[indistinct conversation] peter if you could take your seats. All right, i am pete carmichael, a member of the History Department at the gettysburg college. It is my pleasure to welcome t. J. Stiles to cwi. He is an awardwinning author based out of berkeley, california. He is a native out of minnesota, a graduate of Carleton College who went on to do his graduate work in european history at columbia. He spent some time at Oxford University press. He worked with gabor. Many volumes that gabor put in together, those speeches were delivered right here. T. J. Had a little bit of time yesterday to talk about his work and talk about the craft of writing, and the conversation reminded me of the fact that a there is professional academic writing and then there is popular writing. I think the day has come that we can move away from that, and t. J. Stiles has worked to testify to the fact that you can write engaging biography with ideas, with argument, with analysis, and above all else, original research. T. J. Likes the archives. There are a lot of academic historians who do a lot of their work, i hate to say, on the internet. They do not like to get dirty with the manuscripts and t. J. Does that. He has produced three very important books. The first is jesse james the last rebel of the civil war, a New York Times and notable book of the year. And the epic life of cornelius vanderbilt, and the National Book award in 2009. Most recently has biography of george custer, the 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner. I would call it quits. Two Pulitzer Prizes, and National Book award, this is an incredible record that you have received in a very short time. We are very pleased to have you here. T. J. Stiles will be speaking to us about george custer. [applause] t. J. thank you very much. We are on cspan live so i will keep my cursing to a minimum. If you could please mute your cell phones i would really appreciate it. I am here to talk about somebody nobody has ever heard of, George Armstrong custer. I decided to write about him because obviously i hate myself. He has been so written about, some people have estimated that he may be the second most written about figure in American History after Abraham Lincoln. I did not write my book because all of that work was terrible. Lots of it is very good. Rather, i want to understand custer in a new way, not entirely new but this has been touched on before, but to really drill down on something about the man. People who are academics, when they write biographies they like to look at representative figures, those who tell us something about the times. The rest of us like to read books about consequential people who make a difference and shift the direction of history, and i think custer is a great case of someone who is both. He is not the most important person of his times. He is not the most representative in some ways. He is an exaggerated figure but he tells us a lot about america and had an impact on the times. For most people, their knowledge of custer begins with, lets see if i can do this without messing it up, their knowledge of custer begins with a moment in time when he led a charge of an outnumbered group of cavalry against a much larger foe, noted warriors who overwhelmed him and surrounded his men. For most americans that is little bighorn but for our very knowledgeable audience here, that is gettysburg. I am going to lead up to the moment at gettysburg and lead out of it to try and understand how custer became famous. This was his defining moment. On the third day on the east cavalry field. We want to understand how that moment defined him in the eyes of americans at the time, what it tells us about his effectiveness and consequential nature, but also we find in that moment and the moments leading up to it, the seeds of the disasters and near disasters that would follow him, especially in his life after the civil war. We want to bring together his civil war career and post civil war career and see how there are in fact an organic unified part of one life. Lets look at gettysburg leading up to that moment which we will come back to. The way i look at custer is i see him as a figure on a frontier in time. Very loosely, the idea of modernization in american society, in American History. Going into the civil war, america has many traits of an earlier, more traditional society. It is more personal in nature, not so organizational or technical, it is romantic and sentimental in culture. Coming out of the civil war you begin to see more and more an organizational society, one that is technical, in which who you are does not matter so much as your qualifications, a world in which realism begins to supplant the romanticism and sentimentality that all the recruits in 1861 went to war with. Interesting thing, custer, living in this frontier in time is that it is a transitional time just as the civil war is a transitional war. In some ways he grasps that moment very well and in some ways he disastrously fails to deal with the times he is helping to make. At west point, that is a good example. He graduated in the second class of 1861. They moved up the graduation date and ended the fiveyear system that came in under secretary jefferson davis. At west point he received professional training. Poo thens used to poo level of military training at west point. In looking at it in context of other Training Institutions around the world, west point was at the forefront. He received a thorough Technical Education at west point. This was in an era where most americans did not go to college. 