9. George Armstrong Custer was national hero during the Civil War
George Armstrong Custer is mostly remembered for the debacle in Montana on June 25, 1876, when he and most of his command were wiped out at the Little Big Horn. History has not been kind to his memory. To some he was a blustering fool, to others a racist butcher of women and children, an egomaniac whose legend was created and burnished by his widow. Regardless of Custer’s actions in the west following the Civil War, he was a national hero during that conflict, and deservedly so. His actions on the battlefields of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania were legendary within the army and in the northern press, and he was promoted, albeit temporarily, to the rank of Major General at the age of twenty-three, making him the youngest man to hold that rank since the Marquis de Lafayette during the American Revolutionary War.
At the Battle of Gettysburg an incident which is often overlooked in discussions of the fight occurred. Pickett’s Charge was supported by one of the largest artillery bombardments in history before the Confederate regiments moved forward, a fact which is well known. Less well known was that the charge was also supported by a planned cavalry attack to the Union rear. Confederate cavalry led by Jeb Stuart were attempting to attack Union positions on Culp’s Hill in support of Pickett’s attack on the Union center. Custer, with about 2,700 men, fought off Stuart’s more than 6,000 troops, disrupting the Confederate attack. Custer’s stand at Gettysburg is far less remembered than his fatal stand at the Little Big Horn, but it made him a national hero, a status he retained until the Indian Wars.