An e-newsletter announcing the upcoming launch of the Elizabeth Custer book entitled None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead will be sent out tomorrow morning. I’ll be in Missouri by the time the particulars of the tome reach readers, which is just as well because I’ve done nothing but worry about the material for months now. I’ve spent years working on the book and enjoyed getting to know Elizabeth Custer. It was amusing to learn how unimpressed she was with the Boy General when she first met him. “I don’t care for him except as an escort,” she wrote one of her friends. “He just passed the house and I couldn’t forbear making a sketch of him for you.” Of course, her feelings changed as time went on. Elizabeth was a great champion of his always, but I believe George did break her heart on more than one occasion. As I mentioned, I won’t be in my office this week to receive any comments that might come in about the book. I’ll be in Missouri visiting family and sorting through the most recent information discovered about my brother. After more than six years, people are coming forward to say what they know. It grieves me that this news has come so late, but most everything about this situation has grieved me. It will ultimately help Rick and that’s the goal. My heart rejoices in the information while my mind is thinking, “My Heavenly Father, what evil people there are in this world. What kind of mind could construct such lies and continue on?” T.S. Eliot has the answer. “Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm – but the harm does not interest them.” I believe those that have caused such harm will be interested enough in the weeks to come. I believe Elizabeth Custer felt the same way about the women she knew George had been involved. Those ladies didn’t mean to do harm – but the harm did not interest them. Elizabeth made sure that at the very least it made them uncomfortable. I hope for that concerning my brother – a good man in a cell suffering with tremors brought on by Parkinson’s, brought on by a violent act that left him near dead. But wait…I almost forgot…there’s no interest in the harm they do. I shall try to avoid these soulless creatures the entire time I’m the area. It’s what Elizabeth would have done and I think it was a wise decision. Please do let me know your thoughts about the upcoming title I’d like to hear from you. My email address is gvcenss@aol.com And please give a listen to the interview I did for the syndicated radio show Chronicle of the Old West about the Elizabeth Custer book. You can access the show on the home page of my site.
Journal Notes
Even at the Point of Dying
The release of the Elizabeth Custer book is a month away. I’ve been rereading her journal entries and have grown to like her even more than I already had. She was fearless, but she did worry that after she died no one would be able to answer malignant tongues who would defame her husband, George. Living, she could confront them with documentary vindication. After George’s death in 1876, Elizabeth was in high demand to speak at women’s clubs, historical society meetings, etc… She never passed up a chance to defend her husband’s actions and motives in precipitating the last major Indian battle on the frontier. Elizabeth stood up for George for 56 years. After all his critics were either imprisoned or had died off, Elizabeth was still there as his champion. I think her travels and speaking engagements were a sophisticated version of Wyatt Earp’s vendetta ride. Seventy-eight years after Elizabeth’s passing her voice can still be heard telling the world that George was wronged and falsely accused. Good for you, Elizabeth. Justice does come. It may take awhile, but it comes. As the Roman philosopher, Seneca once said, “Injustice never rules forever.” Like Elizabeth, I’m counting on that.
That Pioneer Spirit
Being snowed in for two days without power gives one a great deal of time to reflect. Mostly I reflected on the fact that I don’t care much for being snowed in with no power. I hope the worst of the winter weather is behind us. I admire the pioneers who made the journey west to settle in a new land. I do not possess the pioneering spirit. There’s nothing I want badly enough that would prompt me to brave below freezing temperatures and forego a nice, hot pizza. My idea of roughing it is a day without cable. I did spend some time thinking about the brave pioneering women and the role they played in settling the wild frontier. Prior to writing books about women of the Old West, I thought females on the frontier fell into two categories. They were either much like the character of Miss Kitty from the Gunsmoke series or Laura Engel’s from Little House on the Prairie. I was wrong. Indeed, there were the bonneted hard working women who stood at sunset etched in bold relief against the prairie, and there were frolicsome harlots, splendid in lace and fancy goods, able to please for a dollar or love for nothing if the right man came along. However, what did the average pioneer woman do? They gathered dried buffalo chips to make fires with when timber was scarce. They helped plant crops and repair leaks on the sod roofs. They made soap, started libraries, and kept locust at bay. They kept journals and wrote about they journey. They marveled at the scenery and noted in detail the character of their traveling companions. They described what was worn, what was said, and what was accomplished. They rejoiced in births, and mourned the dead. They started churches and schools, hauled clothing to streams to be washed, helped fight off dysentery, typhus, and cholera. Many women found they were masters in crop raising, bone setting, and delivering children. They organized socials, planned weddings, cared for their infants, and prepared three meals a day. By 1890, women worked in 216 of the 300 occupations listed by the Federal Office of Opportunity. If they were widowed, they homesteaded themselves. It would be impossible to list the complete diversity of women’s experience in the West. Suffice it to say, she was tough, stubborn, and could endure anything, particularly the weather – especially the snow. It always snowed and rained on wagons and tents. Rainstorms would travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds, for the opportunity to rain and snow on a wagon or tent. I wouldn’t have liked being a pioneer. I fell asleep at my desk once – that‘s the limit of my pioneering spirit. Think I’ll just spend the day writing about women who had the qualities I clearly lack.