1 of White American men went to college before the civil war. He went to not only a college, but an engineering and technical military education institution, however he himself was a romantic, sentimental figure. He was constantly playing pranks. It is famous he graduated last in his class but first in demerits. [laughter] when you go to west point and look at that demerit book, here is something one of his classmates actually a class ahead of him, there is a half a page for four years. For custer, it is four pages. The words are boyish, trifling. He is this boy that is constantly getting into trouble and is courtmartialed after graduation because he did not yet have an assignment to regiment, so he was captain of the guard at the summer encampment, and two cadets started fighting. Instead of arresting them, both he told everyone to stand back and let them have a fair fight. Back then, you got courtmartialed by that sort of thing but lucky for him, the civil war was breaking out so he received no worst punishment than a letter of reprimand. The civil war, this is a Mass Mobilization war, a peoples war, and that professional core of the regular army, 16,000 men, suddenly is supplemented by the u. S. Volunteers. These organizations raised by the states, colonels are appointed by governors. This is america under arms and it brings in this transitional moment when you have the actual professional, systematic u. S. Army. I think by the 1820s mark wilson said there were at least two dozen standardized forms. This is a very modern professional organization. It is the template for the Corporate America that will come into being, and also a war being fought by popular organizations, regiments that represent americans under arms. It is personal politics as well as party politics. At bull run, manassas to you confederates in the audience, this is an untrained volunteer mass that takes time to become professional. So custer comes into that war as a professional and begins to build his career as a junior officer in the Peninsula Campaign in 1862. This is a massive professional undertaking, that the United States military moved an army that was the size if it had been a city, the army of the potomac wouldve been the ninth largest city in the United States and it moves it to the peninsula, and it is moving thousands of horses, enormous amounts of supplies. This Artillery Park gives you a hint of the scale. Custer goes off and is assigned to the topographical engineers, a Technical Branch of the military because the maps were so terrible they had to draw new maps. What did he do in that role . Was he sitting there drafting at a table behind the lines . No, he was scouting the head of the lines, and this involved not only scouting on foot but also going up in an observation booth. Again, a technological innovation. This is a new wave of technology that is coming into being. He is one of the first aerial military observers in Human History and he becomes quite good at it and takes to it quite well. I could go on. In the book, i give some stories about how he figures out how to estimate Confederate Forces through the tree cover in the warm spring when they are not lighting fires at night, like he would expect them to. What happens is that custer, again as a topographical engineer, is spending a lot of time scouting. He takes part in a raid in newbridge on the chickahominy river. As mcclellin advances close to richmond. It is a very daring raid. They inflict a large number of casualties for a small force. Mcclellan exaggerates it up to 50 confederates dead. They take some prisoners. Custer plays a very gearing role and you see the hand of what will conference him, the dashing, romantic, heroic character that he sees himself as being. Mcclellan appoint him to his staff, and this was a key moment because on one hand, here is this young man who has a professional education, who is a technical, well educated officer, what we might call in a very unprofessional way part of the wave of the future, but he also rises through merit but also through patronage. A combination of merit and knowledge along with patronage, who you know, who is watching out for you that combination plays a key role in custers life and his rise during the civil war. He takes part in the battle of the Peninsula Campaign as right hand to mcclellan, and this begins to involve him in another side of the civil war which, it does not spell mcclellans doom but plays a part in the troubles he faces, and that is the question of the politics, the meaning of the civil war. We see that visually after fair oaks times, pretty much everyone these days, when he meets an old friend now on the confederate side, lieutenant james washington. Washington has been taken prisoner and so the two were chatting and a photographer comes up. I think it is james gibson, took this photo, and gibson thought something was missing so he brought in a young contraband, an escaped slave, and put him