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None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead:  The Story of Elizabeth Bacon Custer

It was almost two in the morning, and Elizabeth Custer, the young wife of the famed “boy general” George, couldn’t sleep. The heat kept her awake—a sweltering intense heat that had overtaken Fort Lincoln in the Dakota Territory earlier that day. Even if the conditions had been more congenial, however, sleep would have eluded Elizabeth. The rumor that had swept through the army post around lunchtime disturbed her greatly, and, until this rumor was confirmed, she doubted that she’d be able to get a moment’s rest.

Elizabeth, or Libbie as her husband and friends called her, carried her petite, slender frame over to the window and gazed out at the night sky. It had been more than two weeks since she had said good-bye to her husband. She left him and his battalion a few miles outside the fort. George had orders from his superior officers in Washington, DC, to “round up the hostile Indians in the territory and bring about stability in the hills of Montana.” Elizabeth knew he would do everything in his power to fulfill his duty.

George and Elizabeth said their good-byes, and she headed back to the fort. As she rode away, she turned around for one last glance at General Custer’s column departing in the opposite direction. It was a splendid picture. The flags and pennons were flying, the men were waving, and even the horses seemed to be arching themselves to show how fine and fit they were. George rode to the top of the promontory and turned around, stood up in his stirrups, and waved his hat. They all started forward again and, in a few seconds, disappeared—horses, flags, men, and ammunition all on their way to the Little Bighorn River. That was the last time Elizabeth saw her husband alive.

Over and over again, she played out the events of the hot day that had made her restless. She and several other wives had been sitting on the porch of her quarters singing, reluctant for some inexplicable reason to go inside. All at once they noticed a group of soldiers congregating and talking excitedly. One of the Native scouts, a man named Horn Toad, ran to them and announced, “Custer killed. Whole command killed.” The women stared at Horn Toad in stunned silence. Finally, one of the wives asked the man how he knew that Custer was killed. He replied, “Speckled Cock, Indian scout, just come. Rode pony many miles. Pony tired. Indian tired. Say Custer shot himself at end. Say all dead.”

Elizabeth remembered George’s warning about trusting in rumors. She believed that there might have been a skirmish but felt it unlikely that an entire command could be wiped out. At that moment, she refused to believe George would ever dare die. She would wait for confirmation before she did anything else. Now, in her bedroom, listening to the chirping of the crickets and the howls of the coyotes, she sat up, wide awake, waiting.

The loud sound of boots tromping across the path toward her front door gave her a start. She hurried to the door and threw it open. Captain William S. McCaskey entered her home, holding his hat in his hands. He didn’t want to be there. Elizabeth looked at him with eyes pleading. “None wounded, none missing, all dead,” he sadly reported. Elizabeth stood frozen for a moment, unable to move, the color drained from her face.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Custer,” the captain sighed. “Do you need to sit down?”

Elizabeth blinked away the tears. “No,” she replied. “What about the other wives?”

“We’ll let them know of their husbands’ fates,” he assured her.

Despite the intense heat, Elizabeth was now shivering. She picked up a nearby wrap and draped it around her shoulders. Her hands were shaking. “I’m coming with you,” she said, choking back the tears. “As the wife of the post commander it’s my duty to go along with you when you tell the other . . . widows.” The captain didn’t argue with the bereaved woman. He knew there would be no point. Elizabeth Custer was as stubborn as her general husband—if not more so.

To learn more about the champion of the Seventh Cavalry read

None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead:  The Story of Elizabeth Bacon Custer

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None Wounded, None Missing, None Dead:  The Story of Elizabeth Bacon Custer

“Daughter, marrying into the army, you will be poor always; but I count it infinitely preferable to riches with inferior society.”  Judge Bacon to Elizabeth Custer – 1866

George Custer raced his stallion, Jack, at full speed over the limitless Alkali grass covered plateau miles away from the main entrance of Fort Riley, Kansas. The foam-flecked animal was inches behind Elizabeth and her fast horse, Custis Lee. Both riders urged their horses on to even greater speed, the cold wind biting at their smiling faces.

