Introduction
The purpose of this historiographical essay is to review and evaluate how historians’ description of George Armstrong Custer has changed throughout the years since his death at Little Bighorn. The intent is not to do a historiographical essay on the Battle at Little Bighorn but an essay about Custer, the man, the legend. This essay will look at historians’ description of Custer, his personality, character, positive attributes, and flaws. In this essay, to enhance readability, George Armstrong Custer is generally referred to as Custer while his wife Elizabeth Bacon Custer is, generally, referred to by her nickname Libbie.
During the research for the essay three main genres were identified: mythology, revisionist, and post-mythology. The mythology genre consists of a group of writers and historians who provide a very positive, uncritical, view of Custer and his personality. The main representatives for this genre are of Frederick Whittaker and Libbie. Revisionist genre was a response to the mythological genre’s representation of Custer. Revisionist genre consists of historians who painted a rather dark, negative, view of Custer and are represented, in chief, by Frederick F. Van de Water and Earl A. Brininstool. During the latter half the 20th century, the historiography of Custer became more balanced and neutral, it entered a post-mythology genre, with recognized that Custer was a human and had both positive and negative attributes. This genre, represented by historians like Jay Monaghan and Evan Connell, who provide a more balanced view of Custer as neither a hero nor a villain but a more multi-dimensional individual.
Pre-Mythology
Custer came to be a household name even before his death, in large to published articles about his exploits during the both the Civil War and his campaigns against the Indians. The articles made the public learn about Custer and they came to admire him. Custer, himself, also wrote a series of article for Galaxy Magazine, later published in book form as My Life on the Plains, which was Custer’s first and only literary work. This essay will, however, not look into the pre-mythology of Custer.
Mythology
The first genre that appeared, Mythology, came to represents the prevailing view that existed from 1876 until 1933 which portrayed Custer as a dashing and gallant military officer, flawless who was the victim of ill willed politicians and jealous subordinates. In this genre we will look at the works of Frederick Whittaker and Elizabeth Bacon Custer, two writers who would have a tremendous impact on forging the prevailing view of Custer that existed until 1933 and beyond. In addition we will touch upon the works of Frederick Dellenbaugh and Marguerite Merington.
Almost immediately after the defeat at Little Bighorn, Custer was severely criticized by the Army and newspapers supporting the current Grant administration in Washington, DC. Coming to his defense was Frederick Whittaker, a native Englishman and successful writer of dime novels, who wrote a ten page biography of Custer in Galaxy Magazine shortly after the disaster at Little Bighorn. Whittaker, encouraged by the good reception, decided to write a more complete biography about Custer’s life. It would take him almost six months to complete the book A Complete Life of Gen. George A. Custer, which would start the building of the legend of Custer. With the exception of, perhaps, Libbie, Whittaker has done more than anyone else to give Custer a home in Pantheon of American Mythology.
Whittaker took a leave of absence from his employment, as a writer for a newspaper, to write his book. He contacted Custer’s widow, Libbie, who quickly realized the potential such a book could have in clearing her husband’s, by then, then rather damaged reputation. Libbie agreed in assisting him in his writing and did lend him personal correspondence between her and Custer. In addition, she put him in contact with family, friends, and acquaintances to Custer and Whittaker interviewed them during his work on the book. He would also interview officers and soldiers belonging to the Seventh Cavalry and relied heavily on Custer’s autobiography My Life on the Plains and newspaper accounts. He would add fictional accounts and borrow content from his dime novels.
Whittaker, a creator of innumerable heroes in his widely read dime novels, wrote with an obvious zeal and admiration of Custer, describing him as “one of the few real great men that America has produced – A man who triumphed over great odds to reach the pinnacle of greatness.” If there was any doubt about Whittaker’s intent with the book this passage will help clarify it.
“Few men had more enemies than Custer, and no man deserved them less. The world has never known half the real nobility of his life nor a tithe of the difficulties under which he struggled. It will be the author’s endeavor to remedy this want of knowledge, to pain in sober earnest colors the truthful portrait of such a knight of romance as has not honored the world with his presence since the days of Bayard.”