beneath the knees of washington. This photo circulated under the title both sides and the cause. Gibson went around putting this poor boy between the knees of other people as well, as you will see in the lower right. Again, this actually is a very interesting moment because the army of the potomac follows the lead of mcclellan. It is very conservative on the issue of emancipation and custer is from a democratic family, basically a border state fellow. He is from close to the ohio river, his father is from maryland and he is part of that border state culture zone in which the southern counties of the old northwest were settled by people from kentucky and tennessee and virginia and maryland. So he has close cultural and political affinities in the south even though he is firmly unionist. So he very much absorbs and agrees with mcclellans disagreement with the advance toward emancipation. He personally encounters contraband again and again, he gets information from them, he writes letters home in which he voices this deep prejudice against them, and yet he is seeing them aid the union cause. What happens, of course we know the conservative war that mcclellan wanted comes to an end after telling lincoln to his face that he wants a war without emancipation. Lincoln reluctantly allows him to continue because he has no Better Options in the Antietam Campaign. And again, his failure to take aggressive action is what brings him down. The aftermath of the Antietam Campaign brings down mcclellan, and that leaves custer without a patron. He is floating free and his own future is in doubt because again, of that personal politics of patronage and supplicant. Again, pardon me, here is antietam. Custer comes back from his own exile, long leave in which he met a lady in monroe, michigan named libbie bacon. He comes back and manages to find a second patron. This is key in his life because again, he has got a lot of merit and he is also somebody who has really put himself out there, playing that dashing, daring role, being able to roam the battlefield as mcclellans righthand man. He spends a lot of his time scouting and reporting back to mcclellan with the cavalry. So he ends up becoming close to Alfred Pleasanton and he comes back and pleasanton brings him onto his staff just as he becomes the commander of the cavalry corps of the army of the potomac. Again, luck, timing, something that custer himself called custer luck came to his aid. In he has got merit but key to his rise is who he knows and who likes him. When he is with pleasanton, he misses out on the chancellorsville campaign, but he does take part in the fighting that leads up to and involves lees invasion of the north in 1863. He takes part in the fighting at aldie, in which pleasantons order to go through the calvary screen and find out what he is up to. They engage in this close combat which typifies most of the calvary on calvary fighting in the civil war. Again, when they are mounted they are able to close quickly, they engage in close range contact, and this brings up Something Else about custer. He is himself a fighter and very talented one. At a time when of course longrange rivals, muskets, we are not seeing one style of warfare yet but it is bringing to the forefront firepower and riding the Horse Soldiers to fight more on foot. Firepower is dominating the battlefield, but when they are fighting against other horsemen they often close up quickly and personal skill matters. That custer fought with a saber and he fought with a revolver, and his personal skill mattered, and he found himself cut off and behind the confederate lines, and he had to cut his way out. It is a sign of how custer himself is brave and daring and skilled with the saber. Lucky for him, it turns out that lee was invading the north. It was a lucky break for custer because what happened was hooker, who was getting fed up with pleasanton, replaced him. He went to meet and got permission to replace them with his own handpicked men, including custer. Custer tried to get michigan was his adopted home state he tried to get an appointment as a colonel of a michigan calvary regiment but unfortunately, being a democrat and having been associated so closely with mcclellan stopped him from getting that appointment. Again, the role of politics plays an important part in his career. He gets named brigade commander. Instead of getting one regimen in he asked for another michigan regimen. He writes home, i outmaneuvered the governor on that one. What happens, he shows up at hanover and this is really important, because again, this is not actually a sketch of hanover but it shows the troops deployed and the skirmish formation. His very first day in command he is in combat. The second thing is that contrary to that image of the moment we are about to get to, of the dashing leader leading a calvary charge, he in fact deploys his men on foot in his very first role as a brigade commander, to make use as some of his troops have the new spencer rifle. He appreciates this, a man who is daring himself, loves to sword fight, loves the charge, he realizes and rights, this is the most effective firearm our troops can be provided and he makes use of it. He has an excellent artillery commander, pennington, and he makes excellent