>> washington right. custer,ard george 80 miles september of here. you can go visit here. sheridan, all, have ohio roots. one way or another. raised here.r as a friend mississippi said, of bloody bastards from your state. i guess it depends on what side you're on. bookuestion i get about my is why is that the title? makes your book the real custer. easy way to answer that question is to say, that's what the publisher wanted. rather more like a question. who was the real custer. know about this guy? so pervasiven is when he talk about george custer. whole man.he that's not the case. he had a whole life and a whole character and he was a whole person. really the book is about trying to get to the root of that question. who was this man? if we can strip away all of the things that have been written since then. the history everything else. just really talk about the man himself. it's supposedwhat out. he's more famous today. mentioned today in books than he was at the height fame. he's more mentioned today in books than he ever was ever in history. look and the statistics. up. keeps going custer is immensely famous. part of what we'll talk about is famous for. here he is being portrayed by reagan in the historically challenged film fe trail." where george custer does a bunch stuff that he never, ever did. but it's a movie. thisbrown is featured in movie. we're talking about the great collection here of john brown material. here's earl flynn as custer. they died with their boots on. most noted in terms of 20th century, this was the of custer that people most associated with him. earl flynn captured the seriousness and the boyishness custer the prankster about.e'll talk when someone up to that level it's pretty easy to transfer them into being the super villain. after the 1960's and the 1970's thing tookort of culture, rather than heroic custerred then we had big man.er from little we had richard mulligan playing of psycho.nd self-important ran dop guy who decisions all the time. the realer became custard to many people. he was a blow hard. had no military ability what so ever. indian hater. that.ings like that became dominant image of years. in last 30 now we have representation like night at the museum. stiller.uster and ben in which he lements which i'll be famous for my biggest failure. custard the goat. year. in thinks third described him as an indifferent poor student, reckless cadet, always in trouble. and likedying pranks by everyone. west point.ter at he said his career at west point was an example to be carefully avoided. future cadets. was goat of his class. he was the last in his class. title of my other book out there. what does that mean? dummy?at mean he was a he couldn't hack it? no. peoplere two types of who come in at the bottom of the class at west point. the people who they get to west point. it's really hard. struggle. they do what they can. they study all the time. other type, the guy who gets to says, i cannd handle this. i know i can graduate from this place. i don't care about grades. i don't care about class rank. studying, i will have a good time to the extent that i minute, i'llast through.squeak that was cadet custer. in cadets like that. george picket, speaking of blowing it.s for going to bennyme haven's tavern nearby. off post highly elicit activity. nightin the middle of the to enjoy some flips and have other escapades. try to get together visiting -- at the time west point was a tourist destination. had hotels on the post. naturally cadets were investigating who might be in.ked custer was definitely amongst that group. playing pranks and doing other getting in trouble. did.is what custer he had a talent for getting out of trouble. george custer, whatever reason, or lucky, he would get out of trouble he got into. he institutiononed the or its purpose. when they caught him, fine, you caught me. will take my punishment. to break the rules you have take your punishment. he began racking up lot of delinquencies. his first page was his lengthy andrd of delinquencies merits that he earned. he said, they weren't extraordinary in what they were number.their was able to walk that fine just enough having fun and get in enough trouble, still graduate. the thing >> the goat. a different type of officer. class.bottom of the insight into him had is bravery. up and taket walk it. that's the kind of guy he was. theould have done better at academy if he followed the rules. he want a dummy. wouldn't have been custer civil war came. was really that made custer custer. it was a terrible thing for west point. brothers, cadets had to split between the northerners southerners. custer had a lot of friends on the southern side who have to be the class.in he had to go fight them. they still remain friends. was the way it was. but the war became the perfect to display his talents. point to them west battlefield faster than any graduate in the military academy in history. within four days, he was delayed. class went on. he was busy being court-martialed. in the summer of 1861 hot.things were getting within four days he went from west point to new york to washington. into northern virginia and got there in time as he said run with the rest from bull run then back to arlington all days.ce of four he realized quick what he would be an aid to to commanders. he realized in doing n he'll have freedom of action. with hisan just being unit all the time, he would be like the eyes and ears-his commander. he would be at headquarters when things are going to happen. can volunteer to get involved in them. in some cases he would go out justet involved in stuff because he knew that he could no one would object. the problem with that though was, if he attach yourself to high ranking general, you better hope the guy is successful. likely toines you're go with him. that's what happened. george mcclellan wasn't wanted. the way lincoln he lost his command and then his influence which wasn't so good for him. but belong the way he had been lot of interesting adventures. aid to became the here.l pleasanton shown which is very lucky for him. time.n't know it at the pleasanton seen him around the of battle doing brave the battle.ing into pleasanton had this idea that he to reorganize the union calvary corps. have the authority to do it. luckily for custer, lee invades pennsylvania. gettysberg campaign is happening. lee invade general