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The Real Custer: From Boy General to Tragic Hero
The Real Custer takes a good hard look at the life and storied military career of George Armstrong Custer—from cutting his teeth at Bull Run in the Civil War, to his famous and untimely death at Little Bighorn in the Indian Wars.
Author James Robbins demonstrates that Custer, having graduated last in his class at West Point, went on to prove himself again and again as an extremely skilled cavalry leader. Robbins argues that Custer's undoing was his bold and cocky attitude, which caused the Army's bloodiest defeat in the Indian Wars.
Robbins also dives into Custer’s personal life, exploring his letters and other personal documents to reveal who he was as a person, underneath the military leader. The Real Custer is an exciting and valuable contribution to the legend and history of Custer that will delight Custer fans as well as readers new to the legend.
Author James Robbins demonstrates that Custer, having graduated last in his class at West Point, went on to prove himself again and again as an extremely skilled cavalry leader. Robbins argues that Custer's undoing was his bold and cocky attitude, which caused the Army's bloodiest defeat in the Indian Wars.
Robbins also dives into Custer’s personal life, exploring his letters and other personal documents to reveal who he was as a person, underneath the military leader. The Real Custer is an exciting and valuable contribution to the legend and history of Custer that will delight Custer fans as well as readers new to the legend.
514 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 5, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 26, 2016
When it comes to books about George Armstrong Custer, I’m helpless. I’m going to buy the book no matter what, for reasons I can’t logically explain. This is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a curse because I end up with a bunch of subpar Custer books. It’s a blessing because my wife is always yelling at me about buying too many books. I guess when think about it, my inability to avoid buying Custer books is better described as a curse and a curse.
James Robbins’s The Real Custer goes in the heap of disappointing Custer titles. I was wary from the jump, especially when the subtitle promised to tell the reader of Custer’s life “from Boy General to tragic hero.” Custer was a lot of things, but tragic hero wasn’t one of them. But, like I said, I can’t resist. And it came as no surprise when The Real Custer failed to click with me.
The Real Custer has a lot of ground to cover in 418 pages, and in order to do so, it has to skimp on Custer’s early life and West Point Years. The book stops skimming around page 47, and the outset of the Civil War. The Civil War constitutes the bulk of this book; it is admirably thorough, in its plodding way. It even has a chapter on Custer’s unsuccessful tangles with the partisan leader John Mosby. I appreciated this, because it’s a fascinating, underreported episode (the tit-for-tat hangings) in Custer’s career.
The problem with this section – the problem with the whole book, in fact – is that it’s blandly written. This is a collection of facts, each set atop the other like blocks. At the end, we’re supposed to admire the structure, though there is no other adornment whatsoever.
Right about now, I bet you’re saying Hold on! This is a history book. It’s supposed to be a bunch of facts! Right? No. Wait – let me rephrase that. Emphatically NO! If I want to know simply what happened, and in what order, there are many different places I can go. I can look at a timeline. I can read a reference book. I can check out an encyclopedia entry. When I pay cover price for a book, I want something entirely different. I want the facts to be cohered into an entertaining narrative. I want events to be analyzed. I want the basic journalistic questions answered; not just where and when, but why and how.
That’s not what you get here.
During the Civil War section, Robbins dutifully slogs through Custer’s illustrious Civil War career, checking all the boxes, giving us all the dates. But there is no attempt to divine any deeper meaning. For instance, Robbins (a Custer ‘shipper) claims that Custer was a “genius” of war. That’s a defensible position, but one that Robbins never bothers to support by marshaling an argument. Instead, he falls into an enervating rhythm: a battle occurs; Custer charges; Robbins will quote a witness as saying something to the effect of “it was the greatest charge of the war”; and then we move on. There is no strategic context. Very little tactical context. There are no maps. (Not a single map in the entire book!) No explanation of the topography. No vivid descriptions of battle. No interesting primary source quotations.
By the end, Custer doesn’t seem like a genius. He seems like a psycho. A luckier version of Judson Kilpatrick. This didn't have to be the case. The historian Allen Guelzo has argued persuasively that both the Union and Confederacy badly misused their cavalry. Because of this, there never was a Waterloo in the Civil War, the great climatic battle that would have finished things one way or the other. Instead, there were a series of exceedingly bloody and famous standoffs. Guelzo’s point is that American commanders failed to use cavalry as Napoleon used Murat, utilizing massed charges to take advantage of poorly trained soldiers; exploiting breaks in the opponent’s lines; and securing victory by turning a retreat into a route. There is a case to be made that Custer understood this and should be lauded accordingly. Robbins does not make that case.
Another problem with The Real Custer is that Robbins never bothers to pull on any threads, to explore what happens when you tease out an idea. For example, Robbins goes to the trouble of giving us the chapter on Custer verses Mosby. Mosby was an insurgent, a guerilla fighter, much like the Lakota and Cheyenne Custer later faced on the plains. Custer failed against Mosby. Ultimately, he failed spectacularly against the Indians. That’s something to investigate, right? Or am I asking too much?