A Complete Life of Gen. George A. Custer, was at its completion, a lengthy 648 pages biography. Finished just in time for the Christmas sale in early December 1876, it portrayed Custer as a dashing cavalier and as a general clad in unblemished armor relentlessly attacked by wicked politicians and surrounded by jealous subordinates. Whittaker did not shy away from giving high praise and described the life and death of Custer.
“Never was life more rounded, complete, and symmetrical than that of George A. Custer, the favorite of fortune, the last cavalier … To Custer alone was it given to join a romantic life of perfect success to a death of perfect heroism: to unite the splendors of Austerlitz and Thermopylae; to charge like Murat: to die like Leonidas.”
Whittaker would not be so kind to Custer’s subordinates, Major Reno and Captain Benteen, who he severely criticized for their conduct and actions during the campaign. He alleged that their incompetence, cowardliness, and dereliction of duty were the cause for the defeat at Little Bighorn and he ended the book with a call for a court of inquiry to look into the matter and that the “nation demands such a court, to vindicate the name of the dead here from the pitiless malignity, which first slew him and then pursued him beyond the grave.”
Whittaker then came to encourage Libbie, a prolific letter writer and diarist, to write her book about her husband and, with him as a guide and mentor, she would eventually write three accomplished and successful books about her and her husband’s adventures on the frontier which would remain in print for more than a century.
Libbie used her letters and diaries as the basis for her three books about her life on the plains with Custer. Boots and Saddles dealt with their life after the Battle of Washita River and ends with the fatal Battle of Little Bighorn and the death of Custer. Following the Guidon dealt with the 7th Cavalry’s winter campaign, 1867-68, against the Cheyenne and it ends with the Battle of Washita River. Tenting on the Plains covers their life following their marriage in 1864 and ends in 1867. In her three books Libbie would describe her husband as a great cavalier, a superb horseman, an expert marksman, an affectionate husband, a perfect man, and so much more.
Libbie would forge a successful career on the lecture circuit thanks to her popularity as an author. She would use that opportunity to immortalize her husband, keep his detractors at bay, and get an official vindication for him. Libbie was not alone in the efforts of immortalize Custer and she would soon be joined by numerous writers of dime novels and amateur historians like Frederick Dellenbaugh, a highly regarded topographer and novelist in his lifetime.
In his book George Armstrong Custer, Dellenbaugh continued with unadulterated praise of Custer of Whittaker and Libbie. His book was problematic as Dellenbaugh reference very few sources for his account of Custer. At occasions he mentions his sources names, i.e. Elizabeth Bacon Custer and a few manuscripts, but in large he neglects to use footnotes and a bibliography. Due to the content of the book, it is reasonable to assume the two main sources for this book were Elizabeth Custer’s collected works and Frederick Whittaker’s A Complete Life of Gen. George A. Custer. Elizabeth Custer wrote the preface to this book which she considered to be the fairest and frankest book of her husband’s life.
Libbie, aware of her mortality, but dedicated to the preservation of her husband’s good name, convinced Marguerite Merington, a very good friend, to compile correspondence between Libbie and Custer following her death in 1933. In her book The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and his wife Elisabeth, Merington would use no other sources than the ones provided to her by Libbie. Despite its obvious lack of objectivity, the book contained correspondence between Custer and Libbie which historians find invaluable. Merington’s biographical commentary is very forgiving and uncritical of Custer and she either completely ignored or was dismissive of all critical information and opinions.
In particular Whittaker’s and Libbie’s efforts would guarantee that Custer would remain in consciousness of the American public and had great influence in shaping the perception of him as a gallant hero of the West, a perception that still remains until this day. Her husband’s detractors in the military respected Libbie and they refrained from writing anything publicly that would cause her pain. Any serious reappraisal of Custer would not be attempted until after her death in 1933. The following year, novelist Frederic Van De Water’s biography, Glory-Hunter, arrived at the book stores and ignited decades of reexamination.
Revisionist
The second genre that appeared, Revisionist, came to represents the reappraisal of Custer that occurred after Libbie’s death. The authors of this genre tend to portray Custer as a self-absorbed glory-hunter, brutal and strict toward his subordinates, and filled with arrogance and hypocrisy. The main representative of this genre is Frederick F. Van de Water, but in addition the essay will touch upon the works of Earl A. Brininstool and Wallace Coburn.