George steered his ride along the foot of a high hill. Abruptly reaching a steep decline, he brought his horse to a quick halt. Elizabeth, dressed in a black riding skirt, uniform jacket, and an Excelsior hat, and riding sidesaddle pulled further ahead of her husband. Quickly looking around, George turned Jack in the direction of a narrow trail through a flinty apron of rocks. He followed the crude path as it wound around the hill then suddenly dropped back down and came out the other side of the steep decline in front of Elizabeth. She waved playfully at him. The horses found their rhythm and broke into a smooth gallop. Elizabeth glanced over at George and giggled like a little girl. The two rode on towards a distant, tumbled pile of thunderheads, sooty black at their base and pure white as whipped cream where they towered against the dome of the sky.

They slowed their horses and stopped next to a cluster of rocks. George dismounted and helped Elizabeth down from her ride. Draping their arms around one another they stood quietly staring at the land stretched out before them. “The prairie was worth looking over,” Elizabeth noted in her memoirs, “because it changed like the sea.” “People thought of the deep-grass as brown, but in the spring, it could look almost anything else,” she added, “purple, or gold, or red, or any kind of blue. ₁ Often when cloud shadows crossed the long swells, the whole prairie stirred, and seemed to mold and flow, as if it breathed.” In late January 1867, the terrain the Custers admired was winter-defeated, lightless and without color.

George loosened the hold he had on Elizabeth and she noticed his expression changed subtly. As post commander he needed to return to his duties. The responsibilities of coordinating and training more than 960 enlisted men was daunting, but the 27-year-old was committed to the task. The occasional outing with Elizabeth gave him incentive to carry on and her a chance to explore the countryside, blissfully unaware of anything other than her husband. “It was delightful ground to ride over Fort Riley,” she remembered years later. “Ah! What happy days they were, for at that time I had not the slightest realization of what Indian warfare was, and consequently no dread.” ₂

To learn more about Elizabeth Custer and her life with General George Armstrong Custer read

None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead

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No Place for a Woman:  The Fight for Suffrage in the Wild West

The watershed year of 1848, in the strife-filled period before the American Civil War, saw the rise of women at Seneca Falls who declared that they were equal to men and not just worthy of the vote—deserving of it by the divine right of being human and citizens. Of course, while that organized group was determined to fight for the equality of women, they were fighting at a time when the equality of all people was the central question of the day. The denial of rights to women and blacks (freed and slave) was incongruous with the enlightenment ideals of democracy and the hopes of a new republic—but those in charge of the new republic were having a tough time seeing past the blinders of their race and sex.

During and immediately after the Civil War, many abolitionists and suffragists worked together toward the common goal of ending slavery, and in 1866, after the end of the war, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the American Equal Rights Association intending to continue the fight for voting and civil rights for all citizens.  That was when things got complicated.

As part of the process of reconstructing the Confederate states into the Union, Congress became absorbed in passing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, amendments that defined both who qualified for citizenship regardless of race and sex and that drew criteria for who could vote in elections. The interpretation of the language in both amendments drew challenges from all sides—and ultimately split the previously strong movement in favor of suffrage for all former slaves and women into factions who were in favor of the political expedience of allowing males of African descent the right to vote regardless of their previous state of servitude while letting women’s interest be pushed to the side.

But the split was more complicated than that. In the late 1860s, a further division erupted between women’s suffrage advocates after the Fourteenth and Fifteenth were the law of the land. The faction led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony favored taking swift action to enact national woman suffrage through yet another constitutional amendment. The faction led by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and Julia Ward Howe—once staunch allies of Stanton and Anthony in the struggle for suffrage and the end to slavery—favored using the clause of the Fifteenth that gave the states the right to decide who could vote. They wanted to approach the woman suffrage issue one state at a time.