As I mentioned above, The Real Custer falls into the encyclopedia trap. It brims with “facts” without much else. Of course, the “facts” of history are often in dispute, especially when dealing with a controversial figure such as Custer. Robbins does very little sorting and sifting of accounts in an attempt to find the most plausible story to recount.
A book on Custer lives and dies on its ability to handle the Little Big Horn, the final battle of George Custer’s violent life. Robbins’s treatment of the last stand is hopeless. There are no details on the various movements made by the 7th Cavalry (the charges, the reconnaissance missions, the feints and counter-feints) and no attempt to corral all the varying sources into a credible sequence. Also, no maps! (This is probably not Robbins’s fault. Still. Seriously? Are maps that expensive?)
Robbins’s blindly sides with observers who reported that Custer conducted a great defense of his lonely position among the grassy Montana ridges. This neglects reams of contrary opinions, archaeological evidence, and eyewitness reports that – with the exception of Lt. James Calhoun’s L Company – Custer's regiment suffered a disastrous breakdown in the face of the Indian onslaught. (This is not an indictment of Custer’s abilities or personal courage. He was a capable soldier and a stone killer. In my opinion, the evidence, contra Robbins, is that Custer’s defeat stemmed from his maintenance of an offensive posture long after he’d lost the initiative).
To top off the terrible (that might be too strong a word) chapter on the Little Big Horn, Robbins attempts to glorify Custer by repeating the Indian scout Curley’s account of Custer’s death. Curley claimed that Custer went down hacking at Indians with a saber, was shot in the chest, and died in Curley’s arms. Robbins does note that this story is “far-fetched,” but that is an incorrect summation. Curley’s account is patently fraudulent, and the fact that Robbins included it in the book, to the exclusion of all other accounts of the battle, says a lot about what he’s trying to do with Custer’s reputation.
And we have to deal with that reputation. The title of this book makes a claim to verity. It endorses a warts-and-all view of an American soldier who elicits only strong opinions. This is a promise that goes undelivered.
Robbins never intentionally hides the unsavory aspects of Custer’s character. Instead, he consistently deals with them fleetingly or parenthetically. Exhibit A is Robbins’s blithe, one-page treatment of the aftermath of the Washita Massacre. Following Custer’s attack on Black Kettle’s Cheyenne village, the 7th Cavalry took a number of female prisoners. According to contemporary reports, Custer’s officers treated these prisoners as proto “comfort women,” with one of Custer’s scouts, Romero, serving as chief pimp. There were also reports that Custer was sexually involved with a Cheyenne woman. Robbins dismisses the tales as anti-Custer folderol. However, esteemed western historian Jerome Greene has stated that Ben Clark (a scout who made some of these claims) was a reliable witness, and that independent sources corroborate aspects of this unseemly story.
Declarations of truth-seeking to the contrary, Robbins wants you to embrace Custer as a hero. He even quotes – for some reason – Ronald Reagan for the proposition of Custer’s brilliance. (Reagan’s bona fides? Well, he once played Custer in the movie Santa Fe Trail. The film was set in 1854, with John Brown as the villain. Custer didn't graduate West Point till 1861, which tells you something about the historical accuracy of this cinematic offering). The result of historical cherry picking and postmortem burnishing is something far away from “real.”
It’s too bad, because the real “real Custer” is captivating. He embodied all the paradoxes, contradictions, and warring impulses that marked America’s western expansion after the Civil War. Custer could like and respect individual Indians and their way of life while also charging into their sleeping villages. He could be a savage killer but also a reckless peacemaker. He was soldier, which meant he followed orders. He did not design our government’s treatment of the American Indians. At the same time, it’s disingenuous in the extreme to pretend Custer was an unwilling pawn. He was an eager participant in the Indian Wars, and his ability to question certain aspects of it makes him both more commendable and more despicable. He begged to be part of the military campaign that ended with his death; he did so to gratify financial and professional ends.
Custer was neither all good or all bad, but Robbins wants to glorify him, rather than understand him. I didn't find a bit of insight into his character and motivations.
I might have felt more charitable about The Real Custer, despite its shortcomings, if it’d been written with a bit more verve and panache. I recently reread Evan Connell’s Son of the Morning Star, which is a massively researched, elegantly digressionary take on Custer’s life and death. I just opened a page at random and found a sentence in which Connell describes the 7th Cavalry as “a limping drunken mob of itinerant farmhands.” This conclusion followed paragraphs of discussion on the health and training standards of the 7th Cavalry. Is this a completely true statement? No. Is it evocative? Hell yes. It is punchy and declarative and creates a memorable image.
There is nothing like that sentence in this book.