As previously mentioned, Custer’s detractors, especially the ones who had served with him, held their tongues concerning him so long as Libbie lived. But the year after her death, Frederick F. Van de Water’s Glory-Hunter was released which portrayed Custer as an man consumed by ambition, haunted by his own demons, and then destroyed by his extreme arrogance. Paul Andrew Hutton, professor of history at University of New Mexico and the executive director of Western History Association, would even go so far to consider Glory-Hunter to be the most influential book ever written about Custer.
Van de Water, a reputable editor and freelance writer, had no intention of writing a biography when he first began researching Custer; instead he was gathering background materials for an upcoming novel on the Indian Wars. While writing the novel, Van de Water became so fascinated by Custer that he decided to write a biography in an earnest attempt of explaining Custer and his many contradictions.
In Glory-Hunter the author Van de Water provided the reader with the picture of a brutal and strict commander, dangerously insubordinate and distrusted by many of his peers and subordinates. Van de Water’s Custer had little military talent and, more often than not, owed his victories to luck, competent subordinates, and overwhelming odds in his favor. He identifies Custer’s ineptitude and arrogance combined with his pursuit for glory as the cause for Seventh Cavalry’s defeat at Little Bighorn.
After decades of a historiography severely restricted by Libbie, Glory-Hunter was a biography that took down Custer from his pedestal and showed him as a flawed human being. Other writers would follow his Van De Water’s footsteps and within a few years the interpretation of Custer would be the standard. Van De Water wrote his biography, not out of any desire to destroy Custer’s reputation, but to gain a better understanding of him and Van de Water was successful.
Other writers, contemporary to Van De Water, would also write about Custer and the Battle at Little Bighorn. Earl A. Brininstool, who had a career in journalism and wrote ten books devoted to the Indian wars, wrote Troopers with Custer: Historic Incidents of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, published in 1952, but essentially a rewrite of his book Trooper with Custer published in 1925. Brininstool provided a narrative of the battle at Little Bighorn by retelling stories collected from the troops who were with Custer during the battle. The first part of the book goes over the battle and its aftermath and then moves into eyewitness reports from well -known survivors from the campaign.
In his writing, Brininstool shows a clear biased treatment of both Reno and Benteen. Custer is described as, while undoubtedly courageous, arrogant and egoistic, personality traits that would hamper his entire career and resulted in his death at Little Bighorn.
Another historian to consider for the interested is Wallace Coburn, who in his article “The Battle of the Little Big Horn,” published in Montana: The Magazine of Western History, provided a narrative of Custer based directly and solely on recollections of storytelling by Major William A. Logan, a survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn, who then served under Gibbon as a 17-year old scout. Coburn used no other sources than the recollections of Major Logan. The reader is given a harsh judgment over Custer and Coburn blames the massacre on Custer’s disregard for human life.
In particular Van de Water’s work would change the view of Custer and usher in a more critical interpretation of his character and deeds. The revisionist genre was relatively soon replaced by the post-mythology genre but it had a tremendous impact on the popular view of Custer.
Post-Mythology
The third and most extensive genre, post-mythology, has dominated the historiographical description of Custer for the last 50 years. During this time period, Custer gained a more complex personality and a specialized interest of certain periods of his life started to emerge. The authors of this genre tend to give a more balanced view of Custer and would mainly described him as human with both good and flaws, In this genre the essay will look at the works of Jay Monaghan, Evan Connell, Jeffery Wert, and James Donavan. In addition, the essay will touch upon the work Dr. Charles K. Hofling, Gregory J. W. Urwin, Robert Utley, Lisa Adolf, and Louise Barnett.
One of the more influential narratives of this genre was the book The Life of General George Armstrong Custer, first published in 1959, by the writer Jay Monaghan. Monaghan follows Custer's life from the cradle to his death but dedicate about half the narrative to Custer’s civil war exploits. The book was unique at the time by its use of first-hand accounts from Native Americans who participated in the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Monaghan provides us with the portrait of a much capable Civil War commander who became a failure in peacetime. Monaghan’s Custer allowed himself to do things he condemned in others who routinely violated orders from superiors while severely punish subordinates for the same kind of offense. Custer would have deserting troopers shot but at the same time he would abandon his own command without orders. He was an egoist, kind and loving to his friends, who treated his subordinate officers and enlisted soldiers miserably. He would use his friends, and allow them to use him, to gain promotion and advantages in the Army. However, despite that many of the troopers came to idolize him.
