BRUCE A. ROSENBERG
Another Look at
George Armstrong Custer
Custer in the Civil War: His Unfinished Memoirs. Compiled and edited by
John M. Carroll. (San Rafael, CA:
Presidio Press, 1977. 233p.;
illustrations, bibliographic checklist,
index. $27.50.)
Centennial Campaign: The Sioux War of
1876. By John S. Gray. (Fort
Collins, CO: The Old Army Press, 1976.
392p.; bibliography, maps,
index. $20.00.)
Li/e in Custer's Ca\valr:
Diaries and Letters of Albert and Jennie Barnitz,
1867-1868. Edited by Robert M. Utley. (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1977. xiv +- 302p.;
illustrations, appendices, bibliography,
index. $15.00.)
More than a century ago "Custer
achieved an immortality," writes
Robert Utley, "that a dozen
brilliant victories could not have earned him,"
one of those truisms that is
incontestable because obvious. This perplexing
man, whom author John Carroll calls
"a great officer and leader of men,"
whom fellow officer Albert Barnitz
called "The most complete example of a
petty tyrant that I have ever
seen," is also justly appraised by Utley as a
"repository of a host of baffling
contradictions," a "paradoxical combina-
tion of virtue and vice." The
battle in which he lost his life, gloriously or
ignobly is uncertain, was relatively
small in scope and of itself minor. But it
has become the most popularly known
conflict in American history, the
subject of more than one thousand
paintings and illustrations, of more
than a score of movies, and of hundreds
of essays and books. The three
reviewed here are merely among the most
recent; they will not be the last.
One of the most cogent evidences of the
enduring fascination of Custer's
character and achievement is the
devotion afforded him by such men as
John Carroll, author and editor of nearly
a dozen books on his hero.
Carroll is an ardent champion of
Custeriana and a fervent apologist;
among the devotees in the Custer
cult-the Associates of The Little Big
Bruce A. Rosenberg is Professor of
English at Brown University.