hooker sort on the outs with lincoln. he's fired. pleasanton is friends with meade. with isy meade meets pleasanton. hey what do we need to do to lee.general pleasanton said i've been think being that. we need to reorganize the calvary corps. i want to elevate bunch of young generals so we can build this thing and go after stewart and cite these guys. he raised three guys to general 20's.re in their .here was custer custer was th the youngest of te at 23. that's how he got to be the boy general. circumstances happened. they wanted these guys to be brigades ascalvary an offensive arm to go after the stewarts calvary and fight on one. pleasanton they needed people to charge in the battle. those were his guys. he's the youngest general officer in history of the u.s. that time. ed.was later supersede years old when he has a colonel, when he led the assault in january of 1865 where he was shot to pieces bed, to honorth general.as promoted to got better.d he to majored him up general. addition to having -- it wasn't just lucky. earned it. luck was circumstances that led to it. variousd it through the charges that he led and battles he fought. frequently joining battles. it.ent out and did now he had a whole brigade to fight with. is onays later, there he day three of gettysberg. you're familiar with the story of battle of gettysberg. was on the right flank. greg was not his commander, copatrick was doing stuff. greg needed people over here. was custer. he said okay, we're going this way because something bad will and i need guys. custer said okay no problem. greg's instincts were right, because here comes the calvary swooping around trying to get around the support of flank in picket's charge. that's where custer really fame with hisal charges at gettys gettysberg. with the idea he would stop, slow down and confuse what the confederates were doing. as a turned out t worked. stopped stewart's advance. said the action report, he the union side left the field. they left the field because they beat you. he reported it wasn't he was one who left the field. after that, the boy general with locks, he was famous. but also another important thing he convinced the men that he was leading in the michigan wondering where this 23-year-old kid was general. through that battle, he them, he has a right to be in command. look at him go. knows how to fight. ofwhat if he's wearing kind eccentric uniform with gold lace tie and blue collar. it doesn't matter. of gold lace he likeit is he can fight that. that really cemented custer. he started making friends with hurt.ers which doesn't "new york times" was following him around. why? because he knew they were going good story. you will spend your time following somebody around, guy that will fight and give you a good story. it's not famous for nothing. not like he had the around andollow him didn't give them a story. he did. that's why they loved him. plus other commanders wouldn't to reporters. sherman had one court-martialed the guy.e didn't like custer maintained a good relationship. he had a bad relationship with his cocommander. went wrong,omething kilpatrick was blamed. something went right, custer got credit. that began to wear on kilpatrick. he didn't like that very much. to sidelineried custer and something called the raid, he sent custer on a suicide mission behind confederate line. if custer cameng back. the main force of the raid which turned intoved in, a tragedy. -- kilpatrick didn't get killed. big fiasco. this raid on richmond that ruined kilpatrick's career in east. custer captured prisoners. take any casualties. saved the day. theot to meet with president. he was meeting with members of congress. him.s beautiful for kilpatrick blew it. time, we havee another reorganization where the west.s in from he brings sheridan along. unfortunatend casualty of this raid which he opposed, is sent west. sheridan comes in. sheridan is going to be head of calgary. custer and sheridan really hit well. sheridan'secame right hand man. lincoln grant, grant had sheridan and sheridan had custer. they were fighting the kind of wanted. lincoln get itive, offensive done thing. this was good for custer. in in the sense it gave him the opportunity to fight in many battles, which is what he wanted that.and excel at it's not that he won every time. sometimes he got pretty tough scrapes. in the book, i found every of custerould find being reported killed. look at little bighorn and the first report of his death, no one believed it. were so many reports of him being dead. custer, his wife who was in washington at the time, window, boys below her --ra, extrackers custer killed.ster he becomes the instrument of war new style of aggressive that's really going to destroy the confederacy. here's a statue of him in monroe. he's trying to figure out what to do about all this. of custer andch his men scouring the shanandoah valley. summer of 1864 when grant the way to deal with the confederacy was to destroy their bread basket. they burned all the farms they lower part ofthe the valley. custer was one of the guys who that. he was elevated to a division commander. made a after he was major general. he went from significant ,ictories during that period cedar creek was well known. another one i like to point out is tom's brook. here's a sketch from that battle. races.own as wood stock he faced off with one of his classmates. he was a confederate man. they fought each other war.ghout the in this particular battle, there sides were lined up, confederates were in this really strong position behind a creek hill kind of dug in and ready to receive the union attack. custer was lined up on the other side having to go down over this broken terrain. there, it's pretty. it's pretty imposing terrain. down over this creek and up and them. before they mounted the attack, in front of the rosser up ond see the hill. here we are. we're going to attack you. of old. knights here we are. we're going to do it. ross is up there. saying, you see that guy down there, we're going to give him a wopping. he was energized by this. of custeris is part being a show off. he's being a showboat. that's one way to look at it. other way is, meanwhile, custer thisent three regiments on maneuver using terrain to sneak around the flank. was making sure that all eyes were on him while this unit, the strike force going around and getting ready to hit