use of firepower. We see custer, the professional in this transitional war, understanding the rising role of firepower and making use of it. That is his first moment as a brigade commander, not leading a charge but making use of the new firepower and technology of the civil war. The third day comes around and he actually supports general defying an order to join his Division Commander kilpatrick from the other end of the union line because they get word that a large confederate calvary force is approaching, and he agrees it is important to stay so he actually defies an order, stays at what is now the east calvary field, and again, he fights most of that day with his troops deployed on foot in skirmish formation, making use of their magazine loaded repeating rifles. He does take part in two key charges, and again, because he is a new commander and subordinate to his temporary superior on the field, he goes to his troops at key moments to lead a charge and find out the order to charge had already been given, it basically tells us that his judgment had been sound, he was not out on a limb and found out he was in agreement with his commander. He leads charges that are basically counter country. Once the confederates launch an attack, he countercharges. The largest attack attempting to break through and custer takes his last reserve force, leads a force, cuts his way through the confederate formation famously shouting to his men, come on you wolverines. It is one of the famous moments of the civil war, custer fighting in the forefront with a saber. It is important to remember that some of the aspects of custer which robin commented upon reflect his flamboyant, youthful personality. Here we see his uniform that is black velveteen with all that gold braid winding up from his cuff to his elbow. His blue sailor shirt and the red tie which troops begin to imitate, this is a very dramatic and visible costume more than a uniform. One staff officer sees him in battle and says, he looks like a circus rider gone mad. Again, in that civil war battlefield, longrange firepower is beginning to hold sway but you still have fairly dense formations in which command and control is being exerted by sight and sound. They are listening for bugles, listening for the band, looking for the flags for following direction and rallying, and looking for their commanders on the field. This is both a statement of his desire to be looked at, but also it has a practical effect. His troops see him in combat. It is inspiring, an organizational device where they can see where he is going and follow him, and a statement of his own courage because the confederates can see him also and will target him, and if he was going to lead retreats, they would notice that also. He is not leading retreats, he is leading attacks. Some of the most outrageous sides of custer, there is in that time and place a reason. It is a transitional moment. It is a romantic and flamboyant figure. The figure is more napoleonic. There were generals that dressed like him, most were confederate. He knows the world that he is living in and knows it quite well. Just to play on custer as someone who was aggressive but surprisingly, actually the more i learned about him what surprised me in writing about him, he was not foolish and rash and reckless. He took part in the intense fighting the mounted arm took part in, in the aftermath of gettysburg, chasing after the confederates. He was ordered by his Division Commander who was often foolishly aggressive and reckless, kilpatrick, nicknamed kill cavalry, he actually took part in this attack on the last confederate Infantry Division holding the north bank of the river as the rest of the army went south in fortifications. They had only one regimen on hand as they made contact and kilpatrick ordered an attack and says, no, i want to charge. 100 men went in against this division that was fortified. It was so foolish that confederates let the troops in because they assumed they were confederate troops coming in because it was such a ridiculous attack. Once they realized their mistake, they cut them to pieces and custer had to help rectify things. They ended up inflicting severe casualties. But only after taking severe losses themselves. It was not an attack custer wanted to make. But again chemical we have to think about another aspect of this, which is that he is a cultural figure. In the book, this republic of suffering it talks about the impact of all of this death on americans and the troops as well. This is an era that does not kill off the sentimental idea in america, but it challenges it. You can see writers who are more realistic, even cynical such as Ambrose Bierce and those who did not take part in the fighting such as mark twain. They come out of the civil war with a much darker view of the world. Custer represented it to americans that he is keeping the flame alive for heroism, for individual heroics. For the romantic ideal. This image that he consciously creates, yes there is vanity involved. Absolutely. He becomes a household name around the time of gettysburg because he is both successful and he represents something americans felt slipping away at the time. They write about him in these terms. The press loved him, not just because he