General George Armstrong Custer, setting out for the Little Bighorn, declined to take with him four Gatling guns. They were, he said, unwieldy. He did bring, however, his favorite staghounds. When he died his spectacular death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, he took with him the four dogs, and five whole companies of the 7th Cavalry. The dogs, cosseted and indulged, had exuberantly refused not to follow. The 285 men, poorly-equipped and roughly-used, hadn’t the dogs’ choice.
Custer had courted his fate, assiduously; but the men who died with him, did not. Where he saw adventure, they felt dread. His dash, was their duty; his hubris, their ruin. This tragic dichotomy is at the heart of the Shapell Manuscript Foundation Custer Little Bighorn collection. Told expressly in Custer’s own words, and in those of his troops, this book is centered on the striking contrast between the parallel realities of Custer and his men as they approached, down to the last recorded moment, the cataclysmic battle on June 25, 1876 – in which Custer lost his entire command and American Indians, for he first and last time, vanquished the United States Army.
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