Monaghan had objectivity rare in Custer historiography. Monaghan’s Custer represented, at the same time, everything that was good and everything that was bad about the military service. The Custer presented was a human being with both virtues and flaws, neither good nor evil but like most men a combination of both.
Dr. Charles K. Hofling, M.D., a renowned psychiatrist, wrote in 1971 an article called ”George Armstrong Custer: A Psycho Analytic Approach” in which he did a psycho analysis of Custer. The purpose was to investigate if a psychoanalytic analysis could give a better understanding of Custer’s personality and provide a more coherent view of the events at Little Bighorn. For his analysis, Hofling utilized only a small amount of sources which he felt provided a good view of Custer’s life from childhood to death. Despite shortcomings in sources his analysis of Custer comes across as fair and convincing.
Hofling’s diagnosis was that Custer’s glory hunting was a result of him being a phallic narcissist with an, emotionally and motivationally, immature personality and excessively dependent on his wife to the degree of needing mothering. Custer could best be described, according to Hofling, as “a child of four or five, riding past on his tricycle, calling out, ‘Look, Mommie! No hands!”
Not all post-mythology historians shied away from being openly pro-Custer in their writing. In Custer Victorious , published in 1983, Gregory J. W. Urwin, an associate professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas, provided an interesting picture of Custer and claimed that while Custer committed several tactical mistakes, those were not just his own, and that the mistakes was based on his prior experience and hence understandable
Urwin tried to clear Custer’s good name by implying that surviving officers, like Reno and Benteen, lied to protect themselves or their friends, by deleting incriminating details, fabricating others, and exaggerating unimportant events.
According to Urwin, the pattern to the common interpretation of Custer was formed from the very first with reports of the engagement, filled with white lies and discreet omissions for the good of the service, who blamed the outcome on Custer’s alleged rashness and reckless. Those character traits were to echo down the decades and become synonymous with failure and exposing Custer to countless critiques, attacks and outright ridicule.
Urwin opinioned that those misleading and treacherous sources would have a lasting and pervasive influence on the historiography of Custer and would, according to Urwin, ruin much of the good research work done by many Custer historians Urwin is especially dismissive of Van de Water’s book Glory-Hunter, which he describes as a piece of enduring fiction filled with inaccuracies, twisted facts, and innumerable rhetorical embellishments. In Urwin’s opinion Glory-Hunter has been accorded undeserved respect and influence and he finds it is disappointing that the book has helped shape the current view of Custer.
The author continues to lament that a vindictive administration made Custer look like a glory-hunting fool and that his ambitions compelled him to sacrifice a good part of his own family and the cream of the crop of his beloved regiment.
Evan Connell is a well known writer of novels and short-stories and has been nominated for several national book awards. Connell explores the personality of Custer in Son of the Morning Star, published in 1984, part a biography of Custer and part history of the Indian Wars. He did a scholarly job in comparing different, and usually conflicting, most minute details of the battle. Connell does not stop with giving a narrative over the battle but he also writes a narrative about American life in the late 1800s and provides motivation from both sides. His well researched book came to have a great impact on the public’s perception of Custer due the TV-miniseries based on this book.
Connell’s Custer was, as a West Point cadet, just as profane, libidinous and alcoholic as the rest of the cadets, perhaps even more so. As an officer he became a flamboyant figure, enigmatic, fearless in battle, and sentimental in purpose. Cornell take note about Custer’s unnatural energetic composition and that he seemed immune to fatigue. While Connell acknowledges that Custer violated law and regulations, by using the whip on both enlisted and civilians in an attempt to enforce his strict discipline; he makes sure that this practice was common place among other commanders too.
Cornell explains the strict discipline enforced on Seventh Cavalry with Custer’s conviction that he was leading his regiment of civilized human beings against bestial enemies. During his time at West Point, Custer wrote a sentimental lamentation about the native American and described them as a noble race. However, after years on the plains, he would write:
“We see him as he is, and, so far as all knowledge goes, as he ever has been, a savage in every sense of the word; not worse, perhaps than his white brother would be similarly born and bred, but one whose cruel and ferocious nature far exceeds that of any wild beast of the desert. That this is true no one who had been brought into intimate contact with the wild tribes will deny.”
