The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn

the Seventh.
    Custer then made a statement that was certain to destroy whatever harmony did exist among his officers. “I will be glad to listen to suggestions from any officer of the command,” he said, “if made in proper manner. But I want it distinctly understood that I shall allow no grumbling, and shall exact the strictest compliance with orders from everybody—not only mine, but with any order given by an officer to his subordinate. I don’t want it said of this regiment as a neighboring department commander said of another cavalry regiment that ‘It would be a good one if he could get rid of the old captains and let the lieutenants command the companies.’ ”
    There were only two officers about whom Custer could be speaking: Major Marcus Reno and the regiment’s senior captain, Frederick Benteen. Never one to back down from an encounter with his commander, Benteen asked Custer “who he meant by that remark about grumbling.” “I want the saddle to go just where it fits,” Custer replied. Benteen then asked if Custer “knew of any criticisms or grumbling from him.” “No, I never have,” Custer insisted, adding for good measure that “none of my remarks have been directed towards you.”
    This meant, of course, that Reno was the officer to whom Custer was referring. Before departing from the mouth of the Rosebud, Custer had disbanded the command structure he had established back at Fort Lincoln. Since all the companies were now reporting directly to Custer, Reno—formerly the leader of the Right Wing—no longer had any official responsibilities. Custer was doing everything in his power to ostracize and belittle the officer he had already vilified in his anonymous dispatch to the New York Herald .
    If Custer had hoped to build the morale of his junior officers by casting aspersions on Benteen (who had called his bluff) and Reno (who no longer cared enough to try), he had failed miserably. Throughout his speech that night, there had been none of the “brusque and aggressive” manner to which his officers had grown accustomed. “There was something akin to an appeal, as if depressed,” Lieutenant Godfrey wrote, “that made a deep impression on all present.”
    Once the meeting had broken up, four officers—Lieutenants Godfrey, McIntosh, Gibson, and George Wallace—walked together to their tents. The four of them proceeded in silence until Wallace, a six-foot four-inch South Carolinian who weighed just 135 pounds, said, “Godfrey, I believe General Custer is going to be killed.”
    “Why, Wallace,” Godfrey asked, “what makes you think so?”
    “Because I have never heard Custer talk in that way before.”

    T he next morning, Custer added to Benteen’s already sour mood by putting him in charge of the three companies that were to guard the pack train. General Crook may have perfected the use of mules in transporting provisions and ammunition, but Custer hadn’t a clue as to how to properly train the mules and tie and adjust the packs, and he wasn’t about to learn now. As a result, the pack train was and would continue to be part millstone, part sea anchor: an annoying and ultimately catastrophic drag on a regiment that was supposed to be a nimble and fast-moving attack force.
    It seemed as if the pack train could not proceed more than a few steps before sloppily tied packs began to spill from the mules’ sides, requiring that the train halt as the mules were laboriously repacked. After the first day, Custer must have begun to realize that given the realities of traveling with a pack train, at least this pack train, he might as well have brought along the Gatling guns, which could easily have kept up with this group of obstinate and poorly tended mules.
    In an attempt to improve the efficiency of the 175-mule pack train, Custer placed Lieutenant Edward Mathey in charge of its operations. Each of the twelve companies had a group of mules it was responsible for, and Custer ordered Mathey to report the three companies whose mules were “the most unmanageable in the regiment.” The next morning, those three companies were given the onerous duty of guarding the pack train, which meant that they must spend the day at the rear of the column, eating the dust of the entire command. On the morning of June 23, Benteen was notified that his company was one of the three worst. “I saluted the General,” Benteen recounted in his typically sardonic manner, “and awaited the opportunity