To learn more about how women won the right to vote in the West read

No Place for a Woman

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No Place for a Woman:  The Fight for Suffrage in the Wild West.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who signed the first call for a woman’s rights convention in the United States, was born in Johnstown, New York, on November 12, 1815. She was the daughter of Judge Daniel Cady and Margaret Livingston Cady, both persons of exceptional educational refinement. As a child Elizabeth displayed unusual intelligence and began her education at Johnstown Academy. After finishing the coursework at her homeschool, she went to Mrs. Emma Willard’s seminary in Troy, New York, where she was graduated in 1822.

In 1839 she met Henry Brewster Stanton, an anti-slavery orator of some note, and in 1840 they were married. Immediately after their wedding they went to London where the international anti-slavery convention was to be held.

Mrs. Stanton was one of the delegates from America but was denied participation in the proceedings because she was a woman. While in London she met Lucretia Mott and with her signed the first call for a women’s rights convention. Returning to Boston, Mr. and Mrs. Stanton made their home there until Mr. Stanton was compelled to move to Seneca Falls, New York, because of his health. It was in Seneca Falls on the 19th and 20th of July 1848, in the Wesleyan chapel, that the first women’s rights convention was held. Mrs. Stanton was at the head of the movement at that time and, besides caring for the delegates, wrote the declaration of aims which became the subject of ridicule and jest throughout the United States.

From 1867 to 1874 she went from state to state campaigning for woman’s suffrage and became associated with numerous organizations having that end in view. She became a candidate for Congress from the Eighth New York District, having the support of the New York Herald. She became associated in the management of the resolution with Susan B. Anthony and was the joint author of many books on woman’s suffrage.

To learn more about how women won the right to vote in the West read

No Place for a Woman

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No Place for a Woman:  The Struggle for Suffrage in the Wild West.

Among the busy men sitting at rows of welding machines at the Standifer-Clarkson Shipyard in Vancouver, Washington, in 1917, were several equally busy women. All were dressed in drab gray or brown clothing, work boots, heavy, canvas aprons, and off-white, triangular scarves covered their heads. Sparks flew from the metal pieces being fused together to be used to build ships that would be dispatched to fight in the war in Europe. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in June 1914 propelled the major European military powers toward war. Gavrilo Princip, a Yugoslav nationalist, was responsible for Ferdinand’s death. His actions prompted Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia. European nations aligned themselves with the side of the argument they favored and fighting ensued for more than three years before the United States entered the conflict. Germany’s atrocities during this time forced the United States to declare war on the country in April 1917. Hundreds of thousands of American men were enlisted to fight, leaving numerous vacancies in the work force. Women were recruited to fill those positions. Some of those positions were in shipyards such as the Standifer-Clarkson Shipyard.

Despite the prevailing idea among traditionalists that women should stay out of the work force, World War I made the need for labor so urgent that women were hired in record numbers. In addition to taking jobs in department stores, railroads, and with the postal department, women answered the call to be employed as police officers, firefighters, munitions workers. By the spring of 1918, munitions factories were the largest employer of American women.

When it came to serving their country, women proved they were equal to men. The employment of women supported the war. Women worked not only as nurses but also as ambulance drivers, in steel mills, and in the textile industry. Women across the nation were doing their part to help. Although some political leaders recognized their contributions and were grateful, they still were not convinced granting women the vote was right for the country.

By the time the United States had entered World War I, all the western states had achieved women’s suffrage at some level, but securing the right for women to vote in every state continued to be a struggle. As a leader of the National Woman’s Party, Lucy Burns’ comments about that struggle were echoed by women everywhere. “It’s unthinkable that a national government which represents women should ignore the issue of the right of all women to be politically free,” Lucy noted. Regardless of the battle being fought abroad, key suffragist leaders such as Harriot Stanton Blatch, (daughter Elizabeth Cady Stanton), Alice Paul, and Lucy Burns believed women needed to continue to fight for their rights on the home front.