was good press. This is the individual hero that every soldier thought they would he. By fighting on horseback mostly against other horsemen in clashes that involved lower numbers of troops and at lower levels of firepower, youve got Horse Soldiers that reduce the force with less artillery involved and when they fight in mounted formations, they close up quickly. Individual heroics actually matters. His ability to fight well inspires his troops and actually has an effect in his success. He is in the slice of the civil war which he is not seen men seeing men dying so randomly as Ambrose Bierce did and other soldiers are. Like Oliver Wendell holmes junior who gets severely wounded. He is fighting in a slice of the civil war that is in keeping of an older ideal of romantic warfare. Custer himself never becomes disillusioned. Thats a really important thing to remember. By first wondering the field at will as a staff officer, then rising rapidly through the regained command and he is fighting battles and much more in keeping with the ideal, he himself has this old romantic idea that is reinforced. Instead of being disillusioned, he is more romantic and sentimental after the civil war. The way the culture is beginning to change, he is going in the other direction. At first it does not hurt him, it helps him. The other thing is that custer takes part in a very personal way in the great impact of the civil war on the great i mean massive institution of slavery and the breakdown of Southern Society as the war begins to erode slavery. When he went into virginia in the aftermath of gettysburg, he went to a contraband camp. Because as a selfindulgent young man, he wanted a personal cook. He hires a young teenager. She comes into his headquarters as his cook. It is very interesting. We know about her because custers wife wrote about her extensively. She got her memories for a memoir. Eliza brown was not just some cook. She had grown up in a World Without any security, in which she had to seize every opportunity to carve out safety and advantage for herself. As the cook to a brigade commander, she makes the most of the opportunity. She transforms herself into his household manager. She begins to trade information with couriers from other commands. She always has big treats ready when someone comes. She pumps them for information. She becomes the intercede or for the men with custer. They go to her first when they need a favor. She builds her own Patronage Network with other contraband, distributing food. That irritates custer after the war. She is someone who is this formidable person, who is living with custer. He likes and respects her. She becomes a part of his life. The reality of slavery and the way it has been broken down is something that is personal and real. He was very conservative for the war. He is now dealing with the reality of it on a personal level. When libbie comes during the winter, she comes to virginia and finds this other woman is already in the household running things. She is a very welleducated young woman. She is very smart. She goes along with him, but she resents the limitations placed on women. She talks about it. She is not a radical, but she doesnt like it. The one sphere she has is to run the household. Here is this young lack woman who is running the place. The next five years, they struggled for power in the household. She likes eliza brown, the tension grows because she can never outmaneuver her. Eliza brown keeps the upper hand until 1869. Moving on because i want to leave money of time for questions. Politics plays a key role in his life did his appointment as Brigadier General has not been confirmed by the senate. He tries to get a firm white build support with republican congressman. One man is francis kellog. He sends the most effective political weapon to washington. That is his wife. She goes to washington. She is a lovely young woman with great social charm and is very intelligent. She reads the senators for what they are. She plays it up. She goes to the dances on capitol hill, she has drunken senators leering over her. She is building her influence. She says of kellogg that everyone says he is corrupt, i dont care. He is nice to me. Other words, yet it is true, but i can work with this guy. She is very realistic and helpful. In the end, his marriage to her had been up in the air because there was talk that he would not be confirmed by the senate because he was a democrat and he had ties to mcclellan. Her father was like, i do not want her marrying this guy. In the end, she married him and he was confirmed. Custer as a brigade commander, i looked into the way in which he operated as a manager. He is an administrator. He spent much of his time not leading troops into combat, but running a Large Organization of up to 2000 men. This occupies a lot of his time. He also has repeated problems with the chain of command. We see the postwar problems in the way in which he does things like call truces and goes to the other side so he can chat with his pals on the confederate side. He gets reprimanded by kilpatrick. I told you to stop talking to the enemy. They are the enemy. You cant fraternize with them. Custer is a sentimental fellow, he is spending time on the other side. When of the moments of