Battle of Little Big Horn River

[g.willikers]

As per usual, most of the leaders of the Civil War were using tactics from an earlier era.
Mostly to the detriment of their troops.
If we're voting for best cavalry leader, mine goes to John Mosby.

 

[carbine85]

Quote:
...in spite of his self delusions, Custer was no Alexander
Notwithstanding his later grandstanding, Custer was one helluva Union cavalry commander...
arguably one of (if not) the best of the entire war on either side.

It is not for nothing that he was very specifically part of this group....
http://blog.encyclopediavirginia.org...pomattox-1.jpg

He was a madman who was willing to sacrifice many lives to get results. He screwed up big time at Little Big Horn by not following his own plan and he showed up late for the fight.

 

[MEHavey]

As to Mosby (whose Rose Hill Raid hangs on my dining room wall)...
http://www.oldgloryprints.com/Rose Hill Raid.htm

...he was a partisan ranger who never led many more than 100 men at a time over several days (if that long). True cavalry commanders led thousands -- and engaged in mass tactics. exceptional logistics, and long campaigns. Quite a difference.

And don't confuse Custer's later smaller-scale blunders/personal peccadilloes a decade after The War with his abilities during that War -- and who arguably saved George Meade's derriere during the third day by stopping Stuart cold from punching through Meade's center from the rear; killed Staurt at Yellow Tavern; and unarguably cut off Lee as he retreated out of Richmond -- and ended the War.

But I digress....

 

[bainter1212]

I think Custer's biggest blunder was simply a reconnaissance failure. There were literally thousands of warriors present (not to mention women and children and the elderly) at the Little Bighorn at that time. This number of warriors all together at one time was simply unprecedented.
Custer was either arrogant about the abilities of his forces or he simply was not aware of the sheer numbers.

 

[Bexar]

I think Custer's biggest blunder was simply a reconnaissance failure. There were literally thousands of warriors present (not to mention women and children and the elderly) at the Little Bighorn at that time. This number of warriors all together at one time was simply unprecedented.
Custer was either arrogant about the abilities of his forces or he simply was not aware of the sheer numbers.

I've read somewhere he didn't think the American Indians would stand and fight. He thought it would be more of a pursuit than an actual battle. He had the option to have several Gatling guns along with him but refused because he was concerned their bulk and maneuverability would slow his pursuit down. As mentioned earlier by another the rolling hills complicated communications and reconnaissance. Plus there was communication confusion and several officers actually loathed Custer.

Perhaps another gunner might know but I've also heard the carbines Custer's men were using would tear their cartridges upon extraction in the hot and dirty black-powder crudded up chambers.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Custer indeed believed the Indians would scatter like a covey of quail. That was the general belief in the Army.

There were three Army columns operating in the theater -- the 7th Cavalry, about 600 strong, Gibbon's "Montana Column," about 450 men, and Crook's Column with about 950 men, plus Indian allies.

Crook encountered the Indians first at the Battle of the Rosebud, on June 17th. He was fought to a standstill, and withdrew after the battle to care for his wounded. But Crook, who knew the Indians would fight, had no means of communicating with Terry (in overall command) or with Custer or Gibbon.

As a result, Custer still believed the Indians would run when he led the 7th Cavalry into battle on June 25th.

Analyzed by modern techniques, we would conclude Custer failed to synchronize his attack -- with 12 companies of cavalry, he never got more than three into action at one time.

By contrast, the surviving seven companies managed to hold their position well, and the Indians withdrew after failing to crack their defenses.

 

[Trunk Monkey]

Yet at the Reno Inquiry Benteen testified, "If there was a plan, it was never communicated to me."

This overlooks that Benteen had no use for Custer and likely told the story in a way that cast himself in the best possible light.

One of the best books I have read on the subject was A Terrible Glory , Custer and the Little Bighorn by James Donovan.

 

[Tommygunn]

Custer had his moments during the Civil War as a Cavalry officer. But a Nathan Bedford Forrest he was not.

Forrest was the best by a long country mile. Feared by every Yankee in the Union Army.

If Forrest had not gone on to help found the Ku Klux Klan perhaps his reputation would have survived untarnished and he'd be as remembered as George Armstrong Custer.

Seriously, yes, Forrest was a good leader ..... but the Yanks feared many Confederate Leaders .... so many West Pointers had gobe South to serve in the Confederacy, some people wanted to shut down West Point!!!

