George Armstrong Custer - West Point, New York
Posted by: 
BruceS
N 41° 24.005 W 073° 58.010
18T E 586363 N 4583686
Grave of George Armstrong Custer, Civil War general and Calvary commander who lost his life in the Indian Wars in the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
Waymark Code: WM4DPD
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 08/09/2008
Views: 148
"George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876) was a United
States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the
Indian Wars. At the start of the Civil War, Custer was a cadet at the United
States Military Academy at West Point, and his class's graduation was
accelerated so that they could enter the war. Custer graduated last in his
class. He served at the First Battle of Bull Run and was a staff officer for
Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan in the Army of the Potomac's 1862 Peninsula
Campaign. Early in the Gettysburg Campaign, Custer's association with cavalry
commander Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton earned him promotion from first lieutenant
to brigadier general of United States Volunteers at the age of 23
Custer established a reputation as an aggressive cavalry brigade commander
willing to take personal risks by leading his Michigan Brigade into battle, such
as the mounted charges at Hunterstown and East Cavalry Field at the Battle of
Gettysburg. In 1864, with the Cavalry Corps under the command of Maj. Gen.
Philip Sheridan, Custer led his "Wolverines", and later a division, through the
Overland Campaign, including the Battle of Trevilian Station, where Custer was
humiliated by having his division trains overrun and his personal baggage
captured by the Confederates. Custer and Sheridan defeated the Confederate army
of Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early in the Valley Campaigns of 1864. In 1865, Custer
played a key role in the Appomattox Campaign, with his division blocking Robert
E. Lee's retreat on its final day.
At the end of the Civil War (April 15, 1865), Custer was promoted to major
general of United States Volunteers.[1] In 1866, he was appointed to the regular
army position of lieutenant colonel of the 7th U.S. Cavalry and served in the
Indian Wars. He was defeated and killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in
1876, against a coalition of Native American tribes composed almost exclusively
of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors, and led by the Sioux chiefs Crazy
Horse and Gall and by the Hunkpapa seer and medicine man, Sitting Bull. This
confrontation has come to be popularly known in American history as Custer's
Last Stand." ~
Wikipedia
"He was originally buried at the Little Big Horn with his men, in a dual
grave with his brother, Tom. A year later an expedition was sent out to recover
the remains of the officers. Weather, Indians, and animals had disturbed the
graves, and there was great difficulty in identifying the sites. The first grave
thought to be Custer's contained a rotting uniform blouse with the name of a
Seventh Cavalry corporal. The one next to it contained only a skull, rib cage,
and femur, but the searchers decided those were Custer's and brought them back
to be reinterred at West Point. Some of the witnesses at the exhumation had
strong doubts about the accuracy of that identification, and the archeological
evidence seems to support their suspicions. The bones were reinterred in a
solemn ceremony in 1877, though the present memorial is not the one that
originally marked the grave. The pedestal currently on the site belonged to a
statue of Custer commissioned by Congress and erected in the cadet area in 1879.
Mrs. Custer was not consulted on the design and hated it, and many others also
objected to the swashbuckling pose. Eventually her campaign to have the statue
removed was successful, and in 1884 Secretary of war Robert Lincoln ordered that
action. After spending years in Quartermaster's storage at West Point, the
bronze figure was dismantled from the pedestal and sent to the John Williams
Foundry in New York City for modification. It has not been seen since. The
statue pedestal was placed on Custer's grave, and Mrs. Custer added an obelisk
to it in 1905. She died more than fifty years after her husband, defending his
reputation to her last breath, and is buried alongside. Perhaps only she really
knows whose bones are buried under that monument." ~
Online Tour West Point Cemetery