James Robbins’s The Real Custer goes in the heap of disappointing Custer titles. I was wary from the jump, especially when the subtitle promised to tell the reader of Custer’s life “from Boy General to tragic hero.” Custer was a lot of things, but tragic hero wasn’t one of them. But, like I said, I can’t resist. And it came as no surprise when The Real Custer failed to click with me.
The Real Custer has a lot of ground to cover in 418 pages, and in order to do so, it has to skimp on Custer’s early life and West Point Years. The book stops skimming around page 47, and the outset of the Civil War. The Civil War constitutes the bulk of this book; it is admirably thorough, in its plodding way. It even has a chapter on Custer’s unsuccessful tangles with the partisan leader John Mosby. I appreciated this, because it’s a fascinating, underreported episode (the tit-for-tat hangings) in Custer’s career.
The problem with this section – the problem with the whole book, in fact – is that it’s blandly written. This is a collection of facts, each set atop the other like blocks. At the end, we’re supposed to admire the structure, though there is no other adornment whatsoever.
Right about now, I bet you’re saying Hold on! This is a history book. It’s supposed to be a bunch of facts! Right? No. Wait – let me rephrase that. Emphatically NO! If I want to know simply what happened, and in what order, there are many different places I can go. I can look at a timeline. I can read a reference book. I can check out an encyclopedia entry. When I pay cover price for a book, I want something entirely different. I want the facts to be cohered into an entertaining narrative. I want events to be analyzed. I want the basic journalistic questions answered; not just where and when, but why and how.
That’s not what you get here.
During the Civil War section, Robbins dutifully slogs through Custer’s illustrious Civil War career, checking all the boxes, giving us all the dates. But there is no attempt to divine any deeper meaning. For instance, Robbins (a Custer ‘shipper) claims that Custer was a “genius” of war. That’s a defensible position, but one that Robbins never bothers to support by marshaling an argument. Instead, he falls into an enervating rhythm: a battle occurs; Custer charges; Robbins will quote a witness as saying something to the effect of “it was the greatest charge of the war”; and then we move on. There is no strategic context. Very little tactical context. There are no maps. (Not a single map in the entire book!) No explanation of the topography. No vivid descriptions of battle. No interesting primary source quotations.
By the end, Custer doesn’t seem like a genius. He seems like a psycho. A luckier version of Judson Kilpatrick. This didn't have to be the case. The historian Allen Guelzo has argued persuasively that both the Union and Confederacy badly misused their cavalry. Because of this, there never was a Waterloo in the Civil War, the great climatic battle that would have finished things one way or the other. Instead, there were a series of exceedingly bloody and famous standoffs. Guelzo’s point is that American commanders failed to use cavalry as Napoleon used Murat, utilizing massed charges to take advantage of poorly trained soldiers; exploiting breaks in the opponent’s lines; and securing victory by turning a retreat into a route. There is a case to be made that Custer understood this and should be lauded accordingly. Robbins does not make that case.
Another problem with The Real Custer is that Robbins never bothers to pull on any threads, to explore what happens when you tease out an idea. For example, Robbins goes to the trouble of giving us the chapter on Custer verses Mosby. Mosby was an insurgent, a guerilla fighter, much like the Lakota and Cheyenne Custer later faced on the plains. Custer failed against Mosby. Ultimately, he failed spectacularly against the Indians. That’s something to investigate, right? Or am I asking too much?
As I mentioned above, The Real Custer falls into the encyclopedia trap. It brims with “facts” without much else. Of course, the “facts” of history are often in dispute, especially when dealing with a controversial figure such as Custer. Robbins does very little sorting and sifting of accounts in an attempt to find the most plausible story to recount.
A book on Custer lives and dies on its ability to handle the Little Big Horn, the final battle of George Custer’s violent life. Robbins’s treatment of the last stand is hopeless. There are no details on the various movements made by the 7th Cavalry (the charges, the reconnaissance missions, the feints and counter-feints) and no attempt to corral all the varying sources into a credible sequence. Also, no maps! (This is probably not Robbins’s fault. Still. Seriously? Are maps that expensive?)
Robbins’s blindly sides with observers who reported that Custer conducted a great defense of his lonely position among the grassy Montana ridges. This neglects reams of contrary opinions, archaeological evidence, and eyewitness reports that – with the exception of Lt. James Calhoun’s L Company – Custer's regiment suffered a disastrous breakdown in the face of the Indian onslaught. (This is not an indictment of Custer’s abilities or personal courage. He was a capable soldier and a stone killer. In my opinion, the evidence, contra Robbins, is that Custer’s defeat stemmed from his maintenance of an offensive posture long after he’d lost the initiative).
To top off the terrible (that might be too strong a word) chapter on the Little Big Horn, Robbins attempts to glorify Custer by repeating the Indian scout Curley’s account of Custer’s death. Curley claimed that Custer went down hacking at Indians with a saber, was shot in the chest, and died in Curley’s arms. Robbins does note that this story is “far-fetched,” but that is an incorrect summation. Curley’s account is patently fraudulent, and the fact that Robbins included it in the book, to the exclusion of all other accounts of the battle, says a lot about what he’s trying to do with Custer’s reputation.