To learn more about the fight for the Nineteenth Amendment read

No Place for a Woman:  The Struggle for Suffrage in the Wild West

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No Place for a Woman:  The Fight for Suffrage in the Wild West

In 1911, actress, playwright, and “suffragette” Vida Sutton coined the term “suffragent.” A suffragent referred to a man who was big enough to see that women should be given the right to vote. “This type of man is one of the most powerful allies of the cause of women,” Vida explained to a reporter for the New York Times. “He not only does not hinder but does all that he can to help.”

From the time the woman suffrage movement was first launched in 1846, there were many prominent suffragents who played significant roles in helping women secure the right to vote.  At the urging of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, California senator Aaron Augustus Sargent introduced the first federal woman suffrage amendment in 1878. The amendment was reintroduced in every succeeding Congress until adopted in 1920. “I believe the time is rapidly coming when all men will conclude that it is no longer wise or judicious to exclude one half of the intelligence and more than one half of the virtue of the people from the ballot box,” Sargent remarked in April 1878.

San Francisco mayor Adolph Sutro echoed those sentiments in March 1896. “I believe equality is the basic principle of our government—hence women should assume all the responsibilities that arise out of her moral and mental endowments as a citizen,” Sutro told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Woman’s advent as a voter will be the means through which the government may be perpetuated, as embodying justice, equality, and righteousness.”

Frederick Douglass, American abolitionist, orator and lecturer, was present at the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention of 1848 and advocated for women’s rights along with abolition and the rights of African Americans. At a meeting of the National Council of Women in 1895, he reminded an enthusiastic crowd of what he had written about the issue in 1848. “A discussion of the rights of animals would be regarded with far more complacency by many of what are called the wise and the good of our land than would be a discussion of the rights of women. . . . We hold women to be justly entitled to all we claim for man.”

To learn more about how women won the right to vote in the West read

No Place for a Woman

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No Place for a Woman:  The Struggle for Suffrage in the Wild West

It was a typical Colorado October evening, one of those days when a promising crisp and sunny morning had turned dark and windy by late afternoon. In spite of the rain and bluster, however, a crowd was gathering in the Union Hall on Pearl Street to hear the legendary Susan B. Anthony address the subject of woman suffrage. It was 1877, and the creation of Colorado’s one-year-old state constitution was still fresh in its citizen’s memories. And both women and men were asking the question: Why shouldn’t Colorado follow Wyoming and Utah’s example and extend universal suffrage to the so-called “fairer sex?”

Anthony was, by that time, a veteran of the fight for women’s rights in the United States, a former champion of the abolitionist movement, and a fierce proponent of the right to vote for all citizens. In 1872, after the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, she and a group of her sisters and friends had registered to vote in Rochester, New York, arguing that the 14^th amendment gave them that right. The women were then arrested for casting their ballots. Anthony was held on $1000 bail and was then fined $100 for casting her vote. And Anthony was only one of the many women who had been fighting since the 1840s to have their voices heard. Across the country, women had been agitating for the vote and making allies of men. And in the West, at least, it seemed that men were listening. In Utah and Wyoming, the writers of the territorial constitutions had recognized the political expediency of enfranchisement for women, and in Colorado, the topic was ripe for debate.

Scarcely a month before Colorado officially became a state on August 1, 1876, the citizens of Denver had gathered for a grand 4^th of July celebration, an even that seemed especially significant in that centennial year. Parades and toasts included stirring words about the role of women in the state, and one speaker solemnly intoned, “May there yet be had a fuller recognition of her social influence, her legal identity and her political rights.” The pressure for the state to allow women the vote was growing.

In fact, as early as 1870, Territorial Governor Edward McCook had proposed the idea of following the example of Wyoming Territory and extending the full franchise to the women of Colorado. His efforts were rebuffed, but the notion had caught the attention of the men who were elected to take the state through the process of writing the constitution five years later. Delegates Henry P. Bromwell of Denver and Agipeto Vigil from Huerfano and Las Animas Counties proposed that equal suffrage be included in the state constitution, but were outvoted when the constitution came to a vote in 1876, limiting women’s right to vote to school elections.