Connell provided the reader with a dense and minute narrative of the battle and he missed very little in his effort to account for, apparently, every individual with as much as a minute connection to the battle. Connell provides the reader with a military biography and a Native American ethnography mixed with colorful anecdotes. The final paragraph repeats Kate Bighead's story, told in 1927, that two Southern Cheyenne women found Custer's body and punctured his eardrums with a sewing awl. This action was done to improve Custer's hearing since he had ignored the stern warnings of the Cheyenne leaders, Medicine Arrow and Little Robe, given seven years before.
Robert Utley is a former chief historian for National Park Services and the author of sixteen books on the history of the American West. In Custer: Cavalier in Buckskin, first published in 1988, Utley examines the man behind the myth and finds a man filled with contradictions that inspired either devotion or hatred and provided a detailed picture of Custer, the conflict between Native Indians, and increasing presence of white settlers on the plains.
Utley describes a man of a complex nature, enigmatic, and full of contradictions. Custer was blessed with incredible good luck from childhood, the so called ‘Custer’s Luck,’ which became his hallmark to the wonder of many friends and observers. Utley found that Custer ended up genuinely believing him to be fated to win any challenge regardless of the risk. According to Utley, Custer merited, in many ways, the public vision of him as premier Indian fighter of his time.
However, Utley acknowledges that finding the true person behind the myth has always been elusive, and uses the words:
“Custer tapped deep and revealing intellectual and emotional current. He was what they wanted him to be, and what they made him told more about the creators then the one they created. In turn, this towering Custer of folklore endowed the Custer of history with significance far beyond what he attained in his lifetime.”
In Custer and His Times, Book II, published 1984, Lisa Adolf contributed with a chapter named “Custer: All Things to All Men” in which she took a look into the deeper personality of Custer and rejected the common pictures of Custer which the author finds one-dimensional and lacking in dept. Adolf felt that Custer’s image was in a dire need of balance and, because his enemies had been the most vocal, that is was for us to balance out the view by turning to the people who hand knew him on an intimate level and studying their recollections with an opened mind.
The picture that emerges by the accounts is that as a cadet Custer was most popular, not only because he was not a threat to other cadets’ ambition, but his athletics, friendly nature, and fondness for practical jokes ensured his popularity. As an officer, Custer devoted his life to the profession of arms. He was a gallant soldier, handsome, generous, and a good friend. His so called ‘dash,’ his principal characteristic, was merely an instrument for success.
Adolf thought that better understanding, perhaps, could be reached in John Wright’s recollection of Custer:
“The country now demands that our Indian fighter shall be dashing fellows, who shall sweep over the plains with whirling squadrons and ride down the ruthless savage. Custer was only meeting the demand of the country when he met his fate. His fault was the fault of his time and people.”
Louise Barnett has written several books and has been a professor in American Studies at Rutgers University since 1976. In her book Touched by Fire: The Life, Death and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer, published 1996, Barnett writes about gender relations, Indian affairs, politics, economics, and the evolution of American society in addition to the battles and military campaigns. Particular attention is given to his marriage and the widowhood of Elizabeth Bacon Custer. Gregory J. W. Urwin found Barnett’s book appealing to “students of the Civil War era, the West, and American popular culture.”
Barnett notes that the Civil War provided Custer with the opportunity to become a brilliant combat commander. He would emerge, at the mere age of 24, from the war a national hero, admired by superiors, and idolized by his troops. Custer would never taste such a glory again and embittered by the struggle of leading soldiers on the frontier, he became increasingly erratic and self-centered. Custer would involve himself in controversy after controversy, but according to Barnett, some of the hero survived and he never deteriorated into the devil he is portrayed in today. In Barnett’s eyes, Custer is “neither great nor ordinary, a man who had a brief period of heroic grandeur in which his gifts conspired with the moment to produce dazzling success.”