peril comes before his great triumph in the civil war. That is the election of 1864. He actually has to go to great pains to distance himself from his old patron, mcclellan, a man he still loves and admires immensely. You get to see some of the uglier side of custers personality, he goes out of his way to distance himself from mcclellan because for all of his conservative political views, he wants to win the war. This is one of the big differences. Mcclellan had problems with the way the war was going. He did not like the hard war that was emerging. Custer wants to win at all costs. If it were up to me, the war would never end. That is one difference. He wants to keep his career going as an army officer. As he broke ones, if it were up to me, the war would never end. I would love to have a battle every day of my life did he does not want an armistice. He does not want a truce. He wants to win the war and fight the war. To save himself, he alienates his own father for a while. He writes publicly to the press saying he is going to vote for lincoln and that he supports emancipation. Things that i think were basically not true. So we get to 1864. Again, im not going to go into detail about his career. Starting at third winchester, he becomes a household name and becomes the favorite of his new patron, the new commander of the cavalry corps which is philip sheridan. Sheridan really takes a shine to custer. He really wants to use the mounted arm in a decisive way in battle. It was much more effective. When he goes to the valley in 1864, he brings custer with him. Custer plays a key role at third winchester when the battle was dragging on and when there was a flanking attack that still had not wrote in the confederate line and custer had fought his way around on the right flank and run up against infantrymen behind a stone wall. He pulled his troops back. He received orders to lead a charge because it was late in the day and sheridan wanted decisive action. Sheridan did not know there were infantrymen behind a stone wall. It was suicide to attack. A mounted charge against prepared infantrymen always led to disaster in the civil war. The rifle muskets were to effective against mounted troops. They are redeploying the troops to the main battlefront. I think they are probably going to redeploy. Let me time the charge. He gets permission to time the union charge. Once he see this confederate troops start to move, thats when he charges. They only have time to fire one folly before they are in among them. This is why he is loved by his men. He is aiming his rifle and customer pulls back on the reins and the horse goes up and he comes down with a saber. He is an action hero. He is very good at what he does. The troops love him for it. A confederate officer said its the only time it seen amount to charge effective in a general engagement with infantry. He follows it up again with an effective role helping to cause panic and cedar creek. He has a stunning role in the shenandoah valley. He has a major role in the Appomattox Campaign as well. Finally at upper medics appomattox courthouse, sheridan has the table at which grant had written out his terms for 20. He gives it to libby custer. He said no man has done more to bring about this result than your husband. Sheridan loves him. He has played a key Division Level role. It is hard to find a Division Level commander who is more famous than custers. He is a household name at the and of the civil war. So the question is what happens . He goes off after the civil war and runs into trouble almost literally the moment the the grand review of the armies begins. Im going to take a few minutes so we have time for questions. If youve read my book or read the excerpts on the smithsonian, you know about it. He goes to texas. In texas he gets involved with complications with the local slaveholders and planters who wants his support. He actually takes part in a case of the murder of an eightyearold africanamerican girl, who had been held in slavery after juneteenth. After emancipation had been declared in texas. He struggles with it. The girls murder because she had gone to join her mother. He arrests the boy and decides the military should not be running things, even though martial law is prevailing. He lets the boy go. Its a hint of where he will go politically after the war. He has trouble with his troops. Where he inspired intense loyalty in combat, when he is with new troops who had never seen him in combat, his insecurity comes to the front. He retaliates against the most minor infractions outrageously. He has troops flogged, which is illegal. He has their heads shaved. The army has done a terrible job with logistics. He treats troops harshly. He sees the piece coming. He does come around and believe slavery is evil. He is other than that, he wants glad it is gone. Other than that, he wants conservative restoration. He gets involved with Andrew Johnson when he goes on his swing around the circle in 1866. That is probably the most midterm American Election in history. When he goes against the republican vision for reconstruction, he brings along a few officers including grant and custer. He was assigned to the black ninth cavalry. This is one of the first black enlisted regiments in the