George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839 -- June 25, 1876) was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. Raised in Michigan and Ohio, Custer was admitted to West Point in 1858, where he graduated last in his class. However, with the outbreak of the Civil War, all potential officers were needed, and Custer was called to serve with the Union Army. Custer developed a strong reputation during the Civil War. He fought in the first major engagement, the First Battle of Bull Run. His association with several important officers helped his career, as did his success as a highly effective cavalry commander. Custer was eventually promoted to the temporary rank (brevet) of major general and promoted major general of Volunteers. (At war's end, he reverted to his permanent rank of captain.) At the conclusion of the Appomattox Campaign, in which he and his troops played a decisive role, Custer was on hand at General Robert E. Lee's surrender. After the Civil War, Custer was dispatched to the west to fight in the Indian Wars. His disastrous final battle overshadowed his prior achievements. Custer and all the men with him were killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, fighting against a coalition of Native American tribes in a battle that has come to be popularly known in American history as "Custer's Last Stand." After his death, Custer achieved the lasting fame that he had sought on the battlefield. The public saw him as a tragic military hero and exemplary gentleman who sacrificed his life for his country. Custer's wife, Elizabeth, who had accompanied him in many of his frontier expeditions, did much to advance this view with the publication of several books about her late husband: Boots and Saddles, Life with General Custer in Dakota (1885), Tenting on the Plains (1887), and Following the Guidon (1891). Lt. Col. Custer wrote about the Indian wars in My Life on the Plains (1874). The deaths of Custer and his troops became the best-known episode in the history of western Indian wars, due in part to a painting commissioned by the brewery Anheuser-Busch as part of an advertising campaign. The enterprising company ordered reprints of a dramatic work that depicted "Custer's Last Stand" and had them framed and hung in many United States saloons. This created lasting impressions of the battle and the brewery's products in the minds of many bar patrons. [58] Custer has been called a "media personality",[59][60] and he did value good public relations in addition to leveraging the print media of his era effectively. He frequently invited correspondents to accompany his campaigns (one, Associated Press reporter Mark Kellogg, died at the Little Bighorn), and their favorable reporting contributed to his high reputation, which lasted well into the 20th century. He paid attention to his image; after being promoted to brigadier general in the Civil War, Custer sported a uniform that included shiny cavalry boots, tight olive-colored corduroy trousers, a wide-brimmed slouch hat, tight hussar jacket of black velveteen with silver piping on the sleeves, a sailor shirt with silver stars on his collar, and a red cravat. He wore his hair in long ringlets liberally sprinkled with cinnamon-scented hair oil. Later, in his campaigns against the Indians, Custer wore a buckskins outfit, along with his familiar red tie.[61] The assessment of Custer's actions during the Indian Wars has undergone substantial reconsideration in modern times. Documenting the arc of popular perception in his 1984 biography Son of the Morning Star, author Evan Connell notes the reverential tone of Custer's first biographer Frederick Whittaker (whose book was rushed out the year of Custer's death.)[62] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote an adoring (and often erroneous) poem.[63] President Theodore Roosevelt's lavish praise pleased Custer's widow.[64] Connell concludes: "These days it is stylish to denigrate the general, whose stock sells for nothing. Nineteenth-century Americans thought differently. At that time he was a cavalier without fear and beyond reproach." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custer

• published: 07 May 2014
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