Jeffry Wert is the author of four books and many articles and essays on Civil War topics and his book Custer: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer, published 1996, reexamines Custer’s life as a soldier and portrays him not just as the loser at Little Bighorn, but the victor of many cavalry engagements in the Civil War. Custer was renowned for his fearlessness in battle, always in front of his troops, leading the charge; his men were fiercely loyal to him. However, once assigned to the Indian wars, he was no longer in command of soldiers bound together by a cause they believed in and discipline became a problem. Wert reexamines events using recent archeological finds and the latest scholarship and gives an evenhanded account of Custer.
Jeffry Wert recognizes that Custer was eager for glory but that his ambition and desires did not govern his actions in combat during the Civil War. None of the engagements during that period indicated that he was a reckless commander or had no regard for human life. Custer was drawn to combat and relished in it, not for its terribleness but for its possibilities. To him, he was a knight trapped in a conflict of romance and on a personal quest within a national tragedy.
Things changed after the end of the war and the commencement of occupation duties in Texas. Discipline within his units was filled with strident resentment for the way they had been treated by the post-war administration. Shortness in supplies and illegal foraging caused Custer to instill stringent discipline through harsh punishments. The enlisted personnel never forgave him for his treatment of them and their later writing indicated a deep hatred toward him. He was blamed for incompetence or criminal negligence in not securing supplies and they found his enforcement of discipline to be inconsistent and tyrannical. One of his enlisted subordinates, Wert mentions, would later write that Custer:
“… was only twenty-five years of age, and had the usual egotism and self-importance of a young man. He was a regular army officer, and had bred in him the tyranny of the regular army. He did not distinguish between a regular soldier and a volunteer … He had no sympathy in common with the private soldiers, but regarded them simply as machines created for the special purpose of obeying his imperial will.”
Wert writes, that while Custer’s illegal punishments and unbending discipline caused ill will and resentment among many of his soldiers, he should be credited for preventing his soldiers from becoming marauders throughout Texas. Wert, careful enough, however, mentions that Custer’s methods cannot be justified regardless of motivation.
In reference to Little Bighorn, Wert dismisses the ones who claim to know the motivations and thoughts of Custer on that day. They have ascribed internal furies that blinded him, that he thirsted for glory, was seeking redemption, or even dreaming of a presidential nomination. Wert dismisses this on the basis that they are pure speculations based on little evidence and a presumed understanding of his character. Instead he offers Custer’s own assessment of himself and his aspirations:
“In years long number with the past, when I was merging upon manhood my every thought was ambitious – not to be wealthy, not to be learned, but to be great. I desired to link my name with acts and men, and in such manner as to be a mark of honor, not only to the present but to future generations.”
James Donavan is the author of two other books on Custer. In A Terrible Glory, published 2008, he provides a more sympathetic viewpoint of Custer, though not uncritical of the doomed cavalryman, showing his bravery and military triumphs alongside his famed overconfidence. Donovan relies almost exclusively on primary accounts to create his narrative, endeavoring to examine the evidence objectively before making a decision when there are instances of disagreements in eyewitness accounts.
Donovan thought that Custer lived a charmed life, thanks to “Custer’s luck” according to some but others attributed it to the true components of good fortune: preparation, analysis, confidence, and decisive action. He dismisses the accusation of Custer being reckless and acting without thought or deliberation and stated that Custer ad an uncanny ability to process the things he saw and heard and was able to make well considered decision in a very short amount of time.
Looking into Custer’s childhood, Donovan reach that he never lacked for confidence thanks to being loved, encouraged, and admired by his large family. Donovan considered that his strongest attribute was that he excelled in making friends and was seemed by many to be the role model of noble knighthood. Custer did not shy away from giving praise and concern for the soldiers under his command. His men responded to Custer in kind and stories of his gallantry became legendary.
Donovan acknowledges that Custer became moody while on the plains and that he started to impose strict discipline to the point that officers took notice of his tyrannical ways. Donovan dismisses any allegations of a conspiracy against Custer resulting in his court-martial. According to him, Custer’s guilt was well documented and that Libbie admitted to his guilt in a letter to a friend. At the court-martial the Court gave him any allowances to defend himself but he was found guilty of all charges. According to Donovan a major and constant irritant for Custer was his inability to be promoted but the competition for the colonel was fierce after the end of the Civil War. One of Custer’s flaws, according to Donovan, was his inability to anticipate or appreciate fully the reactions of others to his vocal opinion.
