Custer violated nearly every rule of warfare and got what he deserved. His arrogance finally caught up with him.
That’s utterly uneducated. He made one mistake and underestimated the size of the enemy force. That’s it.
He was a classic aggressive cavalry leader. In several Civil War battles his aggressive leadership carried the day. At Gettysburg, his battles at Cavalry Field likely saved the Union. Without Custer and his Wolverines, JEB Stewart would have hit the Union from behind about the time of Pickett’s Charge.
He very likely saved the union. US Grant personally gifted him the table that he and Lee used at Appomattox.
The plan he used at Little Bighorn worked at the Washita River before.
He was a brave skilled man and his luck ran out one day.
You are buying that revisionist 60s crap. He was a hero, he ran up against a very tough enemy in numbers that caught him off guard. And it’s likely you aren’t fit to shine his boots.
“Custer violated nearly every rule of warfare and got what he deserved. His arrogance finally caught up with him.”
At the behest of the Union Government.
I believe he graduated last in his class at West Point.
He had Presidential ambitions.
Turns out that finishing dead last in your graduating class at West Point really does matter ... who knew?
Not only that, but he broke an earlier oath to the Lakota, that he would never take up arms against them.
Not only that, but he broke an earlier oath to the Lakota, that he would never take up arms against them.
Custer was not the evil man portrayed in films and later write ups. at the Washita he was under orders from Gen Sheridan to attack the tribes who had been raiding in Kansas. His Osage scouts followed their trail through the snow right to the Washita. The Osages were the ones who killed women and children.
https://www.nps.gov/waba/learn/historyculture/osage-scouts.htm
“According to Ben Clark, Custer’s head scout, the blame for the killing and mutilation of Cheyenne women and children at the Battle of the Washita lay squarely upon the Osage scouts because of past atrocities committed against them by the Cheyenne. Custer ordered Clark to stop the killing. The Osage then grabbed tree branches and bushes and beat the fleeing women and children back into the camp.”
The tribe was not on their reservation as it was farther north east in the Cherokee lands, not the Chocktaw Chikasaw lands. They got that area several years later but not in 1868. The bodies of captives Clara Blinn and her son were found near there.