Elizabeth Custer and Vengence
The last letter Elizabeth sent George was written on June 22, 1876 from Abraham Lincoln in the Dakota Territory. “My own darling,” she began, “I dreamed of you as I knew I should. Col. P. has sent word by scouts that the Post is to be attacked. I don’t feel alarmed, because we have so cool and cautious a commanding officer. He is vigilance itself. I am getting this off by tomorrow’s mail to Buford, Ohio. Oh, Autie how I feel about your going away so long without our hearing. …Your safety is ever in my mind. My thoughts, my dreams, my prayers, are all for you. God bless and keep my darling. Ever your own, Libbie.” According to her journal, Elizabeth was extremely bitter about the way Custer died. She blamed his fellow officers for leaving him and his men alone with no support. She ached for revenge. She was smart enough to temper if with common sense. If I had to be honest, the fact that she’d had a loved one taken from her by people who seemed not to care about the pain they inflicted and was vocal about their lack of compassion, was one of the things that attracted me to her story the most. Somehow she knew the parties she believed were responsible for letting her husband die would be punished. There were days when she was preoccupied with how to make them pay quickly. In the end she subscribed to a few principles I’d like to employ. They are as follows: “Delay in vengeance gives a heavier blow”, and “Revenge is a confession of pain.” I’ve just returned from the prison where my brother is located. He shakes so badly because of the Parkinsons it’s hard to talk to him about anything without crying. I left there overwhelmed with animosity and a strong desire to enact my own brand of justice on the truly unfeeling and sanctimonious four who brought all this pain into being. Once again I was reminded that’s not my place. Reading through Elizabeth’s journal reminded me of that fact. She was a strong believer in God. God asked us to forgive others who have so cruelly hurt us. When you forgive someone, you are not saying that what they did was right or even okay. You are saying that you want to be free from the memory and the bondage associated with the past. Unforgiveness has affected my prayer life. It affected Elizabeth’s prayer life. In His way and in His timing God will deal with those who have hurt us. Our responsibility is to forgive and let go of anything and everything that would prevent us from knowing God and walking in fellowship with Him each day. I don’t know that I would have been reminded of that over the last few days had I not been reading Elizabeth’s journal. It was a lesson I didn’t expect to find there.
Custer & the Search for a Father
Five years after George and Elizabeth Custer were married, George writes his wife from a location in the Wichita Mountains to share with her the trials of his command. The date was February 19, 1869. “My Darling…I have been very strict with the officers, have no favorites where duty is concerned. I have had Tom (George’s brother ) in arrest, also Y. The latter is “huffy” but I hope will soon get over it. Several officers refer to the pleasant times they have had at our house, masquerades, euchre parties and the like…. Oh, how I miss you.” In spite of the difficulties their marriage endure the couple remained devoted to one another. Rumors that George had fathered a child with another woman did not alter her attachment to him. She pressed ahead as though she never considered he could or would do such a thing. She was sure of how he felt about her and that’s all she concerned herself with. She knew he was a flirt and accepted that part of his personality. She could flirt with the best of them herself and made sure George saw the attraction other men had for her. It made him desperate to hold onto her regardless of the cost. There were no such thing as DNA testing at the time so proving any claim that he’d fathered a child with another woman was impossible in many respects to prove. I wonder how different their lives would have been had such technology been available. Not too long ago a young woman called me wanting information about my biological father. She had been told that she was his child. I could only give her information I had about his last location. I have, nor want a relationship with him. He left my brothers and I when we were quite young and never looked back. I phoned him seven years ago to ask him to help with the situation with my brother Rick. I was told then that he “had a family and we weren’t it.” And then he hung up on me. I don’t know whether the woman who contacted me ever got the answers she was looking for, but I hope she did. I think it must be an unsettling matter to not be sure of your parentage. It can be unsettling even when you do know too.