 

[BSA1]

Getting back to guns.

Bexar is correct. The fired cartridges would stick in the chamber as the gun got dirty effectively disabling it. A Captain in Reno's command organized the troopers to pass their jammed Trapdoors to him. He cleared the chamber with his knife then passed the gun back to the line. I want to say he received the Medal of Honor for his actions but don't have my resource material handy.

The Army has much to blame for this problem as it was well known and documented yet the Army Top Command did nothing to get better quality ammunition.

Another problem they are to blame for is the lack of firearms training the soldiers had. Soldiers were only authorized three rounds a month for training. There can be no doubt that marksmanship suffered as a result.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Benteen disobeyed Custer's orders, Reno became unnerved and gave confusing, conflicting orders, training and ammunition was ignored due to the budget. The Indians attack was unorganized. There was just to many of them and they had the advantage of the terrain.

Could a aggressive charge by horse mounted troopers changed the course of the battle and saved some of Custers command? Charging into larger enemy force was exactly what the role of the Calvary was trained to do.

 

[Bexar]

Custer's career was falling apart and this command was given to him after he was basically sent back home in disgrace for something else. He was one self-centered glory seeking existence that may have been seeking glory to impress his superiors. Therefore, he didn't want to share any of it with his fellow ranked officers. Vern H.'s response confirms to me Custer's motivations were exactly that. I'm not sure what the significance of his having family members with him. Perhaps he was trying to give them celebrity status also.

Custer fouled up...not only militarily but his personal ambitions cost hundreds their lives too. The proper military/cavalry tactics were known at the time...their limitations and their assets...I wonder if Custer knew the terrain and the fighting tactics on the frontier. Civil War strategies against units led by his fellow classmates may have befuddled him if he had been limited by practical experience and knowledge of not only his enemy...terrain and how to work with his fellow commanders in the Montana wilderness against enemy leadership that had fought in that terrain for generations and had not read the West Point textbooks.

 

[Leanwolf]

BSA1 - " ... The Army has much to blame for this problem as it was well known and documented yet the Army Top command did nothing to get better quality ammunition."

I seem to remember reading that the .45-70 Springfield ammunition that the Army was using at that time and was in use by the troopers at the battle was copper cased rather than brass. (???)

With heated chambers due to rapid firing, that would certainly cause the cases to swell to the point that the soft copper case heads would either pull off leaving the cases in the chambers, or would not extract at all.

BTW, the Indians called that area the Greasy Grass River.

L.W.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Quote:
Yet at the Reno Inquiry Benteen testified, "If there was a plan, it was never communicated to me."

This overlooks that Benteen had no use for Custer and likely told the story in a way that cast himself in the best possible light.

How does this overlook Benteen's dislike of Custer?

The "Bring Pacs" message clearly shows that Custer expected Benteen to following the regiment's trail and NOT moving away from the trail to form a third prong of his attack.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

A Captain in Reno's command organized the troopers to pass their jammed Trapdoors to him. He cleared the chamber with his knife then passed the gun back to the line.

That was Captain French. He chose to carry a .50-70 infantry rifle, which had a cleaning rod under the barrel and used that cleaning rod to clear stuck cases for his men.

The cavalry carbines did not have cleaning rods. The infantry rifles' cleaning rods were held in place by a cramp spring. The cavalry carbines were carried muzzle down, and the cleaning rods would have fallen out after a short bit of trotting. The next year, the Army began issuing a carbine with a butt trap containing a jointed cleaning rod.

The problem of stuck cases went away in 1980, when the Army switched to brass cases.

 

[Bexar]

Getting back to guns.

Bexar is correct. The fired cartridges would stick in the chamber as the gun got dirty effectively disabling it. A Captain in Reno's command organized the troopers to pass their jammed Trapdoors to him. He cleared the chamber with his knife then passed the gun back to the line. I want to say he received the Medal of Honor for his actions but don't have my resource material handy.

The Army has much to blame for this problem as it was well known and documented yet the Army Top Command did nothing to get better quality ammunition.

Another problem they are to blame for is the lack of firearms training the soldiers had. Soldiers were only authorized three rounds a month for training. There can be no doubt that marksmanship suffered as a result.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Benteen disobeyed Custer's orders, Reno became unnerved and gave confusing, conflicting orders, training and ammunition was ignored due to the budget. The Indians attack was unorganized. There was just to many of them and they had the advantage of the terrain.