The post-mythology genre represents the portrayal of Custer that prevails today. It is provides a more balanced approach to Custer, not trying to portray him as a hero or a villain, but tries to give a fair assessment of his attributes and flaws.
Conclusion
Among the three genres of historical interpretation of Custer, the mythology lasted the longest and remained in large undisputed for more than 50 years. It would not see a true challenge until the death of Libbie, after which competing interpretations, such as the revisionist, became common place. While the historians of today largely have abandoned the mythology genre, its portrayal of Custer, has not completely gone away from the mind of the public. Libbie set out to immortalize her husband and she succeeded in doing so.
While the revisionist genre lingered in the shadows after the death of Custer it did not come into full bloom until after the death of his widow Libbie. Custer’s detractors no longer had to worry about hurting Libbie and ushered in an era of reevaluation. While the genre itself did not remain dominant for long it left a long-lasting impression on the historiography of Custer and can be credited with much of the current public opinions and views of Custer.
The post-mythology genre shortly overtook the revisionist genre and became the prevailing genre of historical interpretation. Post-mythology is more believable than the other two genres because of its more balanced view of Custer and a more scientific approach to research. The post-mythology genre would become the dominating one while the other two genres have mostly fallen out of fashion. However, it is a broad genre and could, in theory, be split into at least two subcategories. The genre is more methodologically sound as it has a more scientific approach, better research, and less hampered by emotional baggage.
The initial trend, in terms of historical research, was to use news articles, autobiographies, personal interviews, and personal letter correspondence. It would later evolve to include critical interviews from people who had disassociated themselves with Custer and from Indians who fought against him. The latest trends included archeological research at the battle sites and more scientific approach to eye witness testimonies, etc.
In the beginning the historical interpretation of Custer was heavily influenced by the personal and political considerations by Custer’s contemporaries. Much of what was written was colored and shaped by the author’s personal opinion of Custer and was, in general, not neutral in its portrayal of the man. In addition, Custer’s detractors tried to paint Custer in the worst possible way, either as method to clear their own names, to make themselves look better, or to protect the current administration. Defenders of Custer would, on the other hand, exaggerate his positive attributes and lessen his flaws in the pursuit of protecting his good name and reputation. Due to these considerations, Custer would, in death, become even more controversial than when he was alive.
There are numerous factors, both internal and external, that came to have a great impact on the historical interpretation of Custer. In the beginning the historical narratives was colored and shaped by their authors’ personal and preconceived perception of Custer. He was made into whatever the author wanted him to be. Political consideration also played in, Custer was a Democrat while the administration in Washington was Republican and blame for Little Bighorn had to be placed somewhere, preferably in the opposite camp. Once Custer’s contemporaries passed away a more balanced and a less emotional and political invested historical interpretation emerged.
Historiography
The historiography of Custer became of interest for historians during the latter half of the 20th century. Several respected historians, like Minnie Dubbs Millbrook, Dr. Shirley Leckie, Dr. Douglas Scott and Dr. Paul A. Hutton did research into the subject.
Minnie Dubbs Millbrook, a respectable historian and a recipient of numerous awards from American Association for State and Local History, wrote the article “A Monument to Custer.” Millbrook tells us about how the historiography of Custer has developed from the time of his death and how Libbie worked diligently at creating and preserving the myth of her husband.
Shirley Leckie is Professor Emeritus at the History Department at University of Central Florida and the author of many published works about the history of the plains. Her book Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth looks at Libbie’s undying devoting in commemorating her dead husband. Libbie played a critical role in creating and sustaining the myth about Custer and in this book Leckie reveals her character and motivation. The research done for this book is impressive and contains a large and diverse group of sources.
Douglas Scott is a widely known expert on military archeology and works at Midwest Archeological Center, National Park Center. P. Willey is professor at Chico State University’s anthropology department and Melissa Conner is an archeologist with the Midwest Archeological Center. In the book They Died with Custer they explain how the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument has adapted by the changes in cultural values and the view of General Custer and the conflict between American Indians and the U.S. Military.
Paul A. Hutton, professor of history at University of New Mexico, researched the different interpretations of George Custer’s persona in numerous movies. His article Correct in Every Detail: General Custer in Hollywood provides an insight into how Custer was portrayed by Hollywood and the insight into the impact those movies had on the general public.