the flank. when he made his charge across this really bad ground, and the ready to hittting him, they got hit in the flank, they broke and ran. that is what really happened. it was not custer showing off, this was just part of the genius he had. when to hit the enemy, when did -- it look like they were breaking, when did it look like they were too strong? he was just good at it. the more battles he fought, the better he got. you say he is famous for nothing, no, he is famous because he got it done. he was a natural born warrior and he just knew how to do it. so after this, and when you look at the april of 1865, when the confederate line around richmond and petersburg was broken, custer played a big role in that at the battle of five forks. then you have this pursuit for a week to appomattox, where lee's army was trying to swing south and link up with johnston's army , which was being driven by sherman up through the carolinas. the union forces were trying to keep lee from doing this. you it was custer who was -- and it was custer who was leading all this. he was way out in front trying to block the different sessions, -- positions, block the roads, block the bridges, block the railroads. just magnificently fighting for days on end with men with little rest, taking whole regiments prisoner at a time. when he subverted a confederate regiment, he would take their banner and whoever captured it, he would put it behind him in this personal bodyguard he had. custer would be riding along followed by 20 guys with confederate banners, showing these are the people we have defeated. i mean, it is almost medieval when you think about it. just demoralizing as heck to the confederates to see this. and then finally, finally it was custer's guys who blocked lee at appomattox, backed him into appomattox courthouse and forced the surrender of lee's army. and here is custer accepting the flag of truce that suspended the fighting so that lee and grant could meet and negotiate the terms of surrender. so typical custer, where is he as history is being made, this great historic meeting, one of the greatest meetings in american history, these two west pointers from north and south are coming to end this national cataclysm? custer, who brought it about, where is he? he is off joking around with some confederate west pointer buddy of his he had not seen in atong time, rather than be this historic meeting, he is off screwing around. that is george custer. that is the kind of guy he was. by the way, with respect to the surrender flag, he had it sent to libby and she was disappointed that it was just a dishtowel. she thought about it, armies do not really carry around these beautiful surrender flags. it is probably a bad idea to carry those around in any case. so there he is. this is april of 1865, this photo. he is a major general. he is 25. he has spent his entire career, he went directly from west point to the war and then he spent four years fighting the greatest war of the 19th century with the biggest armies ever in the history of mankind, not just fighting in but playing a significant role in critical battles that shaped the history of that war. and so here he is. now what? where do you go after that? where do you go in your career, what you do after that? he is only 25 when this photo is taken. so what you do? well, he had options. he could have gone into politics. one of his regimental commanders became the governor of michigan, for example. custer could have been governor of michigan, easy. it was there for the taking. he could've been in congress, he could have been a senator. he could've written his own ticket in politics. he could have looked at a diplomatic post -- he was thinking oh, maybe i could be an ambassador. some people were doing that. there was an idea he would go to mexico and fight with the mexican rebels, who were fighting against a puppet government that had been set up by the french down there. in fact, he was going to go -- the secretary of state got in the way and said it might be a diplomatic incident. but he was raring to go for that. so maybe he could have gone into business, although he did not have a head for that. who knows? he could have. he could have done many things , but instead he stays in. he stays in the army. this is when things start to go wrong. the first thing is, he goes down to louisiana and texas because, guess what, the war is still on? the war is still going on. there was still some resistance for a while, then there was an expectation there would be more resistance and through an abundance of caution the government was keeping regiments in uniform. volunteer regiments from states of people who thought the war was over who wanted to go home. so there was a lot of desertion. in order to deter this, custer had some guys whipped. well, this wasn't so good, because there are things you can do during the war -- they were hanging people. you know the expression branded a deserter? well, take it literally. back in the day, that is what they did. they would brand you. there were punishments. but you can't really do this in peacetime. even though technically the war was still going on, in fact, most people thought it was over. so this got him some very bad press. he went from the golden haired hero to the hero of the lash. particularly in iowa, the regiment where some guys were whipped, the legislature passed a condemnation of custer. it just didn't look good. so that was bad. the postwar drawdown affected him because once the war was over we didn't need a whole bunch of generals. so he reverted to his regular army rank of captain. well captain is fine, but he just did all of this great, heroic stuff. can't he get something better? ok, they bumped him up to lieutenant colonel and made him deputy commander of a new regiment, the seventh calvary. custer did not think that was so great. he helped win the war. ,verybody told him -- sheridan grant, all of these guys told him you helped us win the war. no. you're going to be a regimental deputy commander. ok, he will take it, but he was not happy. so in order to try to improve his station, he got linked in with supporting president johnson. of course, he succeeded lincoln. he also got involved in politics, trying to promote the idea of this new centrist coalition. no one knew what was going to happen after the war politically. everyone knew what was