Could a aggressive charge by horse mounted troopers changed the course of the battle and saved some of Custers command? Charging into larger enemy force was exactly what the role of the Calvary was trained to do.

Copper cased as opposed to brass cases. I didn't realize that about the Army command but that doesn't surprise me. SOD McNamera refused to chrome line the bores of the M-16 because it would add $1.50 to the cost of the rifles...even though he had been advised it would help prevent the jamming in the Southeast Asia environment.

 

[witchhunter]

Custer's unsatiable quest for personal glory is what finally led to the demise of the 7th. He was part of a 3 pronged attack that he wanted all of the glory from. He did not wait for Crook and Gibbon to arrive. He was warned by his scouts. He came upon the camp undetected, there was plenty of time. He was hated by his Captains, Benteen especially. Custer could have waited for Benteen to bring ammo as was bringing the pack train. (Benteen was assigned to pack train duty because he beat Custer at Poker) He could have brought a mountain Howitzer, but he thought it would slow him down and allow Crook to catch the Indians first. He made sure and brought a personal correspondent though, to further his ego with reports of the battle. He was disgraced by his actions against Black Kettle's band on the Wash ita River when he ordered Elliot to his death and refused to render aid while his main force was burning teepees and committing murder on peaceful indian women and children. His actions since the Civil War have been disgraceful, he should have been court martialed before he got his command slaughtered on the Greasy Grass River, June 25, 1876.

 

[Red Wind]

SOD McNamera refused to chrome line the bores of the M-16 because it would add $1.50 to the cost of the rifles...even though he had been advised it would help prevent the jamming in the Southeast Asia environment.
__________________

Please don't bring up Robert McNamara! My wife cursed his name every time I checked the Orderly Room Orders Message List in 1965 at Fort Bragg.

Even today, 50 long years later, he, McGeorge Bundy and LBJ are OL conversation.

 

[rcmodel]

Concerning the copper cartridge cases used in the Little Bighorn in 1876?

It was not an attempt at cheapness on the part of the Army.

It was an attempt at making a self contained metallic cartridge at the time.

They simply didn't have any way of doing it better yet.
But they kept trying.

http://www.oldammo.com/november04.htm

PS: I have also read that the Army only allotted 20 rounds per year per man for rifle practice at the time.
And most of that was shot up by forage hunters in the 1800's Kansas forts.

So, the average 7th. Calvary Trooper recruit at the battle may have never fired his rifle until under attack at the Little Bighorn!!

The other thing is, even brass cartridges were not infallible at that date, and offer broke off in the chamber.
So much so that broken case extractors were issued to troops clear up until WWII.

And even then, machine-gun crews still got them.

So, it is doubtful brass cases would have done any better at the time.
A stuck copper case can be dug out with a knife or knocked out with Caption French's cleaning rod.

A brass case broke in half in the chamber can't be

rc

 

[4v50 Gary]

I agree with Red Wind that N. B. Forrest was the best cavalry commander of the Civil War.

Honorable mention in no particular order to: Phil Sheridan, Wade Hampton and Benjamin Grierson.

More legend than anything to: Jeb Stuart and Turner Ashby.

Another good read is Custer's Fall: The Indian Side of the Story by David Miller. It reveals that the Indians were not aware that it was Custer who was attacking them and that Custer fell early in the battle leading the charge across the river. The charge broke and the retreat began.

 

[geim druth]

'Son of the Morning Star' is also a good book by Evan Connell. 'Flashman and the Indians' has a very good and well researched fictional account of the battle.

Was it Nathan Bedford Forrest that said, "Get there first with the most"?

 

[Tommygunn]

Custer's unsatiable quest for personal glory is what finally led to the demise of the 7th. He was part of a 3 pronged attack that he wanted all of the glory from. He did not wait for Crook and Gibbon to arrive. He was warned by his scouts. He came upon the camp undetected, there was plenty of time. He was hated by his Captains, Benteen especially. Custer could have waited for Benteen to bring ammo as was bringing the pack train. (Benteen was assigned to pack train duty because he beat Custer at Poker) He could have brought a mountain Howitzer, but he thought it would slow him down and allow Crook to catch the Indians first. He made sure and brought a personal correspondent though, to further his ego with reports of the battle. He was disgraced by his actions against Black Kettle's band on the Wash ita River when he ordered Elliot to his death and refused to render aid while his main force was burning teepees and committing murder on peaceful indian women and children. His actions since the Civil War have been disgraceful, he should have been court martialed before he got his command slaughtered on the Greasy Grass River, June 25, 1876.

