LOL! Maybe?
The pride of a soldier who was a glory boy reduced to the rank of Captain before given the Lt. Colonelcy of the 7th weighs much.
Add to that no promotion for 10 years and if you go back to that link, he had a fall in 1864 where his acquaintances state he was not the same afterwards (concussion? PTSD?) might explain his bizarre behavior during the Indian Wars.
Ironically, Wesley Merritt (USMA 1860) had a career that literally mirrored his, and was promoted to Colonel right after LBH. He whooped the Cheyenne at Warbonnet Creek less than a month after LBH and eventually became a Major General again before the Spanish American War.
I doubt Custer would have suffered the same patience for promotion.
“The pride of a soldier who was a glory boy reduced to the rank of Captain before given the Lt. Colonelcy of the 7th weighs much.”
But that was common. Remember, Custer’s CW promotions were brevets (very common during the CW), and after the war most of those breveted resumed their pre-brevet ranks.