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Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer
For more than a century, Americans have been captivated by the legend of General George Armstrong Custer. But the various truths of Custer’s life and last stand prove elusive. Why are we so taken with the myth and the so-called mystery behind the man? In a field teeming with highly partisan and wildly speculative treatments of Custer, Louise Barnett enters with a volume widely acclaimed by both military and cultural historians as the most balanced account of his life and legend. Custer's life spans two great eras of American history, and Barnett's commanding work pushes beyond the existing literature to a comprehensive view of this controversial figure.
540 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1996
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April 27, 2016
History is a two-stage process. First, there is the event itself, whether that is a battle or a disaster or a political campaign or truckers on an ice-road. Second, there is the way the event is remembered. It is this second stage that really makes up history. As hard as we try (and we should always try), there is no 100% accurate, objective truth to any historical moment. The only time history is pure, untainted, and entirely truthful is as it is happening. Once we start to remember, we begin to change.
George Armstrong Custer is a prime example of this process. At one time, he was an ordinary human being with some extraordinary talents. He went to West Point; fought brilliantly and heroically in the Civil War; went west to fight Indians; and died on a lonely Montana hillside just weeks before America’s centennial celebration.
That is as short a summation as I can give on the life of Custer. To add almost anything else to those two semicolon-laden sentences would be to court controversy, argument, and bitter list serve wars between amateur experts armed with topographical maps and pet theories.
Today, 135 years after his death, there is nothing simple about Custer. His life and death are impossibly entwined with two competing, ever-shifting mythologies: that of the American Indians, who lost their lives, their land, and their way of life; and of the American pioneers, who plunged into the wilderness and created an enduring civilization. The context we’re dealing with is a collision of stereotypes: savage or noble Indians; rapacious or courageous settlers; murderous or chivalric soldiers; and blundering or farsighted politicians. And Custer is right smack dab in the middle, refighting his famous battle in the memories of successive generations.
My grandparents knew Custer from Errol Flynn in They Died With Their Boots On. Filmed in 1941, it showed a heroic Custer, overwhelmed but fighting bravely, just as America would soon be fighting bravely, against overwhelming odds, on Wake Island.
My parents, the Vietnam War-generation, knew Custer from interpretations by Robert Shaw and Richard Mulligan, in Custer of the West and Little Big Man. Both depictions, as befitting the spirit of the times, made Custer into a bit of a lunatic. Actually, in Little Big Man, he is a deranged madman, cursing Ulysses Grant’s drunkenness and his soldiers are massacred.
My generation, with the benefit of many cycles of revisionism, knows a Custer that is probably a little closer to the truth. We are able, if we choose, to see the broad sweep of Custer’s reputation, from beau sabreur to racist to genocidal maniac to something more complicated. (Unfortunately, the only major cinematic depiction we’ve been given was in the unfortunate miniseries Son of the Morning Star, in which Custer was played by Office Space’s Gary Cole).
I say all this because Touched By Fire is not your typical Custer book. Its raison d’être is not a chronological retelling of Custer’s life, or a blow-by-blow analysis of his Last Stand; rather, it sets out to evoke a memory. It is less interested in the mechanics of George Custer’s brief life and famous death, and more interested in the elusive question of his seeming immorality; it seeks to explore Custer’s afterlife, from fame to infamy to respectability. In other words, author Louise Barnett wants to know why we care. (And I fully understand, by this point, if you are asking yourself the same question about this review).
Now, I am something of a Custer fanatic. While I often have to force myself to read books that are good for me (damn you, Melville), a Custer book is like a chocolate cake stuffed with Snickers bars and methamphetamines. I pull Custer-related titles off the shelf like a junky looking for a fix.
Some of my favorites include Evan Connell’s Son of the Morning Star (upon which that unfortunate miniseries was based), Jeffrey Wirt’s Custer, Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand, and James Donovan’s A Terrible Glory. And if you want to get a bit more in-depth (by which I mean books that utilize time-motion analysis and heavily rely on the average land speed of a fully-laden mule), there are plodding-but-informative tomes by John Gray, Gregory Michno, and Richard Fox.
For the longest time, however, I avoided Touched By Fire, even as I started scraping the bottom of the Custer-book barrel.
Why?
I’ll just come out and say it: I avoided Touched By Fire because it was written by a girl.
Before you hunt me down and burn what few possessions I have (among them, dozens of Custer books), let me say two things: (1) I am an idiot; and (2) Louise Barnett proved this.
The books I listed above are all written by boys, and they are focused on the things that boys like: guns; horses; men shooting guns; men riding horses; men shooting guns while riding horses; etc. Barnett brings a different mindset and sensitivity to this subject. I don’t intend this to sound condescending, or to reduce Barnett’s accomplishment to a sound-bite: Custer, With Feelings!. Also, I’m not trying to damn with faint praise: yeah, this is a good Custer book… for a girl.
