Four Persistent Myths About George Armstrong Custer on the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn

The movies get it all wrong

George Armstrong Custer, 1865 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Just as we are preparing to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States on July 4th, Americans 150 years ago were preparing to celebrate the 100th anniversary of that auspicious date. However, the exuberance was tempered when news arrived just days before July 4, 1876, that George Armstrong Custer and 268 men of the 7th Cavalry had been wiped out by Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors at the Battle of the Little Big Horn on June 25th. It was the worst defeat suffered by the U.S. Army during the Plains Indian Wars, and it shocked a nation still recovering from the devastation of the Civil War just over a decade before.

Even people with little to no interest in history are aware of the most famous battle of the Indian Wars, and in the 150 years since the storied battle took place its history has been revised multiple times, usually for either jingoistic effect or, on the opposite extreme, out of political correctness. The same is true of the man who led US Cavalry forces in that disastrous encounter, George Armstrong Custer.

During my own lifetime I have seen Custer go from being portrayed as a hero to a villain to simply incompetent. As is almost always the case, the real history is far too complex for simplistic answers. Let me say at the outset that this article does not cover the broader history of the Indian Wars or the treatment of Native Americans throughout our nation’s history. Suffice it to say that that chapter is, along with the institution of slavery, our saddest and most regrettable, and one that we are still coming to terms with today. This article deals specifically with George Custer and his final battle near the Little Big Horn River.

It’s no surprise that myths grew up around the battle, and the man himself, almost immediately. This would have happened at any time, but as I said earlier, it was amplified by the fact that when Custer and 268 of his officers, men, and scouts died on June 25, 1876, the nation was already well into the celebration of the centennial of the Declaration of Independence. It was a time of Manifest Destiny, a moving forward from the horrors of the Civil War, and the elevation of Custer to mythic hero status was a foregone conclusion, not least of which because it rallied the nation against the Native Americans, which is what those in power wanted in the first place.

That long introduction out of the way, let’s look at some persistent myths about George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

1. He had long hair when he died. This first myth about Custer is an innocuous one, but it needs correcting all the same: he did not have long hair at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. In nearly every Hollywood film or painting of him made since his death, Custer has long flowing hair at the time of the battle. This was certainly the case throughout the Civil War, as photographs taken at the time clearly show. But at the time of his final campaign Custer had cut his hair short; a photograph from 1876 taken just months before the battle shows his hair cut extremely short. The long hair looks cool in the movies, but it is actually a historical revision.

Photograph of George Armstrong Custer by William Howell, 1876 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

2. Custer held the rank of General at the time of the battle. Though many accounts even from reputable historians and websites refer to Custer as “General,” at the time of his final battle his actual rank was Lieutenant Colonel. Many who get this right, however, then go on to get the reason wrong. Custer was a West Point graduate, and at the outbreak of the Civil War was a 2nd Lieutenant in the US 2nd Cavalry. He steadily rose in rank during the war, with most of these ranks being brevet promotions; this means they were promotions to a higher rank without an increase in pay or privileges, and they typically occurred after a particularly gallant and successful action in battle. They were not intended to be permanent promotions.

Custer was made Brevet Major General of US Volunteers in October 1864 during the Battle of Winchester and Fisher’s Hill, Virginia. When the war ended, Custer was mustered out of the volunteer force and named a Lieutenant Colonel of the 7th Cavalry in July 1866, the same rank he held when he died. It has been claimed that Custer was demoted from General to Lieutenant Colonel following his nearly yearlong suspension for going AWOL to see his wife, but this is not true. He held the same rank before the suspension as after.

3. Custer disobeyed orders when he attacked the Sioux at the Little Bighorn. One of the most common accusations leveled against Custer is that he disobeyed a direct order by launching his attack; this is a myth that has taken hold as the view of Custer as a hero transformed into one of an incompetent leader, and it is simply not factual. The orders he received from Brigadier General Alfred Terry stated the following:

“It is impossible to give you any definite instructions in regard to this movement…and the Department Commander places too much confidence in your zeal, energy, and ability to wish to impose upon you precise orders which might hamper your action when nearly in contact with the enemy.”

Terry then gave Custer suggestions that he should attempt to carry out but added: “unless you shall see sufficient reason for departing from them.” It has also been reported that before Custer and the 7th Cavalry left for the campaign that Terry told him: “use your own judgment and do what you think best if you strike the trail.” Custer did not disobey orders, because his orders specifically gave him the latitude to attack if he saw fit. Unfortunately for him and his men, he did.

4. Custer was ultimately an incompetent military leader. A completely revisionist and unfair view of Custer’s abilities as a military commander has grown up over the years; in spite of the outcome at Little Bighorn, nothing could be further from the truth. Given the intelligence he had from his scouts, his previous encounters with Native American tribes, and standard military tactics at the time, dividing his forces at Little Bighorn was not an incompetent move. He believed the Sioux and Cheyenne force to be much smaller than it actually was, and thus the standard practice of using part of his force to hold the enemy from the front while another group attacked the flank seemed the normal, correct maneuver. Clearly it was not, but Custer had no way to know this.

Furthermore, to question Custer’s ability as a cavalry officer is historical revisionism of the worst kind. While everyone knows about Little Bighorn, few know that Custer was one of the greatest officers of the Civil War; it’s no stretch to say if there was ever a Mount Rushmore of the four greatest Union commanders it would contain Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, Philip Sheridan, and George Custer. He was pivotal in neutralizing Jeb Stuart’s Confederate cavalry at Gettysburg, as well as leading units in the Peninsula Campaign, the Battle of Antietam, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Battle of the Wilderness, and the Siege of Petersburg. There was virtually no battle in the eastern theater of the war that Custer was not part of.

If you need further evidence, consider this. General Sheridan purchased the table on which General Grant drafted the terms of Robert E. Lee’s surrender and gave it to Custer’s wife Libby with the following note:

“My Dear Madam, I respectfully present to you the small writing table on which the conditions for the surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia were written by Lt. Gen. Grant — and permit me to say, Madam, that there is scarcely an individual in our service who has contributed more to bring about this desirable result than your very gallant husband.”

When his entire career is taken into account, there is no question that George Armstrong Custer was indeed a great leader and should be remembered as such, despite his flaws. Great military leaders take great risks; sometimes those risks bring great glory and success while other times they bring disaster. The fact that Custer made mistakes — his final one sadly being fatal to him and his men — should not detract from his lifetime of service to our nation.