u. S. Army. The army has to take lack troops and custer goes over grants had an says he wants to serve with white troops only. We see his conservatism is still there. Johnson wants a conservative union without slavery. Grant gets dragged into the swing around the circle. He stays out of public view and leaves early. Custer is out on the platform campaigning. As a result, many of the Union Newspapers who had loved custer as a hero now castigate him. When he goes west in 1866 to fort riley and take command of the seventh cavalry, he gets his reward. A white regiment and he is the field commander. He is under a cloud. He is under pressure. All of the attention he loved is now contaminated by his own actions. He had brought a program down himself by getting involved in politics. He was a ladies man, even though he had a beautiful wife. That wasnt enough for him. Whether he was having an affair or just very dangerous flirtations is hard to say. Hes got all of these problems. He goes off on his first campaign. He shoots his own horse. He is lucky to get rescued. He is hoodwinked by the indians again and again. This is a sketch by an artist who was on the scene for harpers of the kidder massacre. A detachment bringing him orders was wiped out. Custer finally gives up. He leaves his men and rides hundreds of miles to see his wife so he can at least save his marriage and he does. But he gets courtmartialed. On a number of charges he gets convicted. Its a very interesting moment because now we see custer is no longer the hero. After the civil war, he is not a leader so much as a manager. A vast percentage of the officers who are commissioned in 1865 in the regular army continue. A huge percentage of all the officers between 18651898 are commissioned within two years of the civil war. This is an army that is subtly shrinking, that has very little pitched combat. The enlisted man are getting paid terribly. They are deserting in double digits every year. It requires real management and personnel skills, which custer does not have. At the same time, he wants attention, he dressed in costume. He has fans, but the army as an institution sees him as a loose cannon. Thats an ongoing theme in his life after the civil war. Real problems with the way the institution of the army sees him. He saves himself again and again because he is still a good combat commander. In 1868, he takes part in the Winter Campaign against the southern cheyenne. He fights a controversial battle. In military terms he handles it well, but it is a controversial battle because women and children get killed. He also brings back no male prisoners alive as ordered. He goes on to build up a frontiersman image. He reinvents himself in american eyes as a great indian fighter and frontiersman. He goes to wall street. He tries to get investors in a silver mine in colorado. A wants to get investors in silver mine. He is interested in the new corporate and financial world. Also the new world of the media. He writes a series of articles in which he very seriously looks at the west and writes and adventure tale of his early days in the west. He wants to take part in new mass media. He fails on wall street. His prose, though he is popular, is not the pros of the new writers. His writing is not henry adams. Henry adams said strikeout every unnecessary word. Custer never saw an adjective he didnt like. His prose is so antebellum, the first sentence of his memoir seems like it mustve started before the war. Some of it is fun to read. It is still a romantic, oldfashioned sensibility. Long winding sentences. He is not fully of the new world. He goes on, he saves himself from other problems. He has two battles with the sioux indians. He still knows how to fight. In 1874, the democrats when the house of representatives and he hates reconstruction. He doesnt like grants administration as president. He gets involved very public way very publicly and he goes to capitol hill and rights anonymous articles criticizing grant. He testifies in congress. If an army officer today so openly allied himself with the political opposition to the commanderinchief, his or her career would be over immediately. Grant is upset. Custers life is nearly saved because grant pulls him off command of the seventh cavalry. He has to plead to be able to go with this man. Because he can still fight, his departmental commander asks for him. Sheridan is fed up with him. Sherman is his last patron. He writes this letter, tell custer it makes it difficult for his friends to help them. Dont take any reporters. Dont talk to the press. He gets this fatherly advice. He has one last chance and it leads to disaster. In some ways, for historians and biographers, it has given us someone who has played this fascinating role, very revealing role in america going through these great transformations. It took somebody who would have otherwise been another. Instead, little bighorn made custer into a national icon, someone everyone has an opinion about. We have to remember that he was famous going into the battle. As a friend of mine said, if another officer of his rank in the army had gone to the same disaster, instead of being a national monument, it would probably be a state park. Thank you very much. [applause] i am very happy to answer