Was George Custer as much a victim of a personality disorder as the Indians he was fighting? (You betcha.)
George Custer was a number of things. A glory hunter certainly but one of the outstanding commanders of mounted troops in US military history he was without doubt. As one with a pretty extensive Confederate ancestry and a very long Southern family history I am not given to loosely praising federal leaders in the War Between the States (or CSA leaders either for that matter. There were more than a few clinckers in the GO ranks of the CSA, Braxton Bragg foremost in that depressing cadre.) That said, George Custer was the true thing as a cavalry leader. When units he led attacked they hit with crushing force. If they were repulsed they made a fighting withdrawal and reformed to hit again. If they achieved success they never let go. Custer's cavalry actions are the embodiment of what the phrase ‘offensive exploitation’ means. As a battlefield leader I consider Custer and Wade Hampton (yes I know that is blasphemy to many Southrons) to be the two outstanding commanders in the Eastern Theater. Sheridan operated at a different level something like an army level operational commander.
On the plains Custer certainly had significant behavioral lapses. One, to his eternal discredit led to the destruction of Lt. Kidder's patrol. But again he and Carr were the two commanders who did find and defeat parties of hostiles. In this context I would rate Carr somewhat above Custer but finding and defeating a large hostile force in the dead of winter and escaping to tell the tale is no small achievement. Custer at the Big Horn was using his tried and true offensive template. Unfortunately he discarded the estimates of enemy force size from his scouts because the number were so large as to be exceeded only by the number of Indians that gathered for the signing of the Treaty of Ft. Laramie in some 25 years before.
To claim an officer has a ‘personality disorder’ because he is an aggressive battle captain is classic media BS. Custer may not have been a nice man according to today's PC mantras but one doesn't become a Major General at age 26 by being a fool or a head case.
Asking as the descendant of one of Custer’s scouts at the Washita River, was that a battle or a massacre in your opinion?
Don’t forget that the quality of his soldiers was also not high. They had nothing like the discipline, etc. of the Federals he commanded before.
Excellent analysis of Custer.
As his more recent biographer, Jeff Wert, put it, “He was a damn fine horse-soldier.”
Thanks for your comments on Custer. Modern historians have been misrepresenting him for years.
The Custer of the Civil War and the Custer of the Indian Wars seems to me to be two very different people. Men who served with him and loved him during the Civil War ended up hating his guts out West. His court martial in 1867 and his abandonment of Maj. Elliot at the Washita come to mind as two examples of actions that seem at odds with the Custer of the Civil War.
Was he a "head case?" Beats me. But when people who had known him for years turned against him that indicates something had definitely changed in the man.