Libbie Custer & the Fight for Right
On this day more than one hundred and forty years ago, Elizabeth Custer was reading a letter her husband had written to her on their anniversary. Elizabeth was in Monroe, Michigan and George was with his troops thirty-five miles from Fort Cobb. “I have made a long march since writing you,” his letter began. We have been to try to bring in Indian villages. But our provisions became exhausted; there was no game…. General Sheridan and staff just rode up to my tent. He got here a day before us. I selected my campsite about a mile from him, then what does he do this morning but pick up his tents and come over beside me. He has done this before. Today is our wedding anniversary. I am sorry we cannot spend it together, but I shall celebrate it in my heart.” Elizabeth loved receiving letters from George. She poured over them repeatedly. He kept her well informed about his activities in the field and made her feel as though getting back to her again was his only reason for living. When he died on June 25, 1876, she not only lost her husband, but her best friend. A friend she would fight for until she passed from this life. Elizabeth studied what happened to George at the Little Bighorn and weighed it against the men involved in the battle and what she knew of them. She believed men like Frederick Benteen turned their back on the General and let him die rather than help him. She was steadfast in the truth she knew and never let Benteen or the others forget what they had done to George. Because of Elizabeth’s devotion, Benteen and fellow officer, Marcus Reno, never had a moment peace. She was relentless. Elizabeth Custer believed that injustice never rules forever. I feel the same way. You stand and stick by what you know is right and that’s just what I’m going to do with my brother. Even after he’s gone. Right will win out – and that’s a promise.
Romance & the Western
In mid-February 1872, George Custer was missing his wife terribly. He was in Kentucky and she was with family and friends shopping for clothes in Ohio. “I expect my Sunbeam is so deeply interested in the mysteries of clothes that all thoughts of her dear Bo are vanished. The little bouquet-holder you gave me stands before me holding a delicate pink rose with buds, and a spray of white flowers-reminding me of you.” At the conclusion of George’s note to his wife he wrote a short poem to her. “Love born only once in living, Truth that strengthens in the giving, Constancy beyond deceiving…” I think it’s safe to say that George loved his wife even though he had trouble at times with fidelity. And Elizabeth loved her husband and the romantic poems he penned. I never cared much for romantic poetry. With the exception of one witty rhyme, I don’t care much for poetry as a whole. Like Groucho Marx, “My favorite poem is the one that starts ‘Thirty days hath September’ because it actually tells you something.” I’m not crazy about the typical romance movie either. The dialogue never rings true. Some of the best romantic dialogue is found in a handful of my favorite westerns however. The dialogue in film Lone Star with Ava Gardner and Clark Gable is suggestive, but not verbose. For example, “Have you never heard of the word discretion, Mr. Jones?” Ava’s character asks Gable’s character, a man she finds quite attractive. “Oh, often. But I don’t approve of it. Do you?” In the film Many Rivers to Cross, actress Josephine Hutchinson describes her daughter’s feelings about the character actor Robert Taylor plays. “If he asked her to bring him the Ohio River in a saucepan, she’d do it.” I like the exchange between Henry Fonda and J. Farrell MacDonald about the woman Fonda’s character is in love with in the film My Darling Clementine. “Mack, you ever been in love?” Fonda playing Wyatt Earp asks. “No, I been a bartender all my life,” MacDonald’s character responds. And finally, the film The Naked Spur starring Madeleine Carroll and Preston Foster, has one of the best romantic lines of all time. “Do you love me,” Carroll’s character asks Foster’s character. “I might,” he replies, “but I don’t want to.”
Custer Honeymoon & Prison
On February 11, 1864, Judge Bacon wrote a short letter from Monroe Michigan to his nieces in Richmond, Virginia to tell them about his daughter, Elizabeth and her new husband, George Custer’s honeymoon schedule. “The wedding pair went from Cleveland to Buffalo thence to Rochester where they saw “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Then to Onandaga, to the home of my brother-in-law, husband of my sister Charity. On Sunday afternoon they went to church, but, the weather being inclement, Libbie wore her traveling suit. But it cleared off, and at afternoon church the new things were exhibited…very gratifying to her friends (also to her Mother when she read about it). All the fixings were examined, and from the “Oh’s” and “Exquisites” in the letters I judge the friends were pleased (with her new wardrobe). Their time was divided between the Smiths and Dr. J’s, and at each they were feasted on turkey and sugar-coated cake. On Monday morning they left for Howlett’s Hill, but before train time the wardrobe was displayed to friends and relatives who had not seen it. At the height of the exhibition the porter called for their baggage, and all hands fell to packing. Armstrong among the number. He got entangled in a hoop skirt, whereon Amelia called “Surrender!”…” Judge Bacon missed his only child terrible after she married and moved away. No matter what he tried to do, he keenly felt her absence and envied George Custer’s time with her. I’m trying desperately to allow God to take away all bitterness from my heart over my brother’s absence. I continue to miss him terribly. I feel it more so now because I will be making a trip to see him soon. I don’t relish seeing the way he’s changed. His face is large, bloated from the medication, he has no teeth, and he shakes all the time from Parkinsons. I envy Judge Bacon because he knew his daughter would come home to him. I do not have the same hope about Rick.