going on before the war. you had the northern democrats, southern democrats, republicans, and some assorted others. but the republican party had been an abolitionist party. slavery had gone. the southern democrats had been for slavery. well, it's gone. so how is it going to sort out? and one theory was oh, it will be like these northern democrats and ex-rebels and disaffected people from the republican party will get together and form a centrist thing and that will be the new dominant force. so custer got involved in that kind of politics. well, bad move. what really happened is the republicans took over. even without abolitionism as an issue, it did not matter. they had a new issue. they had won the war. that is a much stronger issue. and all of the relationships that were made during the war became political relationships after the war. to the great benefit of ohio, i might add. because if you look at all the ohio presidents that followed the civil war, all veterans, mostly they fought in the same unit. custer -- big miscalculation on custer's part. the thing is, ever since he had been on mcclellan's staff, he had ducked the idea that his reputation of being a mcclellan man, who of course was anti-lincoln and a democrat. with republicans in charge he had to put distance between those ideas, which were true, by the way. he was a mcclellan man, he loved mcclellan, and he was a democrat all his life. so the drawdown, the stuff in texas and louisiana, bad politics, it was not good for custer. then he had another problem. frontier duty. he was not a frontier warrior. he had never been out there. he did not know anything about that. he was a conventional warrior in the classical sense, he fought in the civil war. force-on-force battle. he faced the same problems we faced in vietnam, afghanistan, and iraq. what do you do about counterinsurgency? because essentially, that is the kind of warfare we fought against the indians. it wasn't like fighting the confederacy. the confederacy would stand up and fight you. the indians would run away and then ambush you later when you are all strung out. they had their own way of fighting. it was totally different. but it was well adapted to their environment. custer had a taste of this chasing mosby in northern virginia during the war. mosby's raters? it did not work then, either. he did not him and it did not work out well. general john gibbons said glory on the plains meant being shot by an indian from behind a rock and having your name spelled wrong in the newspapers. [laughter] james: it is a different kind of war. just not what custer was used to. and the thing about that is he fought fewer battles in his next 10 years than he did in the last year of the civil war. and they were mostly small battles. when you look at the scale of combat of custer on the planes, -- plains, totally different. and little bighorn was the big one. even little bighorn, if you look at the number of casualties, a couple hundred, compare that to antietam. nothing. it was a very small engagement by civil war standards. but that is what custer was used to at the time. all of this added up to -- here he is on the plains talking to pawnee killer, an indian chief who was causing him difficulties during an 1867 campaign. and here he is later, wondering about life. he was court-martialed at the end of that campaign. some people say he was a scapegoat because general hancock, who had run the campaign, had done a bad job and they needed somebody to blame it on and they blamed it on custer, and on the other hand, custer did abandon some of his guys in the field and he had some deserters shot and did some other things that got him court-martialed. so you be the judge, you can read the records. it is in the book, too. custer thought he was framed and he was being scapegoated. sheridan agreed with them but it did not matter, he was still court-martialed and suspended for a year. so, you know, just two years after the civil war when he was a great hero, now he is suspended from duty and has to take one year off. a bad time for custer. he didn't let it show, he spent time hunting, fishing, that kind of thing. but it wasn't good. then he was resurrected. because the problem with the indian wars was you cannot find the enemy. it is the same problem today. when you can find the guerrillas, the taliban or the islamic state, whoever it happens to be, if you can find them, you know what to do. the problem is finding them. someone came up with the idea, later credited to sheridan, what the about winter operations? get them in the winter when they can't move around a lot. well, isn't that going to be harder for the army to do? yes, but it is going to be more hard for the indians to move. so they mounted winter operations, and they need someone who is going to test this concept, so who are you going to call? they go get custer. they cut a month off his sentence and bring him back. that is where we get this, the washita, alsoof known as the washita massacre, depending on what side you want to take on that debate. custer led this operation against black kettle, a cheyenne chief who previously figured in something called the sand creek massacre, where his people were attacked. i feel sorry for black kettle, he keeps getting into these things, not after this, because he got killed. but this brought custer back because from the army's point of view and from much of the public point of view, this particular attack validated the concept of winter operations and showed that the indians could be defeated. to the critics of it, it was an attack on a peaceful village of people who are minding their own business and then the cavalry came in and slaughtered everybody. you know, the actual number of people killed is disputed, the number of women and children killed is disputed, there are a lot of disputes about this. but the important thing to note -- the two important things -- number one, there is an argument about it, number two, it is what brought custer back. in the eyes of his superiors, he did a great job. after this, he reinvents himself as a frontiersman. here's a picture taken in the studio in kansas city. he becomes a great buffalo hunter. here is an illustration of his first buffalo hunt, where he managed to kill his own horse. [laughter] james: i have heard people say he did not know what he was doing -- like george custer