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

by Elizabeth Bacon Custer

One day in New York my husband and I were paying our usual homage to the shop windows and to the beautiful women we passed, when he suddenly seized my arm and said, "There's Kiddoo! Let's catch up with him." I was skipped over gutters, and sped over pavements, the General unconscious that such a gait is not the usual movement of the New Yorker, until we came up panting each side of a tall, fine-looking man, apparently a specimen of physical perfection. The look of longing that he gave us as we ran up, flushed and happy, startled me, and I could scarcely wait until we separated, to know the meaning. It was this: General Joseph B. Kiddoo, shot in the leg during the war, had still the open wound, from which he endured daily pain and nightly torture, for he got only fragmentary sleep. To heal the hurt was to end his life, the surgeons said. When at last I heard he had been given release and slept the blessed sleep, what word of sorrow could be framed?

In the case of another friend, with whom we were staying in Tennessee, from whom my husband and I extracted the information by dint of questions and sympathy, when, late one night, we sat about the open fire, and were warmed into confidence by its friendly glow, we found that no single night for the twelve years after the war had such a boon as uninterrupted sleep been known to him. A body racked by pain was paying daily its loyal, uncomplaining tribute to his country. Few were aware that he had unremitting suffering as his constant companion. I remember that my husband urged him to marry, and get some good out of life and from the sympathy that wells perpetually in a tender woman's heart. But he denied himself the blessing of such companionship, from unselfish motives, declaring he could not ask a woman to link her fate with such a broken life as his. When we left his fireside, my husband counted him a hero of such rare mettle that few in his experience could equal him, and years afterward, when we sometimes read his name in print, he said, "Poor ——! I wonder if there's any let-up for the brave fellow."

Our home-coming was a great pleasure to us and to our two families. My own father was proud of the General's administration of civil as well as military affairs in Texas, and enjoyed the congratulatory letter of Governor Hamilton deeply. The temptations to induce General Custer to leave the service and enter civil life began at once, and were many and varied. He had not been subjected to such allurements the year after the war, when the country was offering posts of honor to returned soldiers, but this summer of our return from Texas, all sorts of suggestions were made. Business propositions, with enticing pictures of great wealth, came to him. He never cared for money for money's sake. No one that does, ever lets it slip through his fingers as he did. Still, his heart was set upon plans for his mother and father, and for his brothers' future, and I can scarcely see now how a man of twenty-five could have turned his back upon such alluring schemes for wealth as were held out to him. It was at that time much more customary than now, even, to establish corporations with an officer's name at the head who was known to have come through the war with irreproachable honor, proved possibly as much by his being as poor when he came out of service as when he went in, as by his conduct in battle. The country was so unsettled by the four years of strife that it was like beginning all over again, when old companies were started anew. Confidence had to be struggled for, and names of prominent men as associate partners or presidents were sought for persistently.

Politics offered another form of temptation. The people demanded for their representatives the soldiers under whom they had served, preferring to follow the same leaders in the political field that had led them in battle. The old soldiers, and civilians also, talked openly of General Custer for Congressman or Governor. It was a summer of excitement and uncertainty. How could it be otherwise to a boy who, five brief years before, was a beardless youth with no apparent future before him? I was too much of a girl to realize what a summer it was—indeed, we had little chance, so fast did one proposition for our future follow upon the other. When the General was offered the appointment of foreign Minister, I kept silence as best I could, but it was desperately hard work. Honors, according to old saws, "were empty," but in that hey-day time they looked very different to me. I was inwardly very proud, and if I concealed the fact because my husband expressed such horror of inflated people, it was only after violent effort.

Among the first propositions was one for the General to take temporary service with Mexico. This scheme found no favor with me. It meant more fighting and further danger for my husband, and anxiety and separation for me. Besides, Texas association with Mexicans made me think their soldiery treacherous and unreliable. But even in the midst of the suspense pending the decision I was not insensible to this new honor that was offered.

Carvajal, who was then at the head of the Juarez military government, offered the post of Adjutant-General of Mexico to General Custer. The money inducements were, to give twice the salary in gold that a major-general in our army receives. As his salary had come down from a major-general's pay of $8,000 to $2,000, this might have been a temptation surely. There was a stipulation that one or two thousand men should be raised in the United States, any debts assumed in organizing this force to be paid by the Mexican Liberal Government. Señor Romero, the Mexican Minister, did what he could to further the application of Carvajal, and General Grant wrote his approval of General Custer's acceptance, in a letter in which he speaks of my husband in unusually flattering terms, as one "who rendered such distinguished service as a cavalry officer during the war," adding, "There was no officer in that branch of the service who had the confidence of General Sheridan to a greater degree than General Custer, and there is no officer in whose judgment I have greater faith than in Sheridan's. Please understand, then, that I mean to endorse General Custer in a high degree."

The stagnation of peace was being felt by those who had lived a breathless four years at the front. However much they might rejoice that carnage had ceased and no more broken hearts need be dreaded, it was very hard to quiet themselves into a life of inaction. No wonder our officers went to the Khedive for service! no wonder this promise of active duty was an inviting prospect for my husband! It took a long time for civilians, even, to tone themselves down to the jog-trot of peace.

Everything looked, at that time, as if there was success awaiting any soldier who was resolute enough to lead troops against one they considered an invader. Nothing nerves a soldier's arm like the wrong felt at the presence of foreigners on their own ground, and the prospect of destruction of their homes. Maximilian was then uncertain in his hold on the Government he had established, and, as it soon proved, it would have been what General Custer then thought comparatively an easy matter to drive out the usurper. The question was settled by the Government's refusing to grant the year's leave for which application was made, and the General was too fond of his country to take any but temporary service in another.

This decision made me very grateful, and when there was no longer danger of further exposure of life, I was also thankful for the expressions of confidence and admiration of my husband's ability as a soldier that this contemplated move had drawn out. I was willing my husband should accept any offer he had received except the last. I was tempted to beg him to resign; for this meant peace of mind and a long, tranquil life for me. It was my father's counsel alone that kept me from urging each new proposition to take up the life of a civilian. He advised me to forget myself. He knew well what a difficult task it was to school myself to endure the life on which I had entered so thoughtlessly as a girl. I had never been thrown with army people, and knew nothing before my marriage of the separations and anxieties of military life. Indeed, I was so young that it never occurred to me that people could become so attached to each other that it would be misery to be separated. And now that this divided existence loomed up before me, father did not blame me for longing for any life that would ensure our being together. He had a keen sense of humor, and could not help reminding me occasionally, when I told him despairingly that I could not, I simply would not, live a life where I could not be always with my husband, of days before I knew the General, when I declared to my parents, if ever I did marry it would not be a dentist, as our opposite neighbor appeared never to leave the house. It seemed to me then that the wife had a great deal to endure in the constant presence of her husband.

My father, strict in his sense of duty, constantly appealed to me to consider only my husband's interests, and forget my own selfish desires. In an old letter written at that time, I quoted to the General something that father had said to me: "Why, daughter, I would rather have the honor which grows out of the way in which the battle of Waynesboro was fought, than to have the wealth of the Indies. Armstrong's battle is better to hand down to posterity than wealth." He used in those days to walk the floor and say to me, "My child, put no obstacles in the way to the fulfillment of his destiny. He chose his profession. He is a born soldier. There he must abide."