And we have to deal with that reputation. The title of this book makes a claim to verity. It endorses a warts-and-all view of an American soldier who elicits only strong opinions. This is a promise that goes undelivered.
Robbins never intentionally hides the unsavory aspects of Custer’s character. Instead, he consistently deals with them fleetingly or parenthetically. Exhibit A is Robbins’s blithe, one-page treatment of the aftermath of the Washita Massacre. Following Custer’s attack on Black Kettle’s Cheyenne village, the 7th Cavalry took a number of female prisoners. According to contemporary reports, Custer’s officers treated these prisoners as proto “comfort women,” with one of Custer’s scouts, Romero, serving as chief pimp. There were also reports that Custer was sexually involved with a Cheyenne woman. Robbins dismisses the tales as anti-Custer folderol. However, esteemed western historian Jerome Greene has stated that Ben Clark (a scout who made some of these claims) was a reliable witness, and that independent sources corroborate aspects of this unseemly story.
Declarations of truth-seeking to the contrary, Robbins wants you to embrace Custer as a hero. He even quotes – for some reason – Ronald Reagan for the proposition of Custer’s brilliance. (Reagan’s bona fides? Well, he once played Custer in the movie Santa Fe Trail. The film was set in 1854, with John Brown as the villain. Custer didn't graduate West Point till 1861, which tells you something about the historical accuracy of this cinematic offering). The result of historical cherry picking and postmortem burnishing is something far away from “real.”
It’s too bad, because the real “real Custer” is captivating. He embodied all the paradoxes, contradictions, and warring impulses that marked America’s western expansion after the Civil War. Custer could like and respect individual Indians and their way of life while also charging into their sleeping villages. He could be a savage killer but also a reckless peacemaker. He was soldier, which meant he followed orders. He did not design our government’s treatment of the American Indians. At the same time, it’s disingenuous in the extreme to pretend Custer was an unwilling pawn. He was an eager participant in the Indian Wars, and his ability to question certain aspects of it makes him both more commendable and more despicable. He begged to be part of the military campaign that ended with his death; he did so to gratify financial and professional ends.
Custer was neither all good or all bad, but Robbins wants to glorify him, rather than understand him. I didn't find a bit of insight into his character and motivations.
I might have felt more charitable about The Real Custer, despite its shortcomings, if it’d been written with a bit more verve and panache. I recently reread Evan Connell’s Son of the Morning Star, which is a massively researched, elegantly digressionary take on Custer’s life and death. I just opened a page at random and found a sentence in which Connell describes the 7th Cavalry as “a limping drunken mob of itinerant farmhands.” This conclusion followed paragraphs of discussion on the health and training standards of the 7th Cavalry. Is this a completely true statement? No. Is it evocative? Hell yes. It is punchy and declarative and creates a memorable image.
There is nothing like that sentence in this book.
December 27, 2014
The sub-title summarizes the life of Custer as shown in this book. Four days after his West Point graduation he fought in the Battle of Bull Run. He was recognized. He made (big) connections. At age 24 he was a (temporary) Major General.
In the telling of Custer's early life there were two dramatic episodes with material I had not seen elsewhere. The first is at how many West Point cadets gradually took sides and left the academy without their diplomas. The second is the telling of how news of the Grant-Lee conference reached the troops including Custer's attempt to get his own surrenders, how the northern troops shared their rations with the men they had just been shooting at and how officer's bargained with the owner of house where the surrender was signed for souvenirs. (General Sherman bought the signing desk as a gift for Libby Custer. Custer left the house carrying it on his back.)
Author James Robbins shows how the next part of Custer's life spins downward. After the war he could keep the title but he reverted to the actual rank of Captain. His fame brought him many employment offers (which he rejected) and invited jealousy. His pay fell from $8,000 to $2,000 and his assignments were not the best. He damaged his reputation by his treatment of troops (inclusive of a court martial for using troops for private means and leaving the dead behind) and dabbling into politics. It is against this background that he met his fate at Little Big Horn at age 36.
Throughout the book we see his special relationship with West Point class mates and his wife Libby. Through the Civil War he both plots to kill Confederates who are his former pals and meets them face to face with acts of generosity. He continues to re-visit old West Point friends, both yankees and rebels, in the Indian campaigns. Libby is a constant in his life. The rumors of infidelity that sometimes appear in Custer recounts are dismissed by slight mention.
It would be good to read this with Larry McMurty's coffee table Custer nearby since there are no photos (and only a few line drawings). There are no maps so if, like me, you need the visuals, they can be found, not always easily, on the internet. The index was hopeless for everything I checked.
I never tire of the Custer story. This is the third book on him I've read in two years, not sure how many in my lifetime. He still remains a mystery. While there was a little more on battles and maneuvers than I care for, it is well researched, easy to read and tells the complete story.