is not a good horseman? are you kidding me? he was a brilliant horseman. he made a mistake. there is his horse, laying there, which was also libby's favorite mount, captured from custis lee. the only reason we know about it is because custer wrote about it. he came out alone on the plains trying to gun down this buffalo with a pistol, which was probably a mistake, but he wrote about it. he was this arrogant guy -- well, he admitted this mistake, that is a pretty good mistake to admit. if you're an arrogant guy, to hold yourself up to that kind of mockery, i think that is characteristic of custer that he would admit his foibles. he was kind of ingenuous that way. he could laugh at himself, which is not something you usually hear about him. but i think it is true. he had -- i lost my picture -- there we go. his wife libby by his side throughout this, his childhood crush. he says, anyway. she didn't notice him when they were younger, she says. he noticed her and then won her hand over the objections of her father, who finally relented when he became a general because a general is good enough for my daughter. a good way to look at it. outwardly, an amazing romance. they were together whenever possible. there are terrific stories regarding their marriage and their romance. my favorite one is that when the confederacy collapsed and left richmond, she was on a congressional tour that went down there very soon after. she got into richmond before he did. he was coming back from appomattox and met her there, she was staying in jefferson davis' bedroom and that was where they were reunited. so -- wow. can you imagine that life? and in their 20's? come on, it is really something. tremendous circumstances that they lived in. there is a story about custer being a ladies man. that is not libby, by the way, that he is kissing. i love the expression of the matron behind them, who is shocked. this was at a reception he and president grant and sherman were at, where the ladies just started kissing the generals. kind of a comical circumstance, but it did make the papers. there is this idea that custer was having various relations and allegedly somewhere, someone says there is a list -- i have never seen this. supposedly in the secret papers of libby that no one has ever seen there is a list of all the women george custer was seeing on the side. well, produce this list. everyone wants to see it. i do not know what was going on, but i do know this. a lot of what we know about custer and other women comes from letters that george wrote to libby. he would talk about -- there is one when he is in new york on a business trip and he says there is this 19-year-old blonde that keeps walking by the hotel. she is trying to catch my attention, so i went out and talked to her for a while. gentlemen, why would you write this to your wife? seriously. this is going to help promote good feelings at home? i don't think so. for this indian princess they maidend at washita, the with the dancing eyes who was supposedly very beautiful. again, how do we know this? he wrote to libby all about her. oh, she is beautiful, she laughs at all my jokes. libby got out to where he was quickly. yes, she packed up and got to him. why would he do this? maybe he was a ladies man or maybe he was just communicating to libby that he was a popular guy and maybe she should pay more attention to him. i don't know. so who can say? another dig at custer, probably the one you hear the most these days, is that he was a genocidal indian hater. he would kill indians at the drop of a hat. that was just his thing in life. and this is not true. it's not true. it is a much more nuanced picture. he was a man of his times, no doubt. but he said there was nothing better -- he wrote about the indians. he lived near them. the ones who lived near the forts and he dealt with them. he said there was nothing better than living side-by-side with them in peace. you could be amongst them, witness their culture, see their customs, all of their traits. he thought it was fascinating. he observed them objectively. he wrote positive things, he wrote negative things. he wrote about the reservation system and how he thought it was killing their spirit. he said the spirit of the indian is to be free and when they go on the reservation, they lose their culture, they start drinking. and by the way, george did not drink. he gave up drink, he did not smoke, either. and it just ruined them. he was a severe critic of this. he thought the indians were much better when they were living their own lives in their own culture. andy saw this. there were indian scouts who -- and he saw this. there were indian scouts who loved him, one said he had the heart of an indian. he wrote if he were one of them, a member of a tribe, he would not be someone on a reservation. he would be one of the dissenters riding free across the plains, the crazy horses and the sitting bulls. those were the people he admired, because they were hanging on to what made them what they were. so that does not sound like he was just this indian killer to me. it sounds like he really tried to reach an understanding of who those people were and he found things in them to admire. and i think the things he most admired about them were the things he saw in himself that he liked. that is my take on custer and the indians. and you say oh yeah, but he fought them and he killed them. why did he do that? he was a soldier and the hostile bands were enemies. and he went after the enemy, that is what he did. he burned indian villages, yes, sometimes. do you know what else he burned? the shenandoah valley. if you want to do a body count, add up the number of probable indian deaths he was responsible for, directly or indirectly, against the number of confederates. he killed a lot more confederates than he ever did indians. to me it is a superficial argument, saying he fought them. yeah, because that was his job. what is he supposed to do? general sherman tells them to do something, what is he going to do? i don't know general sherman, if we live in peace and harmony it would be much better. that's true, it would be much better. but you have the enemy, and you have orders to go fight them. that is what he did. i would say, with respect to this issue, keep it in perspective. bad things happen, no doubt, bad things happen in every war, but custer was not some kind