Handout for Docents, "Mrs. General Custer"

 

“Mrs. General Custer”: Elizabeth Clift Bacon Custer to the Rescue

Elizabeth Bacon, granddaughter of Abel Page of Rutland, Vermont, was born in Monroe, Michigan, in 1842. Beautiful and intelligent, she graduated at the head of her girls’ seminary class in June 1862, and that autumn, she met a young soldier in the Union Army of the Civil War, George Amstrong Custer. The two connected right away, but Libie’s father refused to allow Custer into the Bacon home – he was from a poor family. But Custer was promoted to Brevet Brigadier just before the Battle of Gettysburg (where he won further acclaim) and Judge Bacon finally agreed to their marriage (Feb. 9, 1864).

The couple’s correspondence reveals the intensity of their relationship, along with a great deal of sexuality. And Libbie determinedly joined her husband as the army took him West after the Civil War, where his rank reverted to the Regular Army one of Lieutenant Colonel. So attached were the two that at one point George left the field of battle to be with his wife, adding a court martial to his uneven record.

The 1876 campaign against the Sioux could have rescued Custer’s career, but instead, his disastrous charge of the Seventh Cavalry against Sitting Bull, Crazy Hose, the Sioux, and the Northern Cheyenne – just as the tribal leaders had been willing to negotiate – ended with disaster, humiliation, and George’s death.

Libbie couldn’t bear the way the press and President Ulysses Grant blamed her husband, so she created her own campaign to rescue his reputation. She signed up with the lecture agents and toured the country, giving speeches. Her three books, Boots and Saddles, (1885), Following the Guidon (1890), and Tenting on the Plains, (1893) were brilliant pieces of propaganda aimed at glorifying her dead husband’s memory. And she was so successful in this that not only did she live in great comfort as a wealthy widow, supported by her literary efforts, but she confused American history of “Custer’s Last Stand” for as much as another hundred years.

Libbie’s biography Shirley A. Leckie gave evidence* of how effective Libbie could be in other areas, too, in describing her midlife summers spent at Onteora, New York, with a community of writers and artists in the Catskills. Duringn this time, Libbie made a visit to Saranac Lake and met there the great author Robert Louis Stevenson. She took him to task for not putting “a real woman” into his stories, a woman with depth. When Stevenson tried to claim he didn’t know enough about women, Libbie responded, “But you have some knowledge of women, surely! Why, you have been a married man these seven years!” Leckie says that Libbie continued, “The public expects it of you, and the feminine portion demands it! Come! When are we to be introduced to the Stevenson woman in fiction?” Stevenson’s serious promise to improve the women in his books was carried out, and Leckie cites the character of Catriona in David Balfour as being “attributed to the charming but tenacious Elizabeth Custer.”

Libbie’s visit to St. Johnsbury was courtesy of the St. Johnsbury Woman’s Club, a staunch ally of the Athenaeum’s role as library and cultural center.

[*Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth, by Shirley A. Leckie, 1993]

[from Boots and Saddles by Elizabeth Custer]

"...we gave ourselves the privilege of a swift gallop... ...I never noticed the surroundings until I found we were almost in the midst of an Indian village, quite hidden under the bluff. My heart literally stood still. I watched the general furtively. He was as usual perfectly unmoved, and yet he well knew that this was the country where it was hardly considered that the Indian was overburdened with hospitality. ...
The next day the general thought I might rather not go with him than run the risk of such frights; but I well knew there was something far worse than fears for my own personal safety. It is infinitely worse to be left behind, a prey to all the horrors of imagining what may be happening to one we love. You eat your heart slowly out with such anxiety, and to endure such suspense is simply the hardest of all trials that come to the soldier's wife."

[more from Boots and Saddles, pp. 68-69]

It became the delight of my husband and the officers to chaff me about “Old Nutriment” [the soldier Burkman who took care of their horses – he had been coughing violently and Libbie took charge of his care], for such was the sobriquet they gave him, At last, even Mary began to narrate how he swept everything before him with voracious, convalescent appetite. “Why, Miss Libbie,” she said to me one day, “I thought I’d try him with a can of raw tomatoes, and set them before him, asking him if he was fond of them. And he just drawled out, ‘Always was,’ and the tomatores were gone in no time. His laconic answer passed into a proverb with us all, when invited to partake of anything we liked. …

            I had made some scarlet flannel shirts for my husband’s use on the summer campaign, and he was as much pleased as possible, beginning at once to wear them. Not many days’ march proved to me what an error I had made. The bright red color could be seen for miles, when the form itself was almost lost on the horizon. I had to coax to get them away again and replace them with the dark blue that he usually wore. Though I triumphed, I was met with a perfect fusillade of teasing when I presented the red shirts to Burkman. The officers, of course, hearing all the discussion over the subject – as no trifle was too small to interest us in one another’s affairs – attacked me at once. If I had been so anxious to protect the general from wearing anything that would attract the far-seeing eye of the vigilant Indian on the coming campaign, why should I be so willing  to sacrifice the life of “Old Nutriment”? They made no impression on me, however, for they knew as well as I did that the soldier, though so faithful, was not made of that stuff that seeks to lead a Balaklava charge.

            My husband and I were so attached to him, and appreciated so deeply his fidelity, we could not that the good-fortune enough that gave us one so loyal to our interests.

biographer Shirley A. Leckie’s comment about Elizabeth’s writing: “In short, by publishing her well-written book on her private life with ‘my husband,’ Elizabeth expanded her personal influence and infused her domestic role with power.”