In the telling of Custer's early life there were two dramatic episodes with material I had not seen elsewhere. The first is at how many West Point cadets gradually took sides and left the academy without their diplomas. The second is the telling of how news of the Grant-Lee conference reached the troops including Custer's attempt to get his own surrenders, how the northern troops shared their rations with the men they had just been shooting at and how officer's bargained with the owner of house where the surrender was signed for souvenirs. (General Sherman bought the signing desk as a gift for Libby Custer. Custer left the house carrying it on his back.)
Author James Robbins shows how the next part of Custer's life spins downward. After the war he could keep the title but he reverted to the actual rank of Captain. His fame brought him many employment offers (which he rejected) and invited jealousy. His pay fell from $8,000 to $2,000 and his assignments were not the best. He damaged his reputation by his treatment of troops (inclusive of a court martial for using troops for private means and leaving the dead behind) and dabbling into politics. It is against this background that he met his fate at Little Big Horn at age 36.
Throughout the book we see his special relationship with West Point class mates and his wife Libby. Through the Civil War he both plots to kill Confederates who are his former pals and meets them face to face with acts of generosity. He continues to re-visit old West Point friends, both yankees and rebels, in the Indian campaigns. Libby is a constant in his life. The rumors of infidelity that sometimes appear in Custer recounts are dismissed by slight mention.
It would be good to read this with Larry McMurty's coffee table Custer nearby since there are no photos (and only a few line drawings). There are no maps so if, like me, you need the visuals, they can be found, not always easily, on the internet. The index was hopeless for everything I checked.
I never tire of the Custer story. This is the third book on him I've read in two years, not sure how many in my lifetime. He still remains a mystery. While there was a little more on battles and maneuvers than I care for, it is well researched, easy to read and tells the complete story.
April 7, 2014
James S. Robbins
The Real Custer: From Boy General to Tragic Hero
Regnery History, 23 JUN 2014.
5 out of 5 stars
Thousands of authors and reporters have written about George Armstrong Custer. Hundreds have published books. But only a few dozen have contributed to understanding the continuing fascination with General Custer while adding to the existing historical research. At some point, we must ask, “Haven’t we studied this to death by now?”
The answer for many of us is “Not quite yet.” There are so many facets and approaches to historical research of Custer and his famous last battle, with research bias being the most deadly to achieve an accurate picture of the man and his military career. It is simply an overwhelming task to ask any single author to capture an overview of this material.
Most recently, Thom Hatch’s recent “Glorious War” did a tremendous job at exposing the Civil War exploits of Custer, while Nathaniel Philbrick and James Donovan placed the Last Stand in a narrative form exceeding many of the previous attempts to do so.
James S. Robbins “The Real Custer,” however, is a stand-alone book with excellently guided narrative relying primarily on first and second person source material. Robbins’ portrait of Custer is exhaustive, providing what this reviewer believes to be the single most unbiased attempt at Custer’s deeds.
From his youth to West Point, from Bull Run to Appomattox and from Washita to the Little Big Horn, Custer’s character is revealed to us with a smooth grace firmly planted within historically verifiable records. The delivery is so well presented that the reader is not left to feel it is a subject best left for historians or “Custer buffs.” Even if the historical record and our knowledge that the man Custer did not in fact exist, this book would still stand by itself as an incredible adventure, filled with excess and triumph, pitfalls and victories, true to the period, but still just inches beyond the stretches of believability.
This is the Custer presented in Robbins’ portrayal. The author’s well-rounded approach doesn’t shrink from pinpointing Custer’s weaknesses in politics, nor does it shy away from Custer’s resounding successes as a military tactician and leader.
Other than the author’s previous title “Last in Their Class,” Robbins appeared at first to be an unknown figure in the Custer drama. With the “Real Custer,” Robbins has firmly ensconced himself into what should be the heart of future canonical references. Without a doubt, the author has given us a biographical overview that will stand the test of time for anyone interested in a more and fuller view of the background to the myth of Custer.
Incidentally, the title’s release date coincides with the beginning of Custer’s trip from the Rosebud that would end a few days later at the Little Bighorn.
The Real Custer: From Boy General to Tragic Hero
Regnery History, 23 JUN 2014.
5 out of 5 stars
Thousands of authors and reporters have written about George Armstrong Custer. Hundreds have published books. But only a few dozen have contributed to understanding the continuing fascination with General Custer while adding to the existing historical research. At some point, we must ask, “Haven’t we studied this to death by now?”
The answer for many of us is “Not quite yet.” There are so many facets and approaches to historical research of Custer and his famous last battle, with research bias being the most deadly to achieve an accurate picture of the man and his military career. It is simply an overwhelming task to ask any single author to capture an overview of this material.
Most recently, Thom Hatch’s recent “Glorious War” did a tremendous job at exposing the Civil War exploits of Custer, while Nathaniel Philbrick and James Donovan placed the Last Stand in a narrative form exceeding many of the previous attempts to do so.