of genocidal killer. he was a soldier. he did what he did. so he spent a lot of time on the frontier, several years in kentucky. he did not fight a lot of battles. it was not like they were ranging around fighting all the time. it ebbed and flowed. sometimes the seventh calvary was not even involved. he went on the yellowstone expedition, 1873, which was to chart a route for a railroad. thererthern pacific -- was some fighting there. he fought some of sitting bull's guys. he did a good job there, he learned lessons about the indians that probably informed him when he was fighting at little bighorn, probably informed him wrong. but he did understand some other things about them. by that time, the indians were better armed than our guys because the calvary had been facing budget cutbacks and had inferior weapons, where the indians were buying off the black market and getting better weapons. so during the yellowstone expedition he realized there was a problem. but really, what started the chain of events that changed things was this -- the 1874 whichhills expedition, custer led and which discovered gold in the black hills. there is some argument over how much gold was found or if it was enough to start a gold rush or things like that, or whether custer was a cheerleader for the gold rush or if he was in the pay of the railroads, there are a lot of theories. but the fact is the gold rush happened. because of that, the black hills were supposed to be off-limits. they were supposed to be part of the great sioux reservation, part of the sacred ground for indians, it was not to be messed with. well, you can't keep out people who are pursuing gold during the gold rush, particularly when you have an economic downturn which was happening at the time. so there was the idea the government would buy the black hills from the indians. no, the indians weren't interested in that. some of the indians -- this was the point at which sitting bull and others said you know what? treaties are worthless with you guys. you're breaking your word with us, you're trying to get us to be complicit in that by offering us paltry sums. we are not staying on the reservation. we are going out in the hinterlands, we are going to live the traditional way and you're going to have to deal with it. so that chain of events started rolling and that is what leads you to the battle of little bighorn. because little bighorn happened after the interior department gave an ultimatum to the sioux and the cheyenne and the others who are off the reservation, backaid if you don't get we will send out the army -- and they did. that is how that happened. but before we get to there, you have to have the washington angle. see, everything is really about washington. here is president grant. see, i think that custer had a little resentment for grant. because custer -- it is now 10 years after the war is over. he is still a lieutenant colonel, he is still the deputy commander of the seventh cavalry, which has gone through two colonels. there were opportunities for custer to be promoted -- no, it went to older guys going through their army career. custer said to heck with this, i want to be the commandant of which at west point -- would have been awesome. the returning goat being the commandant, the second ranking guy at west point. that would have been fantastic. no, he did not get that. grant did not help him out, no one pulled strings. he thought about quitting, my career is going nowhere, everything is stagnant, forget it. 1874.hen the election of in that fall, november, the democrats seized control of the house for the first time since before the war you had a democratic house. finally, people custer can work with, his friends, the democratic party. custer gets involved that spring, 1876, with hearings on corruptions in the grant administration, in particular testifying against the secretary of war. you have a serving lieutenant colonel on the hill giving testimony that is taking down the secretary of war, who had to resign and was impeached after he resigned, that is how mad they were at him. he was not convicted. secretary of war belknap. and also, custer was obliquely implicating others in the grant administration, including the president's brother. well, you can guess the president was thrilled by these developments of a sitting officer, particularly someone he had known and worked with during the war. a new custer was kind of a loose cannon, but come on. you're going to do that to the president of the united states? so sherman, who let that point is the chief of staff of the army, he is trying to help first telling of him hey, you have to shut up, but also i will try to work something out with grant. grant says the heck with it, you're not going on the sioux expedition. i am taking you off the sioux expedition because you interrupted your preparations for that to come to washington to jam me up. fine, you are off. well, this wasn't so good. custer tries to get meetings with grant to plead his case. no, grant won't see him. sherman tells him just sit tight, we will work it out. does custer sit tight? no. he leaves. he says he is going back to his command at fort lincoln. wrong move. andhicago, he is arrested told, you are in big trouble, son. finally, through the intervention of sheridan and general terry and others, not to mention george pleading on his knees for clemency, he is finally allowed to go on the sioux expedition -- with two stipulations. one, he would not be in command, he would just be in command of his regiment. number two, no reporters. you cannot take along any reporters to talk about how great you do. well, of course, custer immediately blew those two stipulations off. as soon as he could get free, he did his own thing. of course he brought reporters along. he is george custer, that is what he does. that is the political background to this. it put a chip on his shoulder that he had something to prove when he went to little bighorn. when he went on the expedition, he did not know it was going to end up there. when we get to little bighorn, we can talk a lot about this battle. it is one of the most written about battles in american history. this and gettysburg. there is a lot to say about it. and very strong opinions on this battle. people really dig into their positions on what happened. it overshadows all of his life. this became the defining