George Armstrong Custer

George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876) served as a U.S. Army officer and cavalry commander during the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars.

He entered West Point in 1857 as part of a class of 79 cadets, originally on a five-year track. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the program was shortened to four years. Custer graduated last in his class that same year. His initial class had 108 candidates, with 68 passing the entrance exam, but many classmates resigned to fight for their home states, leaving only 34 graduates. Custer ranked 34th among them, yet he rose to a higher military rank than any other officer from his class. After graduation, he worked closely with future Union generals George B. McClellan and Alfred Pleasonton, who recognized his skill as a cavalry leader. At just 23, he was promoted to brevet brigadier general of volunteers early in the war. Days later, in early July 1863, he fought at the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg, commanding the Michigan Brigade. Though outnumbered, Custer defeated Confederate General J. E. B. Stuart’s cavalry attack at East Cavalry Field on the battle’s crucial third day.

In 1864, Custer served in the Overland Campaign and later that summer with General Philip Sheridan’s army in the Shenandoah Valley campaigns, defeating Confederate General Jubal Early at Cedar Creek. In 1865, he destroyed or captured the remainder of Early’s forces at the Battle of Waynesboro in western Virginia. Custer’s division blocked the final retreat of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia from Richmond in early April 1865, and he received the first flag of truce from the exhausted Confederates. He was present at General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Union General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. After the war, Custer was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the Regular Army and sent west to fight in the Indian Wars, primarily against the Lakota, Sioux, and other Great Plains tribes. On June 25, 1876, while leading the 7th Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in southeastern Montana Territory against a coalition of Western Native American tribes, he was killed along with every soldier in the five companies he commanded. This event became known as “Custer’s Last Stand.”

Custer’s dramatic end was as controversial as the rest of his life and career, and reactions to him remain divided even 150 years later. His mythologized status in American history was partly built through the energetic lobbying of his devoted wife, Elizabeth Bacon “Libbie” Custer (1842–1933), throughout her long widowhood, which spanned six decades into the 20th century.

**Family and ancestry** Custer’s paternal ancestors, Paulus and Gertrude Küster, came to the North American English colonies around 1693 from the Rhineland in Germany, likely among thousands of Palatines whose passage was arranged by the English government to gain settlers in New York and Pennsylvania. His maternal ancestors were of English and Ulster Scots descent, with roots in England and Northern Ireland. According to family letters, Custer was named after George Armstrong, a minister, in his devout mother’s hope that her son might join the clergy.

**Birth, siblings, and childhood** Custer was born in New Rumley, Ohio, to Emanuel Henry Custer (1806–1892), a farmer and blacksmith, and his second wife, Marie Ward Kirkpatrick (1807–1882), who was of English and Scots-Irish descent. He had two younger brothers, Thomas and Boston. His other full siblings were the youngest child, Margaret Custer, and Nevin Custer, who suffered from asthma and rheumatism. Custer also had three older half-siblings. He and his brothers developed a lifelong love of practical jokes, which they played among close family members. Emanuel Custer was an outspoken Jacksonian Democrat who taught his children politics and toughness early on. In a February 3, 1887, letter to his son’s widow Libbie, Emanuel recalled an incident when George (called Autie) was about four years old:

“He had to have a tooth drawn, and he was very much afraid of blood. When I took him to the doctor to have the tooth pulled, it was in the night and I told him if it bled well it would get well right away, and he must be a good soldier. When he got to the doctor he took his seat, and the pulling began. The forceps slipped off and he had to make a second trial. He pulled it out, and Autie never even scrunched. Going home, I led him by the arm. He jumped and skipped, and said ‘Father you and me can whip all the Whigs in Michigan.’ I thought that was saying a good deal but I did not contradict him.”

**Education** To attend school, Custer lived with an older half-sister and her husband in Monroe, Michigan. Before entering West Point, he attended the McNeely Normal School (later Hopedale Normal College) in Hopedale, Ohio, which trained teachers for elementary schools. While there, Custer and classmate William Enos Emery carried coal to help pay for room and board. After graduating from McNeely in 1856, he taught school in Cadiz, Ohio. His first sweetheart was Mary Jane Holland. Custer entered West Point as a cadet on July 1, 1857, as a member of the class of 1862. His class numbered seventy-nine cadets on a five-year course, but with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the program was shortened to four years.