my husband had kept me from knowing the tragic or the sorrowful in our military life heretofore, were of no avail now. Fortunately, I knew nothing of the petition for pardon; nothing, thank God! of the wife at her home, or of the curl of baby's hair that was rising and falling over the throbbing, agonized heart of the condemned father. And how the capacity we may have for embracing the sorrows of the whole world disappears when our selfish terrors concentrate on the safety of our own loved ones!

The sergeant's life was precious as a life; but the threats, the ominous and quiet watching, the malignant, revengeful faces of the troops about us, told me plainly that another day might darken my life forever, and I was consumed by my own torturing suspense. Rumors of the proposed murder of my husband reached me through the kitchen, the orderlies about our quarters, and at last through the staff. They had fallen into the fashion of my husband, and spared me anything that was agitating or alarming; but this was a time, they felt, when all possible measures should be taken to protect the General, and they implored me to induce him to take precautions for his safety. My pleading was of no avail. He had ordered the staff to follow him unarmed to the execution. They begged him to wear his side-arms, or at least permit them the privilege, in order that they might defend him; but he resolutely refused. How trivial seem all attempts to describe the agonies of mind that filled that black hour when the General and his staff rode from our lawn toward the dreaded field!