Hergt
Private
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2011
- Location
- Troy, Michigan
Thread: Is George Armstrong Custer under appreciated as a cavalry commander.
To me the title of the thread does not limit the converstaion to just the eastern theatre of the ACW, but his whole career. To study & claim a man as brilliant or as good as Murat and then gleefully ignore his greatest failures seems... well odd to put it politely.
If I was going into a fight and had my choice of US Cav officers of the ACW of General rank I think I would grab Upton to command the Division w/ Wilson, Buford & Minty as Brigade commanders. If I was given Custer I would put him under Minty where I think Minty could use his aggresion and flair for the dramatic to good effect... as well as keep him under tight rhein.
"Of course, Custer will always be most remembered for the day on the Little Big Horn when his eye for the battlefield and his tactical instincts failed him. But that was a different day and a different enemy. Any balanced appraisal of Custer as a soldier must remember what he did in March, 1865."
I would simply say that any balanced appraisal of Custer as a soldier must remember what he failed as much as what he accomplished and in the balance I do believe Custer was weighed, measured and found wanting by some of the finest Cav to ever grace this continent. Nuff said. If I were to study an ACW General for tactical accumen it would not be Custer. Upton & Wilson w/ perhaps Greirson would be on my list for the US. Hampton, Stuart & Forrest would lead the pack for the CS.
I may perhaps be being unfair but IMO by March of 1865 AoP vs CS forces were much like Pattons men facing off against the remains of the Wermacht in March 1945. While still very dangerous they were not the terrifyingly lethal adversaries of 2 years earlier, for most of the same reasons.
IMO one of the measures of good Cav is rapid sweeping movements that can have multiple impacts/effects upon a foe. Something which IMO Wilson & Upton managed during the Selma campaign, Greirson in 1863 Mississippi etc. Stuart was quite adept at such, Hampton not so much but Forrest was an absolute genius in making his enemy wonder where in hell he was.
When I started the thread I thought a discussion of the Indian Wars particularly Little Bighorn would lead nowhere as too little is known about what actually occurred. This is not to say there have not been persuasive reconstructions but it is the smallest unknown detail that sometimes can change the case. In any event I limited this thread to the Civil War because that was the venue in which he earned his reputation. I feel his reputation has been unfairly taken from him. Rather than credit the Indians for the victory, Custer had to be denigrated to account for the loss. It is my understanding that Indians rarely fought when their village was attacked by the army, and that it was Custer’s plan not to have a pitched battle with them but to isolate the woman and children and thereby force the men to surrender. This worked for him at Washita but did not at Little Bighorn. Later his reputation was further sullied and he has been turned into a sort of cartoon character as the sacrificial lamb to cleanse our conscience of ills we inflicted on the Indian.
For reason I discussed previously I believe Murat is an apt comparison. As you are aware to regain the throne of Naples, Murat met his own Little Bighorn when he tried to mimic Napoleon’s return from Elba. He took a gamble beyond what any reasonable general would do and ended up in front of a firing squad. Do we judge Murat as a Marshall of France by his failure as King of Naples? To judge civil war generals by their performance against the Indians just does not make sense to me. As you yourself have pointed out is was a much different war. I don’t know how easy it would be for any of the civil war leaders to have adjusted to this type of battle. I know Stuart as a young man did not meet with success against them, so it was a task that could elude otherwise brilliant commanders.
One quibble I have with you is that you are not consistent in your arguments. You praise Wilson for defeating a defenseless foe at the end of the war but then attempt to belittle Custer’s accomplishments with arguments that the Confederates were by then only a shadow of their former selves. Which is it?
One final question. You previously asked what battles Custer single handedly won. If that is the standard what battles did Upton, Wilson and Minty win single handedly? I still see you have no retort to the observation that Wilson tried to take credit for Yellow Tavern when it was Custer who made the tactical decision of how and where to attack.