questions. Do you think custer had political ambitions beyond what he was trying to achieve in the army . This is a very interesting question. Stephen ambrose said that custer wanted to be president. He was hoping to stampede the democratic convention. Two problems with that scenario, one is politics did not work that way. A lot of the Democratic Leaders are men who were close to vanderbilt. I looked through their papers very closely. The democratic kingmakers were not even talking about custer. That is something that did not happen. Even a dark horse like Abraham Lincoln had an organization. He had a plan. He was a player. The other thing is that libbie hated his involvement in politics. She knew that it alienated much of the country. He had been asked to run for congress in 1866 and libby said no. I think she wouldve kept him out of politics. I was wondering, why you didnt draw parallels from some of the other battles, between them and little bighorn . Understand that one fight is known as custers first stand. One writer suggested that what custer was trying to do at little bighorn was repeat his success. Tj i think this is an interesting question. I think custer made some mistakes going into that. There is a book about it. He talks about how the union command didnt really understand there was a large confederate force there. Custer had an early clash and i dont think he properly reported it. He showed his cool. He showed his valor and luck. He was being hit i spent bullets. This is somebody who shouldve died long before little bighorn. The little bighorn is a big topic. Its an extraordinary circumstance. He was in a similar circumstance. He had the time and space to be able to collect his troops and he had a very clever tactic to get out of that situation. There was a larger village than the one he attacked down the river. They swarmed around him. They were fighting around the edges. Custer was in real peril. They withdrew to protect him and then he escaped. Little bighorn was an extraordinary circumstance. I think he was carrying out a force. He did not have the advantage of surprise. He also did not want to miss anything. Hint gotten a telegram before he left. He had gotten a telegram before he left. No one in the army thought he had too few troops. He intended to consolidate i think when they figured it out, they went to attack from two sides. He attacked from multiple sides. We have to give credit. I will sum up this way, we have to give credit to the lakotas. Obviously custer made mistakes or he would not have been wiped out. They were not only in huge numbers, they were competent with their success. They had excellent leadership. They fought really well and really hard. Instead of doing what everyone expected, they stood and fought and acted in ways no one expected. They earned that victory. If we spend too much time running down custer, we take away from the scope of their victory. Going back to west point, in the years he was at west point, i know cadets were moved down a year for academic deficiency and discipline reasons. Even in custers class, why do you think he wasnt moved down even though he had more demerits and worse academic standing than some of the cadets that were moved down. Tj its hard to know. At one point, he failed a test that should have gotten him ejected they failed a number of cadets. Somehow he lucked out. There is a certain degree, i wish i had an answer. Its terrible to say nobody knows. Maybe it was his charm . He had that ability. Even as a junior officer, his commanders really liked him. He was a great staff officer. Maybe there was something about him that translates personally that got him some slack . God knows he took every bit of slack he could get. Im not sure. Thats my guess. I dont have any documentary evidence of that. His roommate wrote about him, he is too clever for his own good. Nobody thought he could survive, but he did. There is a mystery surrounding that. It could be his personal charisma showed over his antics. He was a very smart guy. He was a good writer. He was a good thinker. I have problems with some of his thoughts in politics, he disagreed with a lot of people who created civil rights in america. He was a smart guy. He got some slack. Maybe someday somebody will come up with a better answer. Thats the best i can do right now. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. [applause] earl will speak to us on a topic. That we are to see not going to hear crickets. I george mccullar Braxton Bragg to get off their chief jokes. They have accumulated and led to this distorted view of both men. Today we will be talk about Braxton Bragg. Earl has written a fantastic biography of Braxton Bragg. It is published by university of North Carolina press. I believe we have some copies of that volume. We come here because we want to complicate history. We do not want to put forth easy answers, and i think earl has done this on all of his work, he will get you to think long and hard. He will not get you to think that bragg was the Second Coming of napoleon, but he will get you to ponder and to think about this very important confederate general. It is my pleasure to welcome earl hess. [applause] hess. [applause]
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