moment for him, even though he did all this stuff before hand that made him famous. this becomes the thing. the battle was famous because of custer. otherwise it would have just been a battle. because he died there, the immortal custer who cannot be killed, this flamboyant famous guy. fighting a battle against people who had no business winning battles. no one thought the indians could win a battle that day. it seemed inconceivable. how could this possibly have happened? there are a lot of reasons. it is so central to everything regarding the story. think about how many who bent out to that battlefield that they have markers where all of the bodies were found of the men who fell. hite markers were every body was found. what other battle do you know of where it is that frozen in time, where they have marked the location of all of the men on one side, anyway, who died. incredible. the myth that surrounds this battle. there are also some markers that they started putting up for native americans who fell there, where they think they might have been. you look at the mistakes he made, and again, i whole want to do a section of the battle because it would take too long. mistakes, poor intelligence preparation of the battlefield, meaning he did not find out enough before hand of what he what he is going into. he should've done more scouting but he was trying to take them by surprise. so, he didn't. a poor estimation of enemy morale and fighting. capability he thought maybe they would run but they didn't. in tferior weapons, which i mentioned. he should've been aware the kind of firepower he was going into against his own firepower which was inferior. dividingimportantly, his forces and then not properly coordinating them. he kind of lost track of where all of his guys were. and wound up isolated way down at last stand h ill. so, that was a problem. that was really his biggest mistake, was going so far down that ridge. i mean, if you know the battle, at one point, he, either some of his men or all of his men, again, it is debated, they went down to the river, they came back up. they kept going further where they could be caught often surrounded. and that's really what killed him. are we ok? sorry. hem etime,, isolated and he could not regroup his men because reno, major reno, one his battalion commanders, was just not a good guy. did not show the proper initiative. and didn't like custer anyway. bentine who also did not like custer showed more initiative but not enough. then custer's part of the command was surrounded and white out. here's the final order from toter telling bentine come on quick. it is up it was point in the museum up there. you know, but no. he didn't come on quick. but it was a big village, it was too big. so, i mean, again, you can debate. i'm just really briefly summarizing what i think was the biggest mistake custer made. but, when you think about little bighorn and the tragedy, the thing i like best about it, you can say "like" was sitting bull's account of how custer d ied. he was the last man standing of his command surrounded and shot down. that he fire the final shot from his revolver. and then he laughed. the person who was interviewing sitting bull said, you mean, he cried out. no, he laughed, because he had fired his final shot. when they found his body was laying there with a smile on his face. so, custer made his own death. he's going to go out anyway in a blaze of glory, then that was the way to do it. and that cemented him in fame forever. it was also in the many times that custer was reported that it was the first time it was true. -- reported dead, it was the first time it was true. here is the statue directed at west point which later disappeared. if you ever at a yard sale and you see something like that, let me know, because everyone is looking for it. the base of the statue is currently over his grave, but the top of the statue, libby didn't like it. so, after years of pestering people, she prevailed on west point to take it down. there is a whole story. but like i said, it's missing. no one knows where it is. it's.e hard to hide, but somewhere so, if i can sum up custer, you know, we talked about the extremes. he's this wonderful, unblemished hero, esteemed or this idiot or all of these things that are set about him. i just don't believe any of them. he was none of those types of extremes. he might've had some extremes but i do not think those other. ones what was he? he was a self-made man. a very american story. this kid from ohio who went on and did all these amazing things. and he achieved it through his own ability and may be through luck. he was a brave man. no one can say he wasn't. he would charged right into the teeth of enemy fire. whether he was a lieutenant, captain or general, he had the the same m.o. he never asked his men to do something he would not do. he was a natural born warrior with instinct for battle. he knew how to operate his forces on the battlefield. and, yes, he was this colorful eccentric. which is what made him memorable. one of the reasons why we are talking about him, no doubt, but i do not think it is the only reason. and he got, he got what he. wanted he said earlier in his life he craved adventure, that he craves renown and he got all those things. but i think one problem with custer was that he got it too soon. he got it almost immediately in his life, when he was 25 at the peak of his fame and power. then it went away and he had to deal with all of these problems and just the career stagnation and things plodding along. he did not have kids. he lived a good life with libby, but it just was not what it was. he had a taste of it at 25 when he was at the knife edge of history -- making things happen that would be remembered for all time, he was shaping world events. then it was gone. he never got it back. and may be that feeling was what tailas chasing down madison -- at little bighorn. maybe that was part of what he was trying to find again. maybe that is the real custer. thanks for coming out tonight. i'll take any of your questions. [applause] >> please keep your questions brief and to the point so we can get a couple of them in. too remember we are going the rotunda afterwards for a book signing and you can have extensive conversations with them afterwards. >> i'm here all night. >> i would be interested to know how you came to the subject. was