Elizabeth Custer & the Wedding
The Elizabeth Custer book Howard Kazanjian and I wrote entitled None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead will be in bookstores everywhere in May. In preparation for the release of this title I am going to chronicle what George and Elizabeth Custer were doing at this time in 1864. Fortunately, Elizabeth kept a journal and the letters George wrote survived the years, so keeping track of what they were doing some 147 years ago is easy to find out. The two were married on February 9, 1864. Elizabeth’s father wasn’t sure at first that George was the perfect man for his daughter, but as time went on he grew to appreciate the brash, young Civil War hero. Judge Bacon, Elizabeth’s father, wrote a friend about the ceremony and how he was dealing with losing his only child. “On Tuesday evening Libbie was married. All went off remarkably well, and no mistake made. It was said to be the most splendid wedding ever seen in the State. From one to two hundred more in the church than ever before and as many unable to enter for want of room. The number at our house afterwards estimated at three-hundred. I did not act the babe as I had feared I might at parting, for I had schooled myself beforehand. None of us slept that first night, fearing burglars, by yesterday I placed the silver in the Bank, and we went to bed at seven to make up for lost sleep. My wife looks well. Everybody said the house and fixings were all right, and the entertainment elegant.” Judge Bacon and his wife gave the newlyweds a Bible as a wedding gift. I believe that Bible is on display at the museum in Elizabeth’s home town of Monroe, Michigan. Elizabeth had two nieces that she was particular fond of and who helped take care of her in her old age. She was quite proud of them. Reading about their dedication to her made me think of my own nieces and how special they are to me. My niece Melissa suggested I write about the five of them instead of focusing on the sadness and loss in life. I think she’s right. It doesn’t seem possible that my nieces Melissa, Naomi, and Amanda could have children of their own now. My twin nieces, Taylor and Jordan are now Juniors in high school. I am proud of all of them and love them deeply. Elizabeth bragged that her nieces were “extraordinary women who far and away exceeded her dreams for them.” I look forward to saying the same about my girls.
Eliabeth Custer & Family
It wasn’t until I began working on the book about Elizabeth Custer that I knew how much she and George wanted a child. Elizabeth often wrote her husband about her desire to have a son or daughter. She reproached herself for not being able to get pregnant. George was sweet and reassured her that in time, they would be parents, but it never happened. As years past they grew to think that it was a blessing they couldn’t have children. The discomforts associated with childbirth and raising a baby in army life in the 1800s, and the many separations they endured helped to convince Elizabeth it was for the best. The couple was married for more than 12 years before George was killed at the Little Bighorn and although they were devoted to one another, I can’t help but wonder if their marriage might have been stronger if they’d been able to have a child. George had a bit of a roving eye – who knows if having an heir might have made him see things differently. Times were different in the Old West, but the desire to have a child at one time or another hasn’t seemed to dissipate as the centuries have rolled on. People long for a sense of family. I lost a child years ago and could never have any again after that. I always wonder how that would have changed my life and how it would have changed my ex-husband’s life if he had known. It doesn’t necessarily follow that your child will love you or be devoted to you I don’t suppose. I’ve seen enough of that in my lifetime to know that’s true. I never imagined children would make false accusation that would send a good man to his death. However, it happens all the time and recent news stories bear that out. It doesn’t stand to reason that those children will be quality individuals at all and not manipulate relatives with proclamations of “I love you and care about you” then announce “they are done trying to have a relationship with you.” Given all the horrible things, those children have done how could I have believed that anyway? (By the way, one of those grown children check this website daily). It doesn’t necessarily mean that people who have children are going to love their child either. My biological father left when I was seven and never looked back. He had a roving eye too and like George Custer, rumors that he had children with women other then his wife continue to swirl about. George’s nieces helped to take care of her in her old age. They were a great comfort to her and she remembered their faithfulness in her will. No matter how she reasoned the desire away, I believe Elizabeth would have preferred to have her own children around her. A physical presence to remind her of the love her and George shared. She spent a lifetime defending his reputation. It would have been nice to look on the faces of their offspring and see George in their eyes. I think that would have made her immensely happy.