To the contrary, I’ve read a lot on Custer, and in my opinion, this is a really good book that takes on a well-trod subject from a fresh angle.
For me, the book started slow, as Barnett lays out a biographical sketch starting with Custer's birth, going through the Civil War, and then following him from the Washita to the Little Bighorn. Obviously, this is necessary for readers unfamiliar with Custer; for others, nothing Barnett relates breaks new ground.
Since Barnett’s interest lies elsewhere, there is a lot of skimping in the biographical sections. Custer's early life is covered in five pages. The entire Civil War is told in one short chapter that mentions only one battle: Gettysburg. Barnett tells us about the Washita and Little Bighorn, but only in generalized, sweeping terms.
At times, I sensed that Barnett, a professor of English and American Studies, wasn’t entirely sure of her grasp of the subject. Or maybe she was (justifiably) worried about loudmouthed “experts” crowding that corner of history belonging to George A. Custer. For whatever reason, Barnett touches on a lot of controversies, but never takes a strong stand for or against her subject. While this might have been an attempt at evenhandedness, it comes across as waffling. (For instance, Barnett takes the position that Custer victimized himself with poor intelligence. Almost immediately, however, she backs off that stance, noting that the odds Custer faced, roughly 15:1, were far better to him than the odds faced by victorious soldiers at the Wagon Box Fight and Beecher’s Island).
Much of my criticism here should be taken with a large grain of salt (actually, this holds true for whatever I am saying, about anything). Sure, Touched By Fire lacks an in-depth examination of Custer’s career, tends towards simplicity, and contains no trenchant analysis of the Little Big Horn. But so what? You don’t need that stuff for a basic understanding of Custer, one that will suffice to get you through the vagaries of your daily life. Barnett actually does a pretty decent job of hitting the high points. And it helps that she is an engaging writer, one who knows how to keep a reader’s interest.
Still, Barnett does a much better job in the realm of myth and memory. She devotes time to Custer’s literary career, his marriage, and to the controversy over Custer’s mutilated penis (the Freudian obsession among Custer-philes over the post-mortem fate of Custer’s genitals is a PhD dissertation waiting to happen; I call dibs).
The absolute highlight of Touched By Fire, which alone makes it worth reading, is Barnett’s portrayal of Elizabeth “Libbie” Custer and her “long widowhood.” After Custer’s death, Libbie devoted her life to her dead husband’s memory. She was married to Custer for 13 years; she lived 57 years as a widow. In that time, Libbie served as Custer’s posthumous caretaker, writing memoirs and letters that burnished her dear “Autie’s” legacy. In her diligence, she wrote the first draft of Custer history, which she sought to expand and protect for all her remaining days. This is a fascinating tale on how history is shaped in general, and how women have helped to shape the history of the American west in particular (see also Shannon Smith’s Give Me Eighty Men, which is an exceptional take on the Fetterman massacre, and the literary works that have shaped its legacy).
In telling Libbie’s story, Barnett injects an element missing in most Custer books: empathy. Her widowhood, after all, was not simply a shrewd calculation; it was an expression of almost impossible grief for a man she truly and absolutely loved.
I’ve spent much of this review explaining Touched By Fire in reference to all the types of books it is not. That’s how I read it as well, with an eye towards the aspects of the Custer story Barnett elided. Yet, by the end, I was wholly satisfied. More than that, the book’s effect lingered even after I turned the final page. In conveying Libbie’s overly-romantic, almost-impossible love, Barnett gives Custer a measure of humanity that he is often denied. Indeed, the great surprise of this book is that while it searches for the roots of a myth, it actually tells us a great deal about the realities of life.
George Armstrong Custer is a prime example of this process. At one time, he was an ordinary human being with some extraordinary talents. He went to West Point; fought brilliantly and heroically in the Civil War; went west to fight Indians; and died on a lonely Montana hillside just weeks before America’s centennial celebration.
That is as short a summation as I can give on the life of Custer. To add almost anything else to those two semicolon-laden sentences would be to court controversy, argument, and bitter list serve wars between amateur experts armed with topographical maps and pet theories.
Today, 135 years after his death, there is nothing simple about Custer. His life and death are impossibly entwined with two competing, ever-shifting mythologies: that of the American Indians, who lost their lives, their land, and their way of life; and of the American pioneers, who plunged into the wilderness and created an enduring civilization. The context we’re dealing with is a collision of stereotypes: savage or noble Indians; rapacious or courageous settlers; murderous or chivalric soldiers; and blundering or farsighted politicians. And Custer is right smack dab in the middle, refighting his famous battle in the memories of successive generations.