James S. Robbins “The Real Custer,” however, is a stand-alone book with excellently guided narrative relying primarily on first and second person source material. Robbins’ portrait of Custer is exhaustive, providing what this reviewer believes to be the single most unbiased attempt at Custer’s deeds.
From his youth to West Point, from Bull Run to Appomattox and from Washita to the Little Big Horn, Custer’s character is revealed to us with a smooth grace firmly planted within historically verifiable records. The delivery is so well presented that the reader is not left to feel it is a subject best left for historians or “Custer buffs.” Even if the historical record and our knowledge that the man Custer did not in fact exist, this book would still stand by itself as an incredible adventure, filled with excess and triumph, pitfalls and victories, true to the period, but still just inches beyond the stretches of believability.
This is the Custer presented in Robbins’ portrayal. The author’s well-rounded approach doesn’t shrink from pinpointing Custer’s weaknesses in politics, nor does it shy away from Custer’s resounding successes as a military tactician and leader.
Other than the author’s previous title “Last in Their Class,” Robbins appeared at first to be an unknown figure in the Custer drama. With the “Real Custer,” Robbins has firmly ensconced himself into what should be the heart of future canonical references. Without a doubt, the author has given us a biographical overview that will stand the test of time for anyone interested in a more and fuller view of the background to the myth of Custer.
Incidentally, the title’s release date coincides with the beginning of Custer’s trip from the Rosebud that would end a few days later at the Little Bighorn.
June 4, 2015
Love him or loathe him, no-one could ignore George Armstrong Custer - and that fact remains as true today as it was during his life. Whether he is seen as a brutal and ruthless Indian-killer or 'the last cavalier', dashing and gallant, Custer has not been forgotten - and he still inspires debate, argument and conjecture whilst other figures more notable in his own day have long since been forgotten.
Part of that, of course, is the legacy of 'Custer's Last Stand', the American Thermopylae that passed from historical fact into legend almost as soon as the ink was dry on the first newspaper reports. Indeed, there can be no true historical fact when dealing with the 'Last Stand' as the only survivor of the battle was an officer's horse. No doubt this lack of any real understanding is part of what has contributed to the battle's enduring fame. No-one can know what truly happened that day at the Little Bighorn.
But part of Custer's legacy is down to his own unique personality. Custer was a larger-than-life figure, from his flowing blonde curls to his extravagant dress, his reckless and cavalier personality, his almost inhuman battle courage and his own special brand of luck, known throughout the army as 'Custer's luck'. Custer was reported dead numerous times during both the Civil War and the Plains warfare, and time after time the reports were false. Custer was what we would know as an It personality, a celebrity famous as much for being himself as for his military prowess and glory.
James S. Robbins really captures that boyish charm of Custer's, and after several hundred pages of this biography one comes to the end with almost the same sense of disbelief that must have greeted those first newspaper reports. Men like Custer don't die! Other men, lesser men, but not Custer, surely. One feels, reading this book, that Robbins has a real affection for his subject, and it shines through on every page. This may perhaps make this a somewhat one-sided read - I'm not familiar enough with Custer, Crazy Horse or the Plains Wars to be able to judge. I began this book with the now-fixed modern image of Custer as a glory-hunting adventurer who got himself and his entire command killed through his own hubris and reckless behaviour. I finished it with a real sense of sorrow for Custer's death. I suspect the truth is somewhere in-between.
Part of that, of course, is the legacy of 'Custer's Last Stand', the American Thermopylae that passed from historical fact into legend almost as soon as the ink was dry on the first newspaper reports. Indeed, there can be no true historical fact when dealing with the 'Last Stand' as the only survivor of the battle was an officer's horse. No doubt this lack of any real understanding is part of what has contributed to the battle's enduring fame. No-one can know what truly happened that day at the Little Bighorn.
But part of Custer's legacy is down to his own unique personality. Custer was a larger-than-life figure, from his flowing blonde curls to his extravagant dress, his reckless and cavalier personality, his almost inhuman battle courage and his own special brand of luck, known throughout the army as 'Custer's luck'. Custer was reported dead numerous times during both the Civil War and the Plains warfare, and time after time the reports were false. Custer was what we would know as an It personality, a celebrity famous as much for being himself as for his military prowess and glory.
James S. Robbins really captures that boyish charm of Custer's, and after several hundred pages of this biography one comes to the end with almost the same sense of disbelief that must have greeted those first newspaper reports. Men like Custer don't die! Other men, lesser men, but not Custer, surely. One feels, reading this book, that Robbins has a real affection for his subject, and it shines through on every page. This may perhaps make this a somewhat one-sided read - I'm not familiar enough with Custer, Crazy Horse or the Plains Wars to be able to judge. I began this book with the now-fixed modern image of Custer as a glory-hunting adventurer who got himself and his entire command killed through his own hubris and reckless behaviour. I finished it with a real sense of sorrow for Custer's death. I suspect the truth is somewhere in-between.