Actually, he had been court-martialed earlier in his Plains Indian Wars career; he had been suspended for a year, but the heating up of the Indian Wars compelled an early reinstatement.
Custer didn't wait for the Terry/Gibbon column, true, but he had a good reason; food supplies from the pack train had fallen off and troopers going back to retrieve them discovered they were being pilfered by Indians, who escaped. Hearing this, Custer feared the element of surprise would be lost, something he felt important for the success of his attack. Having just force marched the 7th overnight, he had intended to rest them and attack Monday morning, but the food supply incident caused him to change his plans. Thus, on the deadly Sunday, Custer's men were exhausted and would fight that way, in the simmering heat of a Montana afternoon.

In the book, A SAD AND TERRIBLE BLUNDER, the author follows the Terry/Gibbon column's progress toward the battle site, and the incredible blunders General Alfred Terry made that delayed the column.
General Crook's men had been stopped because of the Battle of the Rosebud and there would really be only a two-pronged attack. ASATB's author debates that even Custer may not have intended a "pincer movement" type of attack, since no one knew the actual size of the village on the Little Bighorn River.

 

[rcmodel]

since no one knew the actual size of the village on the Little Bighorn River.

Well, that in itself would be a monumental blunder for any military commander to make in the first place!!

Not much more can be said about that mistake.

rc

 

[Hypnogator]

FWIW, I have a couple books on the archaeological exploration of the Little Bighorn battle site, written by the NPS Ranger/Archaeologist in charge of the park. Based on ballistic examination of spent bullets and cartridge cases, the best estimate was that the Indians had a repeating rifle for every trooper Custer had. True, there were a lot of muzzle-loading rifles and arrows used as well, but most of the devastation to the cavalry troopers was caused by short-range rapid-fire weapons; both repeating rifles and bows and arrows.

Several examples of exploded cartridge cases were found on the battlefield, apparently caused by the Indians use of captured .45-70 cartridges in their .50-70 rifles/carbines.

 

[Trunk Monkey]

Two of the best books I have ever read on the subject were “The Custer Reader” and “A Terrible Glory” .

In “The Custer Reader” the author examines the writings of Custer’s contemporaries as well as how the popular view of Custer has changed over the years and examines the theory that Benteen deliberately abandoned Custer to his fate and includes the immediate account of the battle and the account given at the court of inquiry and points out how the number of Indians grew between the two tellings and speculates that it’s possible Benteen was trying to cover up his deliberate abandonment of Custer.

TCR also examines the idea that Custer was trying for one big victory to set up a Presidential run. The author contends that Custer was quite content to be a soldier but found himself stuck in a peace time Army with very little chance for advancement (Example Charles Varnum was a Second Lieutenant at the Battle of Little Bighorn and had only been promoted to Captain by Wounded Knee.) . The Book Speculates that it’s far more likely that Custer was trying to distinguish himself in an effort to gain promotion to Brigadier General.

"A Terrible Glory" points out that prior to LBH the Indians had never stood and fought and that they had routinely been beaten by numerically inferior U.S. forces with superior firepower. It also points out that Custer did not disobey orders but that his orders were very general and left him plenty of room to react to the changing situation.

Donavan also points out that while Custer’s battalion commanders might have been good fighters , they were crappy officers who were trying to advance their careers in the same slow moving peace time Army. It also draws the conclusion that the survivors placed all the blame on Custer who wasn’t around to defend himself in an effort to save their careers.

I think anyone with a serious interest in LBH would benefit from reading either or both of these books.

The Custer Reader by Paul Andrew Hutton ? Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn - the Last Great Battle of the American West by James Donovan ? Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

 

[Bexar]

Were there ever any reliable accounts of Am-Indian losses?

 

[Jolly Rogers]

Had a guided tour of the battleground a few years ago narrated by a young Crow Nation Native American that was born and raised on the reservation where the battle occurred. It was fascinating. After the tour I asked the guide about the fact that, as the Crow were aligned with the Military and scouted for them, what was their relationship with the other Indian nations. He said that " The Crow are like the Jews of the Native Americans" . The Crow are still regarded with distain for the alliance the elders made when they realized that the Government was going to be the long term victor in the conflict. The hosts mother attended school on a Lakota Sioux reservation and was beaten regularly...
Joe