My grandparents knew Custer from Errol Flynn in They Died With Their Boots On. Filmed in 1941, it showed a heroic Custer, overwhelmed but fighting bravely, just as America would soon be fighting bravely, against overwhelming odds, on Wake Island.
My parents, the Vietnam War-generation, knew Custer from interpretations by Robert Shaw and Richard Mulligan, in Custer of the West and Little Big Man. Both depictions, as befitting the spirit of the times, made Custer into a bit of a lunatic. Actually, in Little Big Man, he is a deranged madman, cursing Ulysses Grant’s drunkenness and his soldiers are massacred.
My generation, with the benefit of many cycles of revisionism, knows a Custer that is probably a little closer to the truth. We are able, if we choose, to see the broad sweep of Custer’s reputation, from beau sabreur to racist to genocidal maniac to something more complicated. (Unfortunately, the only major cinematic depiction we’ve been given was in the unfortunate miniseries Son of the Morning Star, in which Custer was played by Office Space’s Gary Cole).
I say all this because Touched By Fire is not your typical Custer book. Its raison d’être is not a chronological retelling of Custer’s life, or a blow-by-blow analysis of his Last Stand; rather, it sets out to evoke a memory. It is less interested in the mechanics of George Custer’s brief life and famous death, and more interested in the elusive question of his seeming immorality; it seeks to explore Custer’s afterlife, from fame to infamy to respectability. In other words, author Louise Barnett wants to know why we care. (And I fully understand, by this point, if you are asking yourself the same question about this review).
Now, I am something of a Custer fanatic. While I often have to force myself to read books that are good for me (damn you, Melville), a Custer book is like a chocolate cake stuffed with Snickers bars and methamphetamines. I pull Custer-related titles off the shelf like a junky looking for a fix.
Some of my favorites include Evan Connell’s Son of the Morning Star (upon which that unfortunate miniseries was based), Jeffrey Wirt’s Custer, Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand, and James Donovan’s A Terrible Glory. And if you want to get a bit more in-depth (by which I mean books that utilize time-motion analysis and heavily rely on the average land speed of a fully-laden mule), there are plodding-but-informative tomes by John Gray, Gregory Michno, and Richard Fox.
For the longest time, however, I avoided Touched By Fire, even as I started scraping the bottom of the Custer-book barrel.
Why?
I’ll just come out and say it: I avoided Touched By Fire because it was written by a girl.
Before you hunt me down and burn what few possessions I have (among them, dozens of Custer books), let me say two things: (1) I am an idiot; and (2) Louise Barnett proved this.
The books I listed above are all written by boys, and they are focused on the things that boys like: guns; horses; men shooting guns; men riding horses; men shooting guns while riding horses; etc. Barnett brings a different mindset and sensitivity to this subject. I don’t intend this to sound condescending, or to reduce Barnett’s accomplishment to a sound-bite: Custer, With Feelings!. Also, I’m not trying to damn with faint praise: yeah, this is a good Custer book… for a girl.
To the contrary, I’ve read a lot on Custer, and in my opinion, this is a really good book that takes on a well-trod subject from a fresh angle.
For me, the book started slow, as Barnett lays out a biographical sketch starting with Custer's birth, going through the Civil War, and then following him from the Washita to the Little Bighorn. Obviously, this is necessary for readers unfamiliar with Custer; for others, nothing Barnett relates breaks new ground.
Since Barnett’s interest lies elsewhere, there is a lot of skimping in the biographical sections. Custer's early life is covered in five pages. The entire Civil War is told in one short chapter that mentions only one battle: Gettysburg. Barnett tells us about the Washita and Little Bighorn, but only in generalized, sweeping terms.
At times, I sensed that Barnett, a professor of English and American Studies, wasn’t entirely sure of her grasp of the subject. Or maybe she was (justifiably) worried about loudmouthed “experts” crowding that corner of history belonging to George A. Custer. For whatever reason, Barnett touches on a lot of controversies, but never takes a strong stand for or against her subject. While this might have been an attempt at evenhandedness, it comes across as waffling. (For instance, Barnett takes the position that Custer victimized himself with poor intelligence. Almost immediately, however, she backs off that stance, noting that the odds Custer faced, roughly 15:1, were far better to him than the odds faced by victorious soldiers at the Wagon Box Fight and Beecher’s Island).
Much of my criticism here should be taken with a large grain of salt (actually, this holds true for whatever I am saying, about anything). Sure, Touched By Fire lacks an in-depth examination of Custer’s career, tends towards simplicity, and contains no trenchant analysis of the Little Big Horn. But so what? You don’t need that stuff for a basic understanding of Custer, one that will suffice to get you through the vagaries of your daily life. Barnett actually does a pretty decent job of hitting the high points. And it helps that she is an engaging writer, one who knows how to keep a reader’s interest.