Afterwords
No other American, with the exception of Lincoln, has had as many publications written about his life. This essay contains references to numerous of sources but many others has been left out. The essay could have included Dr. Lawrence Frost, the great-nephew of Custer, is considered one of the foremost authorities on Custer’s army career, produced a book solely about the court-martial of Custer. It could have also included Minnie Dubbs Millbrook, the respectable historian who wrote the article “The Boy General and How He grew” in which Millbrook tells us the story about the Second Wisconsin Regiment under the draconian rule of Custer at the end of the Civil War. Due to time restraint, these sources, and many others like them has been left out.
Few other Americans have reached the same kind of immortality as George Armstrong Custer and just as few have caused the same level of passion and controversy. To quote Evan Connell:
"Even now, after a hundred years, his name alone will start an argument. More significant men of his time can be discussed without passion because they are inextricably woven into a tapestry of the past, but this hotspur refuses to die. He stands forever on that dusty Montana slope."
Bibliography
Books
Adolf, Lisa. “Custer: All Things to All Men.” In Custer and His Times, Book II, edited by John M. Carroll and Jay Smith, 5-16. Fort Worth: Little Big Horn Associate, Inc, 1984.
Barnett, Louise. Touched by Fire: The Life, Death and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996.
Brininstool, E.A. Troopers with Custer: Historic Incidents of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 1952
Connell, Evan. Son of the Morning Star. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984.
Custer, Elizabeth. Boots and Saddles or Life in Dakota with General Custer. New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, 1885.
---. Following the Guidon. New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, 1890.
---. Tenting on the Plains or General Custer in Kansas and Texas. New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1893.
Dellenbaugh, Frederick. George Armstrong Custer. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917.
Donovan, James. A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn – The Last Great Battle of the American West. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008.
Frost, Lawrence. The Court-Martial of General George Armstrong Custer. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968.
Monaghan, Jay. Custer: The Life of General George Armstrong Custer. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1959.
Urwin, Gregory. Custer Victorious. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1983
Utley, Robert. Custer: Cavalier in Buckskin. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.
Van de Water, Frederick. Glory-Hunter, A Life of General Custer. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1930.
Wert, Jeffry. The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Whittaker, Frederick. A Complete Life of Gen. George A. Custer: Major General of the Volunteers, Brevet Major General, U.S. Army, and Lieutenant Colonel, Seventh U.S. Cavalry. New York: Sheldon & Company, 1876.
Periodicals
Coburn, Wallace. “The Battle of the Little Big Horn.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1956): 28-41.
Danker, Donald. “My Life on the Plains. “ Review of My Life on the Plains: Personal Experiences with Indians by
George Armstrong Custer. Arizona and the West, Summer, 2002.
Donald, David. “The Custer Story.” Review of The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and his wife Elisabeth by Marquerite Merington. The Journal of Southern History, November, 1950.
Hofling, Charles.”George Armstrong Custer: A Psycho Analytic Approach.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1971): 32-43.
Hutton, Paul. “Correct in Every Detail: General Custer in Hollywood.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 41, No. 1 (1991): 28-57
Leckie, Shirley. “Custer’s Luck Runs Out.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 43, No. 3 (1993): 30-41.
Leckie, Shirley and William Leckie. Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993
Millbrook, Minnie Dubbs. “A Monument to Custer.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 24, No. 2 (1974): 18-33.
---. “The Boy General and How He Grew: After Appomattox: Mutiny, Desertion, Court Martial, Death.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 23, No. 2 (1973): 34-43.
Saum, Lewis. “Private John F. Donohue's Reflections on the Little Bighorn.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 50, No. 4 (2000): 40-53.
Scott, Douglas, P. Willey, and Melissa Conner. They Died with Custer. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998
Utley, Robert. “Barnitz on Custer.” In Custer and His Times, Book II, edited by John M. Carroll and Jay Smith, 229-336. Fort Worth: Little Big Horn Associate, Inc, 1984.
Urwin, Gregory. “Touched by Fire. “ Review of Touched by Fire: The Life, Death and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong by Louise Barnett. The Journal of Southern History, February, 1998.
