What is your take on George Armstrong Custer?

Harrison said:
I think it was General Buford and his cavalry division that was instrumental in delaying the Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg on the first day, and Custer was not in his division. Stuart was late in arriving at Gettysburg. He go there the second day. By the time Stuart and Custer's troopers fought, the battle was essentially won by the Union. I wonder how Sherman would know much about Custer. Custer always served in the East and Sherman in the west. It is true that Sherman did not have a high opinion of Cavalrymen. True JEB Stuart died at Yellow Tavern, he was killed by a union Sargent. I doubt Custer had much to do with it.
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I thought that Stuart--was accidentally shot by a Confederate Soldier? who mistook him for a Yank.
 
ltcdoty said:
I work as a curator at a military museum, and a good friend of mine, Brian Pohanka, who some of you may have seen as a talking head on the TV series, " Civil War Journals ". told me an intriguing story about George Custer. One of Brian's great interest was the battle at the Little Big Horn.

He told me that the records show that when Custer's body was recovered , he was buried in a grave along with his brother Tom. Each man had an empty shell case place in their mouths with a piece of paper identifying them.

A year or so later when it was decided to recover the officer's bodies , and inter the enlisted men in a common grave, the body that was identified as General Custer was removed from a grave that had only contained a single body.

This body was reburied at the cemetery at West Point. Brian said that there is a good possibility that the body at West Point is an unidentified enlisted man. Kind of ironic...oh Brian Pohanka died way too early several year ago. A good friend and a great historian
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When I was in college I was in the library supposed to be studying for finals. I found an old book about the 7th Cavalry written by one of the sergeants. I wish I could remember the title and author. A year after the battle the sergeant took a small detachment of men with a wagon and a wooden box back to the battlefield to recover Custer's body. He descibes how they removed a single body from a single grave and placed the remains in the box to be shipped to West Point. Now I knew the George and Tom Custer were buried together. So that didn't fit. Also, this was an extremely dangerous assignment. A small group of soldiers in the middle of nowhere, without any hope of support if they were discovered by hostile Indians, I can guess how a sergeant would handle such a dangerous mission. Go in there fast, dig up the first body they see, throw the bones in the box, and get the heck of of there before they are observed. I don't know who is buried as West Point, but I believe that Custer is still with his men and his two brothers, and that's where he belongs.
 
Sheridan, his superior, loved him. IIRC, Grant was quite fond of Sheridan, enough that Sheridan attended the Confederate surrender (which, BTW, was in the mayors home and not a court.)

Since Custer had to stand outside, Sheridan purchased the table the surrender was signed on and gave it to his favorite officer, knowing the historic significance of it.

I dunno much about his Civil War exploits but he was obviously foolish at Little Big Horn.

Let's finally put one myth to rest, though: the Gatling Gun he left behind would not been a game changer, even three or four of them. Despite the high rate of fire, it was still a black powder weapon and couldn't sustain fire for very long before fouling rendered it useless. About every demo we've ever seen was firing smokeless powder, where it looked like the operator could crank them out forever.
 
jtcarm said:
Let's finally put one myth to rest, though: the Gatling Gun he left behind would not been a game changer, even three or four of them. Despite the high rate of fire, it was still a black powder weapon and couldn't sustain fire for very long before fouling rendered it useless. About every demo we've ever seen was firing smokeless powder, where it looked like the operator could crank them out forever.
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At the same time, American Indians weren't big on mass casualties. They weren't Zulus who'd assault in close order and were willing to take a lot of damage to carry the objective. I'm not sure they'd be willing to do in the face of Gatlings what the French were willing to do in the face of MG-08s.

Of course Custer might well have found a way to lose with Maxims, never mind Gatlings or Nordenfeldts.
 
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A big thank you to all who shared their wisdom in this post. I wasn't around the first time & don't have the time to dig thru the archives much. I learned a lot and greatly enjoyed the discussion.
 
I was fortunate enough to visit the Little Bighorn battlefield last fall and I learned a lot. It is well worth the time to make a visit. Custer's chances were seriously damaged by two of his subordinate commanders who refused to move their troops in and assist Custer's command when needed due to their cowardice and/or self preservation. Custer also erred by refusing additional troops and two Gatling guns when offered to him prior to moving out. Finally, he underestimated the size of the enemy forces. But in his defense, the Army had never seen a force of this size before.
 