Still, Barnett does a much better job in the realm of myth and memory. She devotes time to Custer’s literary career, his marriage, and to the controversy over Custer’s mutilated penis (the Freudian obsession among Custer-philes over the post-mortem fate of Custer’s genitals is a PhD dissertation waiting to happen; I call dibs).
The absolute highlight of Touched By Fire, which alone makes it worth reading, is Barnett’s portrayal of Elizabeth “Libbie” Custer and her “long widowhood.” After Custer’s death, Libbie devoted her life to her dead husband’s memory. She was married to Custer for 13 years; she lived 57 years as a widow. In that time, Libbie served as Custer’s posthumous caretaker, writing memoirs and letters that burnished her dear “Autie’s” legacy. In her diligence, she wrote the first draft of Custer history, which she sought to expand and protect for all her remaining days. This is a fascinating tale on how history is shaped in general, and how women have helped to shape the history of the American west in particular (see also Shannon Smith’s Give Me Eighty Men, which is an exceptional take on the Fetterman massacre, and the literary works that have shaped its legacy).
In telling Libbie’s story, Barnett injects an element missing in most Custer books: empathy. Her widowhood, after all, was not simply a shrewd calculation; it was an expression of almost impossible grief for a man she truly and absolutely loved.
For most of us there is a middle course between forgetting and remembering, with intense grief over a loss followed by a gradual resumption of ordinary life. Both of Custer’s parents were widowed early in life, but after a proper interval they remarried and began anew, as Libbie might have done as a young widow. She was attractive and sought after: perpetual widowhood was her own choice, and one she never regretted. As she told her literary executor, Marguerite Merington, “One gets so lonely. But I always felt I should be committing adultery if I were to wake up one morning, and see any head but Autie’s on the pillow by me…”
I’ve spent much of this review explaining Touched By Fire in reference to all the types of books it is not. That’s how I read it as well, with an eye towards the aspects of the Custer story Barnett elided. Yet, by the end, I was wholly satisfied. More than that, the book’s effect lingered even after I turned the final page. In conveying Libbie’s overly-romantic, almost-impossible love, Barnett gives Custer a measure of humanity that he is often denied. Indeed, the great surprise of this book is that while it searches for the roots of a myth, it actually tells us a great deal about the realities of life.
August 22, 2011
By including much material that the other two Custer books I'd read did not, and by telling Custer's wife Libbie's story along with his, my knowledge of Custer's life and times was considerably broadened. We learn about Custer and Libbie's courtship and marriage, what was going on during the less dramatic period of time between his fame in the Civil War and Little Bighorn, how women were treated on frontier army posts, something about Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody, and particularly about Libbie's long widowhood and public career as writer and lecturer. Barnett's superb exploration of the mythical dimension of Custer and the Little Bighorn helped me make sense of why he and the battle occupy a larger place in the American psyche than would, on the surface, seem warranted. A thoughtful and worthwhile addition to the considerable body of Custer literature.
December 1, 2019
Barnett offers a panorama of George Armstrong Custer's life and the second half of the nineteenth century; she's interested as much in what happened to Custer's image after he died as she is in his life. She also gives nearly equal billing to Libbie Bacon Custer, who was professionally Custer's widow for over 50 years, accepting at face value Libbie's portrayal of herself in her writing, as timid, vulnerable, naive, and always madly in love with Custer. (Other biographers, like T. J. Stiles, are more skeptical.) This is an excellent read.
August 27, 2024
There appears to be a slight bias in support of Custer’s actions at the Little Big Horn. While obviously well researched, I think there are a few too manny suppositions, what might have beens. More deserving of 3.5 or even 3.75 stars, but you must go to TheStoryGraph to be able to do that.
October 19, 2025
An excellent review of Custer and his life, as well as the life of his young widow Libbie. Recommended
October 25, 2016
I spent over a year studying Custer, the Little Bighorn Battle, and Sitting Bull. Many of the things that Barnett states is interesting, but the author has a tendency to contradict herself. Furthermore, I find that many of her statements can be rebutted by other sources that I personally studied. I find this read to be important, for it teaches historians of what not to do. I recommend this book to historical scholars whom are just beginning to study historiography.
March 4, 2010
Loved Matt's comprehensive review. I found myself wanting more about decisions made in battle, and more detail on Little Bighorn, maybe a Native American's account. I thought Barnett's conclusions regarding racism's role in the events were well supported, and I did like her portrayal of Libbie. I found Libbie to be more interesting than Custer.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews