Custers had a passionate relationship, historian says

Mar. 29—The woman behind Gen. George Armstrong Custer spent her life trying to rehabilitate her husband's image because she deeply loved him, said historian Bob Smith, curator of the First Infantry Division museum in a presentation for the Fort Riley Historical and Archaeological Society last week.

Smith began the presentation by saying that as an historian, Libby Bacon Custer is one of the historical figures he would have liked to sit and talk to over dinner.

"I think Libby is an interesting person," Smith said. "I don't know if I would have liked George all that well, because he was pretty bombastic and a very rash person in some of his characteristics."

Libby was born into a family house of wealth and influence. Her father, a prominent lawyer who became a Michigan state representative and probate judge forbid her from seeing George after the two met when at a Thanksgiving party in 1862 when George was a captain because the two were from two separate social circles and Libby's father had seen George stumble drunkenly through the streets of Monroe, Mich. However it was that party George fell in love with Libby.

"Custer, however, was up to the challenge," Smith said. "During his 1862 leave Custer began attending Monroe's Presbyterian Church sitting in a pew near her so he could watch her. Between Christmas and New Year's, Custer proposed marriage, but Libby responded that it was impossible, as her father had become aware of the relationship and was adamantly opposed to the match."

In April 1963 Custer became George McCelland's aide and his actions in the field led to a rapid rise in rank. By late June, he was promoted to brigadier general.

"WIth Custer now a general, Libby's father relented and consented to Libby's marriage," Smith said.

Their marriage was a grand ceremony with Custer's entire staff in attendance, with Libby wearing a dress of mist-green silk trimmed in cavalry yellow as her wedding dress. On their honeymoon, which included a stop at West Point Academy, she received a kiss from one of Custer's professors that enraged Custer.

"It took her a day to calm him down after this innocent kiss by one of the professors," Smith said.

Through the war, Libby was at her husband's side at his headquarters in the field while he commanded the calvary. Because she spent a lot of time with George in the field she even had her own feminized military uniform.

Custer ended the war as major general, but peace after the war "was difficult for Custer," Smith said. He struggled because although soldiers fought bravely, were very patriotic and proud of their commander during the war, that wasn't the case in peace time. Made up mostly of Irish and German immigrants — many of whom couldn't even speak English — desertions were high in the Army following the war because soldiers were very disillusioned. Custer would often threaten to shoot soldiers on sight if he ever found them after they deserted, and even then that was frowned upon, Smith said.

Custer was stationed at posts in Texas and Louisiana before the two came to Fort Riley in the autumn of 1866. She was surprised to find the post wasn't the bastions of masonry that were found in the forts in the east, but rather, a couple sets of officers' quarters surrounded by a parade field with hostile forces all around them

"You can almost read her saying, 'George, why did you bring me here?" Smith said. "But it appears that Libby here at Fort Riley was rather pleased with the post's accommodations, writing to friends that 'We are living almost in luxury. It appears that life in the Army is not so rough.'"

It was at Fort Riley that Custer would be court-martialed for leaving his command over forces in western Kansas, which he did to check on Libby's safety when there was a cholera outbreak.

"He rode three horses to death to do it," Smith said.

Custer was found guilty of three of the six counts he was charged with, suspended from his rank for a year; but he was reinstated largely thanks to his friendship with Philip Sheridan, who convinced Ulysses S. Grant, who Chief of the Army at the time, to reinstate him

Custer took part in the campaign that forced the southern Cheyanne into reservations and in the early 1870s and in the 1972 they went north to the Dakotas, first to protect the railroads; and later led an expedition into the Black Hills where they found gold — which ultimately led to his demise.

Following his death at the Battle of Little BigHorn in 1876, Libby suddenly found herself a widow at only 34.

"Libby at this time related that even before she had recovered from the shock, she realized she was no longer in the Army," Smith said. She had to give up her home, and now she was expected to live her life on an officer's pension of $30 a month."

Libby never remarried and devoted her life to keeping her husband's memory before the American public. Part of this was a practical decision — she found a way to make a living in writing and talking about her husband to an audience that had "an insatiable appetite" for stories from the western frontier, Smith said; but it's also because she deeply loved the man and wanted to rehabilitate his image. Grant and other Army officials blamed the massacre on Custer's ego and inability to follow orders.

Although there were rumors that Libby had eyes for others, Smith said that was mostly brought on by Custer's jealousy, not on anything that was there.

"The relationship between Libby and her husband has been described by biographers as tempestuous and passionate," Smith said. "Custer's and Libby's letters were rather explicit — and I mean explicit — and not ones you would expect from Victorian times."

Smith would not share any passages from those letters, but he said they're out there and he encouraged everyone to "check out those letters."

When asked late in life she had any regrets, Libby responded that her only regret is that she did not have a child to carry on Custer's name, and that is "very telling," Smith said.