it as a child or something that developed later on? >> it kind of developed later on, actually. when i was younger and studying military history, i was a mainly a world war ii buff because my dad served in world war ii. it was much more interesting to me than the civil war. the civil war came later when i was working for the marine corps as a professor at marine corps university, we did, which was at quantico. we did staff rides to all of the battlefields. so, well, i had to get interested in it because that was my job. but i really developed more of an interest in it at that time. and this particular book grew out of the first book on the ghosts. ghosts came from gettysburg because we're were on little round top talking about guys that were last in their class because pickett was last, custer was last in his class. henry heath fought at gettysburg , he was last in his class. how the heck many guys were lessen their classic gettysburg? it turned out there were six that were last in their class. it grew into a book and that book grew into this book. >> [inaudible] or world war ii or possibly the spanish-american war. >> george patton. no doubt. george patton. similar west point experience, because camino, as a said, the statue of him it was point has his back turn to the library for reason. when you look at patton's early career starting in the expedition where he -- was on saying, world war i. people do not know the story of the young george patton. much m ore interesting than his later stuff. but, yeah, i would definitely say patton and cuaster -- custer are very similar. >> there's an wholesaling want when it comes to the battle of little bighorn said that custer had it coming which a lot of two bits to the arrogance and like you said, he did not have the preparation for that battle, but, you know, his technical skills on the plains were probably the only a third of what they were in the typical force on force. so, do you think that his, um, when he went out on the plains, thatield of doom, eventual because of his missteps this would happen sooner or later? >> no necessarily. like i said, h e could have survived, survived little bighorn right up into the end. there was when he made that last move. when he put his italian out of any -0- battalian out of any support from reno. if, instead of going north, he had gone south back up at the way he came. instead of being four miles away, he was two miles away or even if he had been tracking more closely what his other battalions were doing, that was his failing. seen that reno wasn't moving forward like he was supposed to and pulled back. he should've seen that movement and responded to it. the only thing i can think of why he would keep going was that other column with general teri that was supposed to be coming south to meet them in the pincer movement, maybe there is like a remote idea that he could see terry in the distance or something. but terry was way far away. swo, -- so, to me, it is that final move. reno and bentine's guys survived. to uniter been able with them they would've made it through the battle. so, no, i don't think it was inevitable. and i don't think he had it coming. he made mistakes, no doubt, i enumerated summit, particularly his miss estimation. but the real fatal one was that final move. some people say, this is where you get into debate, was custer alive at one point? there was once here he went down to the river and was killed. there's another theory that only a few guys went down to the river and the rest of them cap going. i don't know. those debates are endless, but in my opinion, if it is true they all went down to the river, then they should have known wher re reno was, not where he should have been, and should have pulled back but they didn't. >> hello. i know there was supposed to be a three-pronged attack, including general crook. at that time, custer had no idea that crook had met a few days early, in a battle -- and decided to head on back to the fort. they thought they were probably proceeding upwards to meet, all together at that time. i think that, to me, always surprised me that nobody, he did not let anybody know -- >> righgt, yeah, i completely agree with that. crook really blew it. not only did he fail in his battle, and you know, decide to stop because he was out of ammo. and, according to one of his aides, he spent the next few weeks hunting and fishing. he sent word, he did not send any scouts out. he did not try to inform the other columns. he sent word back to the fort and then over to chicago. come back up to fort lincoln and out to the field, and everything was over by the time anyone knew that his guys were out of play, yeah. crook, he really blew it. i don't know why he does not get more criticism. he just should have sent people out to inform people. he knew they were coming. oh, the scouts could not have made it through. come on. theiry're scouts. at least give it a shot. great point. a depressing time that is going by. i'm going to end questions and ask you to adjourn to the rotunda to have coffee, tea, drinks and cookies. talk further with our other. thank you all for coming. thank you to o ur friends at c-span and we hope you enjoy us next year. with american history programs. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> you're watching american history tv, 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span 3. follow us on twitter @c-span history for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. >> gideon putnam settled in what is now saratoga springs in 178 9, for the history of this area goes back much farther than that. join us as we talk with the parillo about the different eras that shape this city. >> the saratoga spring history museums is one of the oldest museums and upstate new york. we were founded in 1883 as the historical society of sa

Related Keywords

New York , United States , Louisiana , Afghanistan , Westpoint , Ohio , Arlington , Texas , Washington , Vietnam , Republic Of , Michigan , Mississippi , Benin , Iraq , Petersburg , Sankt Peterburg , Russia , Iowa , Shenandoah , Italy , Cheyenne , Gettysburg , Saratoga Springs , France , West Point , Chicago , Illinois , Italian , Americans , French , American , Earl Flynn , George Mcclellan , George Custer , Calvary Custer , George Patton , Gideon Putnam , Tom Brook , Henry Heath , John Gibbons , Richard Mulligan ,