January 28, 2015
This book sets out to show a more complete picture of this great general and I think that by and large it succeeds. I was certainly the audience the book was written for, as all I knew about Custer up to this point is that he was a bit of a "pretty boy" who made a wrong turn at Little Bighorn and got himself and his men massacred. I am ashamed to say that I didn't even put together (based on the his timeline and the timeline of the U.S.) that he was involved in the Civil War, let alone a very well known major general for the Union. The author takes us from his humble beginnings to his rather...spirited...time at West Point and then through his successes and failures during the War Between the States. Here I must make mention of the biggest pet peeve I had with the whole book: the almost complete lack of illustrations, particularly photos and maps. Photography was just beginning to be widely used during this time and during my own research after reading this book I discovered several excellent photos that I'm sure could have been used in this book. More than that though was the total lack of any battle maps and this in a book that discussed in detail probably close to a dozen or more battles in both the Civil War and the West. I don't have the mind of a military genius, nor do I have the encyclopaedic mind it would require to understand the terrain and situation of a Gettysburg or a Washita or a Little Bighorn, so I was left to imagine some stylized version of the battles that was probably the furthest thing from the truth! But beside this rather glaring omission, I found this book easy to read and engaging. I came away realizing that this was not some dandy who dashed off to his death one day, but rather a man misunderstood, brave, daring...and someone who should have stuck with a military life and left the politics to the politicians!
January 19, 2018
Interesting biography generally favorable tonCuster
The book was well written and not stuffy at all. It did , I think give Custer the benefit of the doubt most times, although it did point out when the author thought Custer was wrong. I especially liked that he did not get into the minutia of the battle but gave the outline of it and then some of the many , many variants that are possible.This was definitely a worthwhile read.
The book was well written and not stuffy at all. It did , I think give Custer the benefit of the doubt most times, although it did point out when the author thought Custer was wrong. I especially liked that he did not get into the minutia of the battle but gave the outline of it and then some of the many , many variants that are possible.This was definitely a worthwhile read.
March 14, 2015
oh no, I found another obsession ---- Custer...
February 24, 2018
A good biography of George Armstrong Custer, focusing on his military career and romance with his beloved wife. My only critique is that it would be helpful if the book included an appendix explaining the military terms used in the book, such as "brevet" and the number of men in a column, etc. Even so, a clear understanding of Custer is provided and easily absorbed. The final chapters are real page-turners though the reader likely knows the consequences of Custer's last stand.
December 18, 2015
This is a decent, but uneven, biography of a historical figure who has basically gone down in modern political history as a two-dimensional Indian-murdering barbarian Antichrist.
To begin with, I really have to question Robbins's objectivity. He seems way too close to his subject, especially in the way that he conveniently omits Custer's entire expedition to the Black Hills to dig for gold in violation of a standing US treaty with the Lakota, which is the main reason why American Indians hate him to this day and akin to telling Christians, Jews, or Muslims that you're going to raze old Jerusalem in order to drill for oil. This is the most legitimate strike against Custer, and one that simply isn't addressed by Robbins at all, which is pretty damning.
What Robbins does do well, however, is introduce reasonable doubt against the whole "Custer was the devil" narrative. He portrays Custer as a devoted husband and generally capable officer whose failures largely came as a result of bad luck or having offended the wrong higher-up with his eccentricity. He may have sympathized more with the Indians than with the government he worked for. He was much more ideally suited for battle than for the festering political morass that was Reconstruction-era America. And he failed at Little Bighorn largely because he was on the outs politically and his career was at stake, so he was uncharacteristically incautious that day and didn't make enough effort to communicate with his less than stellar subordinates, who failed to reinforce him and instead decided to cut and run.
The key point that this book hints that it is trying to make but stops just short of making is phrased succinctly by Matthew White, author of The Great Big Book of Horrible Things. Custer didn't actually kill that many Indians, and he held no ill will towards them - he was mainly following orders. Rather, he became a convenient scapegoat for the government because he failed, which combined with his Black Hills expedition made him an easy negative symbol for the Indian sovereignty movement in the 1970's. By contrast, Andrew Jackson both personally and through his policies killed hundreds more Indians than Custer ever did and relocated thousands more. His statements of open xenophobia against the Seminole in particular are a matter of public record, so much so that they partially inspired Hitler's policy against the Jews a century later. However, Jackson never lost a battle, so he actually did become President and his picture is on the $20 bill. History is written by the winners, and has a convenient of-its-time political element that can be difficult to separate from the truth after a while. Had things gone differently at Little Bighorn, Custer could have become a candidate for President - he was a loyal Democrat, easy for the party bosses to control, and would have been a war hero. As it is, this book, while not extraordinary, does a good job of at least casting doubt upon the dominant narrative that Custer was the devil incarnate.