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Had it not been for Libby Custer's incessant celebration of her husband for almost 50 years and constant defamation of Reno and Benteen, Custer would probably be viewed somewhat differently today.

I doubt that had Custer accepted the additional troops offered from Gibon's command and the gattlins as well, he would have achieved a different outcome. Custer was essentially very lucky, but his luck ran out that day in June 1876. He was also amazingly reckless and disdainful of others opinions. He was simply not up to the job required for success that day. Maybe McKenzie or Miles could have pulled it off, but certainly not Custer (or Crook).
 
What if's !? HUMMMM.
I bet Custer said in the last though he had---they can't do this--I'm custer.
I often wonder if he felt the last blow ?
The only thing that would have saved Custer's arse would have been a drone--and if he had had one--there would have been no battle--only dust trails back to where they had come from.
Boys--Custer had no intelligence to rely on---you might say he had no intelligence,,, period.
Blessings
 
I hate to judge Custer to harshly. He and others forces after years of hit and run attacks from the Lakota and Cheyenne covering the retreat of their villages did no0t expect the enemy to stand and fight let alone really attack. Custer was not expecting the village along the Big Horn to stand and fight. He likely had no idea that several bands had put aside their own traditional dislikes and come together. That alliance was something that only last a few weeks the early summer of 1876.

Crook had made some of the same miscalculations just a week before when he stopped to a rest and take a break to give his strung out column to regroup. He expected to find a village and hope to attack and push them north. I'm sure it came as a huge surprise to Crook when a superior force attacked that morning as they rested along the Rosebud.

Neither expected to have the enemy to stand and fight and they had no idea the bands had come together giving them a fighting force numbering in the thousands.

So they were making decisions by what had gone on in their past experience. They really lacked the facts and information to make wise decisions.
 
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Bill Bates said:
I hate to judge Custer to harshly. He and others forces after years of hit and run attacks from the Lakota and Cheyenne covering the retreat of their villages did no0t expect the enemy to stand and fight let alone really attack.
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After years of pantsing the Chinese and after humiliating the Russians in 1905, the Japanese didn't expect the Soviets to stomp them into the ground like an angry cape buffalo at Nomonhan.

After the debacle in the Philippines, the Japanese didn't expect us to kick their teeth in at Midway and all the way from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.

I forget who said, "No plan survives contact with the enemy."
 
Ranger514 said:
IMO, Custer was driven by ego and political aspirations. He felt he was destined for a higher calling, and his arrogance led him to disaster. The earlier events of Red Cloud's War should have been a clue to Custer that he wasn't going to achieve easy victory over the Indians he was sent to pursue.

Fetterman Fight - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This page blows away most of everything I ever read about the Fetterman fight.
 
the ringo kid said:
This page blows away most of everything I ever read about the Fetterman fight.
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The Fetterman site is just south of Sheridan, WY, and fairly close to the Little Big Horn. Fetterman and Custer both had superior attitudes towards Indians. Their arrogance led them to underestimate the strength of their adversaries. In Custer's case, he completely disregarded the warnings of his Crow scouts, who repeatedly advised him of the size of the Indian camp along the Little Big Horn, as well as the numbers of Indian warriors present.

Custer chose not to acknowledge the intelligence available to him, or wait for additional troops, both of which would have likely resulted in a very different outcome at the Little Big Horn. He needed a resounding victory to restore his reputation and further his political aspirations. In the face of overwhelming odds, he chose to rely on his past history of luck, which he took as some sort of divine indicator of his destiny for greatness.
 
Custer was nothing but a screw up & it's a miracle he lived through the War of Northern Aggression!
 
cmort666 said:
After years of pantsing the Chinese and after humiliating the Russians in 1905, the Japanese didn't expect the Soviets to stomp them into the ground like an angry cape buffalo at Nomonhan.

After the debacle in the Philippines, the Japanese didn't expect us to kick their teeth in at Midway and all the way from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.

I forget who said, "No plan survives contact with the enemy."
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It's disturbing how many commanders think their opponent will NEVER change tactics.
 
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