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ducted on good military principles, instead of which Custer made
his attack recklessly, earlier by 36 to 48 hours than he should
have done, and with men tired out by forced marches. Why,
if they had caused the Indians to retreat, they could not possi-
bly have followed them. I feel, too, that when the news is re-
ceived from individuals of the regiment, it will fully sustain the
position I take. Custer was not a popular man among his troops,
by any means. He was tyrannical and had no regard for the
soldiers under him.Four days later the Tribune published an angry rebuttal letter
from Colonel E.A. Sherburne, a Civil War veteran of the 27th
Iowa Volunteers:“Custer’s luck,” as General Sturgis sneeringly styles Custer’s success,
was what naturally resulted to a soldier whose heart was a stranger
to fear, who went to battle with an eye gleaming like a blazing star,
and whose arm was ever found in the thickest of the fight, dealing
blows both well directed and resistless. General Sturgis’ object
seems to be to get before the mind of his listener a com-
parison of his “record” with that of the dead general
which shall be injurious to the latter.Colonel Sherburne may well have known some-
thing about Sturgis’ record.
Samuel Sturgis was a West Point graduate
in the celebrated Class of 1846, which included
George B. McClellan and Thomas J. “Stone-
wall” Jackson. On Feb. 20, 1847, during the
Mexican War, 2nd Lt. Sturgis of the 1st U.S.
Dragoons was captured leading a reconnaissance
of Buena Vista and held for eight days. The Kiowas
and Comanches he claimed to have subdued as a
1st U.S. Cavalry captain in 1860 remained troublesome
through the 1870s. Sturgis rose steadily through the ranks
during the Civil War, serving capably at the 1862 Battles of
Antietam and Fredericksburg. But at Brice’s Crossroads in
Mississippi on June 10, 1864, when he pitted his half-starved
soldiers against the redoubtable cavalry of Confederate Maj.
Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Brevet Brig. Gen. Sturgis lost his
supply train, 16 cannons and some 1,600 prisoners—to a force
nearly half the size of his own. Slanderers charged Sturgis had
been drunk, a charge his junior officers refuted. While an Army
board of inquiry declined to reprimand him (West
Pointers take care of their own), Sturgis was trans-
ferred to desk duty, “awaiting orders,” for the rest
of the war. He received a promotion to brevet
major general in 1865.
Meanwhile, Custer, who graduated last in his
class at West Point in 1861, had risen rapidly to
the rank of brevet brigadier general and helped
save the Union at Gettysburg in 1863, thwarting
Confederate Maj. Gen. Jeb Stuart’s charge against
Cemetery Ridge in one of the hardest-fought cav-alry clashes of the war. (One of Custer’s Michigan troopers
mortally wounded Stuart at the May 11, 1864, Battle of Yellow
Tavern in Virginia.) Custer ultimately helped cut off
Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s April 1865
retreat from Appomattox Court House, prompting
Lee to surrender his Army of Northern Virginia.
Like Sturgis, Custer ended the war as a brevet
major general.
Following the war Custer was assigned to
reconstruction duties in Texas before heading
west in 1866, having been appointed lieutenant
colonel of the newly formed 7th Cavalry. Stur-
gis remained on administrative duties, mostly
in St. Louis, until given nominal command of
the 7th Cavalry on May 6, 1869. But it was Custer
who led the regiment in the field.Undoubtedly still grieving the May 8, 1875, death
of toddler son Thomas to illness, Sturgis likely experienced
foreboding that June on having his eldest son, James, assigned
to the 7th Cavalry as a second lieutenant. “I well remember
when we were all in line to receive our instructions,” recalled
Private William Slaper, a recruit at Jefferson Barracks that fall.
“General Sturgis told us he was going to send his son with us
to the 7th Cavalry and for us to take good care of him—which
we gladly promised to do. Poor Jack! His service was a short
one after that. He was killed with Custer’s com-
mand in the Little Bighorn fight, and his body was
one of those never found—at least, not recognized
when we buried the dead.”
Lieutenant Sturgis was one of six or seven men
(including the three West Point officers) with Cus-
ter’s five doomed companies whose remains were
never identified. His severed head may well have
been among those found in the village. The prac-
tice was not unknown on the Plains. In historic
times many tribes subsisted in place on farmingPosthumous Attack
“He was tyrannical
and had no regard for
the soldiers under him,”
Sturgis wrote of Custer.Frederick BenteenMarcus Reno