To begin with, I really have to question Robbins's objectivity. He seems way too close to his subject, especially in the way that he conveniently omits Custer's entire expedition to the Black Hills to dig for gold in violation of a standing US treaty with the Lakota, which is the main reason why American Indians hate him to this day and akin to telling Christians, Jews, or Muslims that you're going to raze old Jerusalem in order to drill for oil. This is the most legitimate strike against Custer, and one that simply isn't addressed by Robbins at all, which is pretty damning.
What Robbins does do well, however, is introduce reasonable doubt against the whole "Custer was the devil" narrative. He portrays Custer as a devoted husband and generally capable officer whose failures largely came as a result of bad luck or having offended the wrong higher-up with his eccentricity. He may have sympathized more with the Indians than with the government he worked for. He was much more ideally suited for battle than for the festering political morass that was Reconstruction-era America. And he failed at Little Bighorn largely because he was on the outs politically and his career was at stake, so he was uncharacteristically incautious that day and didn't make enough effort to communicate with his less than stellar subordinates, who failed to reinforce him and instead decided to cut and run.
The key point that this book hints that it is trying to make but stops just short of making is phrased succinctly by Matthew White, author of The Great Big Book of Horrible Things. Custer didn't actually kill that many Indians, and he held no ill will towards them - he was mainly following orders. Rather, he became a convenient scapegoat for the government because he failed, which combined with his Black Hills expedition made him an easy negative symbol for the Indian sovereignty movement in the 1970's. By contrast, Andrew Jackson both personally and through his policies killed hundreds more Indians than Custer ever did and relocated thousands more. His statements of open xenophobia against the Seminole in particular are a matter of public record, so much so that they partially inspired Hitler's policy against the Jews a century later. However, Jackson never lost a battle, so he actually did become President and his picture is on the $20 bill. History is written by the winners, and has a convenient of-its-time political element that can be difficult to separate from the truth after a while. Had things gone differently at Little Bighorn, Custer could have become a candidate for President - he was a loyal Democrat, easy for the party bosses to control, and would have been a war hero. As it is, this book, while not extraordinary, does a good job of at least casting doubt upon the dominant narrative that Custer was the devil incarnate.
July 12, 2014
James Robbins has set about giving a balanced and fair account of the life of George A. Custer and his life as a soldier. Much has been written of the flamboyant officer, much of it romanticized or slanted by those who either loved or hated him. The nation had weathered a bloody conflict in which many more had been slaughtered in a single battle than would die at the Little Bighorn, but that battle in June, 1876 became a focal point, as Robbins calls it, "The battle became a national Rorschach test; people saw in it whatever they wanted, and still do." (p.409)
From the many descriptions given of Custer's affectation for flamboyant costume, to the coolness he displayed in battle, the reader is given the opinions on the man in the press, in letters of soldiers in his commands and the judgements of the Army through official actions. This reader found himself forming the image of a warrior who had immediately found his calling at the outset of the War between the States, and who foundered in the troubled peace which followed. Perhaps that "National Rorschach test" notion is the best we can do as a nation when it comes to our wars and the warriors we groom to fight them.
From the many descriptions given of Custer's affectation for flamboyant costume, to the coolness he displayed in battle, the reader is given the opinions on the man in the press, in letters of soldiers in his commands and the judgements of the Army through official actions. This reader found himself forming the image of a warrior who had immediately found his calling at the outset of the War between the States, and who foundered in the troubled peace which followed. Perhaps that "National Rorschach test" notion is the best we can do as a nation when it comes to our wars and the warriors we groom to fight them.
June 4, 2015
Pleased that I now know more about this dude than "he was that guy that got massacred at Custer's Last Stand".
A very accomplished Civil War General. A renegade soldier with famous long hair and an equally famous reckless attitude. Someone who 'colored outside the lines'. Possibly one of this country's first ever rock stars.
Most of this biography is about his early and Civil War years. Not much about his last stand in 1876. Not surprising as no one really knows how he died, when he died, or exactly where he died.
Just that he died.
A very accomplished Civil War General. A renegade soldier with famous long hair and an equally famous reckless attitude. Someone who 'colored outside the lines'. Possibly one of this country's first ever rock stars.
Most of this biography is about his early and Civil War years. Not much about his last stand in 1876. Not surprising as no one really knows how he died, when he died, or exactly where he died.
Just that he died.
February 25, 2015
A nicely balanced biography.
Highly recommended for its portrayal of one of the legendary figures of our national history. I was particularly struck by the number of sources the author used. Taught me a great deal about his Civil War service that tends to get overlooked and his love of his wife, Libbie.
Highly recommended for its portrayal of one of the legendary figures of our national history. I was particularly struck by the number of sources the author used. Taught me a great deal about his Civil War service that tends to get overlooked and his love of his wife, Libbie.
May 29, 2015
Very detailed. I found the narrative about Custer's West Point days and Civil War especially interesting. A good resource for history buffs.
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