The next year, however, a referendum on the issue went before the male voters of the state asking to grant the franchise to the women who worked and lived alongside them, and the historic move brought luminaries of the national suffrage movement to the Rocky Mountains. Henry Blackwell and Lucy Stone joined Susan B. Anthony in stumping across the state. Local suffragists such as Matilda Hindman and Margaret Campbell were joined by former territorial governor John Evans in encouraging their fellow Coloradans to vote yes on the measure that November.

To learn more about the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment read

No Place for a Woman:  The Struggle for Suffrage in the Wild West

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No Place for a Woman:  The Fight for Suffrage in the Wild West

When suffragist Susan B. Anthony boarded the passenger car of the Union Pacific Railroad in Ogden, Utah, in late December 1871, the train was filled to capacity. Men, women, children, livestock, baggage, and crates containing food and supplies were being loaded onto the vehicle bound for Chicago. Weary and carrying an oversized satchel bulging with clothing, books, and papers, the fifty-one-year-old woman climbed aboard and began the slow procession past the throngs of people occupying various seats and berths. She snaked her way toward the semi-private compartments until she found the one, she was to occupy for the duration of the trip. The pair Anthony would be traveling East with had already arrived and made themselves comfortable. She smiled at the congenial-looking couple as she entered. California congressman Aaron A. Sargent politely got to his feet to help her stow away her bag. He introduced himself, then introduced his accomplished wife, Ellen, to Anthony, who returned the kindness.

Not long after Anthony was settled, Ellen admitted to being familiar with her work. Anthony’s crusade to acquire the right to vote for women had been covered in the Sacramento newspapers as well as the publications in Nevada City, California, where the politician and his family lived. She had joined the fight for woman’s suffrage in 1852. Since that time, she had traveled from town to town, inspiring women to fight for equal rights. The crusade, which initially began in Seneca Falls in New York in 1840, had expanded westward. Once Wyoming granted women the privilege to cast their ballots, suffrage rose in territories beyond the Mississippi to battle for the opportunity to do the same. Crusaders reasoned if women could gain that right state by state the federal government would be persuaded to pass an amendment making it law.

From June to December of 1871, Anthony had traveled more than thirteen thousand miles, delivered 108 lectures, and attended close to two hundred rallies on the issue of woman’s suffrage. There were others such as Emily Pitts Stevens, who helped form the California Woman Suffrage Association, and physician and minister Anna Howard Shaw who had joined the fight and were hosting meetings to inform and educate women about the movement. It was essential that the message of equality be heard in every mining community, fishing village, and major city from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Women needed to be encouraged to petition for enfranchisement. They needed to be reminded they were entitled to speak for themselves and stand against fathers and husbands voting for them. Anthony and the other dedicated suffragists had been able to share the message with women in Kansas, Wyoming, Utah, Washington, and Oregon; they had great hope the ladies in California would back reform.

Anthony couldn’t have found a more receptive audience for her message than Congressman Sargent and his wife. Ellen had founded the first suffrage group in Nevada City, California, in 1869, and Aaron was in full support of giving women the vote. The Sargents had moved to California from Massachusetts in 1849 and settled in Nevada City in 1850. In addition to owning and operating the newspaper the Nevada Daily Journal, Aaron was an attorney and former U. S. senator. Ellen was a homemaker and mother who was active in the Methodist Church. She firmly believed that women could not attain their highest development until they “had the same large opportunities and the same large chances as her brothers have.”

To learn more about how women won the right to vote in the West read

No Place for a Woman: The Struggle for Suffrage in the Wild West

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No Place for a Woman:  The Fight for Suffrage in the Wild West.

On April 5, 1895, the lavish Grand Opera House in Salt Lake City was filled to overflowing with a host of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen. Women engaged in serious discussions outnumbered the men filtering into the building. Musicians in the orchestra pit serenaded the preoccupied crowd standing, talking, and preparing to sit upon rows of waiting chairs. As the clock approached two o’clock in the afternoon, more than a dozen women filtered on stage and took their places among the plush seats stationed in front of a magnificent, hand-painted drop curtain. Conversations quieted, and the room slowly came to order. When the music faded, Mrs. J. A. Froiseth called the meeting of suffragists in the Utah Territory to order. The following articles were read to the audience.

