George Armstrong Custer

Biography

George Armstrong Custer graduated last in his West Point class of 1861 — a fact that did nothing to temper his enormous self-regard. He won fame as the 'Boy General' during the Civil War through reckless courage and self-promotion, and translated that celebrity into his post-war career on the Plains, where the rules of conventional warfare gave way to something uglier. His winter dawn attacks on sleeping villages — first at Washita in 1868, where he killed Chief Black Kettle and captured women and children — established his approach: maximum destruction with minimal restraint. Custer was a complex and troubling figure. He was genuinely brave, a skilled self-promoter who understood the value of press coverage, and a man whose ego consistently outpaced his judgment. He was court-martialed in 1867 for abandoning his command and leaving the field without authorization. His decision to attack the Little Bighorn village on June 25, 1876 — without waiting for Terry and Gibbon's columns, without adequate reconnaissance, with a divided command — was characteristic. He divided his regiment into three columns and led five companies directly into one of the largest gatherings of warriors in Plains history. He and all 210 men with him were killed in under an hour. His death made him a martyr in the American press; his actual record was considerably more complicated.

Key Battles