“Whereas, a convention is being held in this city for the purpose of framing a constitution for the proposed state of Utah, and; whereas, the question is being considered by said convention of incorporating in said constitution a provision for women suffrage, and; whereas, no opportunity has been afforded the women of this Territory to manifest their opinion upon the matter; and whereas, by the adoption of a plank of favor of woman suffrage in the platforms of both political parties, no opportunity was afforded to the citizens of this Territory to indicate their approval or disapproval of the proposition, and; whereas, it is conceded alike by the advocates and the opponents of woman suffrage that in all intellectual attributes and attainments the women are entitled to vote, and if this is true, then they possess the necessary intelligence and attainments to enable them to determine for themselves whether they desire this privilege, and they should be given the opportunity to decide this question for themselves.”

The crowd of onlookers cheered and applauded the articles read aloud. They waved their hands in the air approvingly and congratulated one another for their dedication to the cause. Someone shouted, “Give me suffrage or give me nothing.” That single voice then led many in a chant of “Give me suffrage or give me nothing!”

An enthusiastic supporter of the cause leapt to her feet and proclaimed, “The fight is still on!” Fellow believers praised the sentiment. “Ninety percent of the people hesitate to try the experiment these men would force upon us,” the spontaneous orator announced. “You who propose to vote against statehood make your voice heard now, with no uncertain sound. If we are to have equal suffrage, let us have it equal. Let the women serve on juries, let them work their poll tax on the roads, make them subject to military service, let them be drafted and enlisted in time of war, let them be equal in all things!”

More than twenty-five years prior to the enthusiastic gathering at the Grand Opera House where women argued for their right to vote, a somber group of leaders in the Utah Territorial Legislature quietly passed an act giving women that entitlement. Sarah Young, grandniece of settler and Mormon Church leader Brigham Young, became the first women to vote in the region. She voted in a municipal election on February 14, 1869.

To learn more about how women won the right to vote in the West read

No Place for a Woman

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No Place for a Woman:  The Fight for Suffrage in the Wild West

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who signed the first call for a woman’s rights convention in the United States, was born in Johnstown, New York, on November 12, 1815. She was the daughter of Judge Daniel Cady and Margaret Livingston Cady, both persons of exceptional educational refinement. As a child Elizabeth displayed unusual intelligence and began her education at Johnstown Academy. After finishing the coursework at her homeschool, she went to Mrs. Emma Willard’s seminary in Troy, New York, where she was graduated in 1822.

In 1839 she met Henry Brewster Stanton, an anti-slavery orator of some note, and in 1840 they were married. Immediately after their wedding they went to London where the international anti-slavery convention was to be held.

Mrs. Stanton was one of the delegates from America but was denied participation in the proceedings because she was a woman. While in London she met Lucretia Mott and with her signed the first call for a women’s rights convention. Returning to Boston, Mr. and Mrs. Stanton made their home there until Mr. Stanton was compelled to move to Seneca Falls, New York, because of his health. It was in Seneca Falls on the 19th and 20th of July 1848, in the Wesleyan chapel, that the first women’s rights convention was held. Mrs. Stanton was at the head of the movement at that time and, besides caring for the delegates, wrote the declaration of aims which became the subject of ridicule and jest throughout the United States.

From 1867 to 1874 she went from state to state campaigning for woman’s suffrage and became associated with numerous organizations having that end in view. She became a candidate for Congress from the Eighth New York District, having the support of the New York Herald. She became associated in the management of the resolution with Susan B. Anthony and was the joint author of many books on woman’s suffrage.

To learn more about how women won the right to vote in the West read

No Place for a Woman: The Struggle for Suffrage in the Wild West

Visit www.chrisenss.com to enter to win a copy of No Place for a Woman.