13. A Complete Life of General George A. Custer
Six months after the death of Custer at the Little Big Horn, Mount Vernon New York author Frederick Whittaker produced A Complete Life of General George A. Custer, a biography. Whittaker was an author of nickel and dime novels, usually of a sensational nature, in the manner of what became known as pulp fiction. He had met Custer but once when the Civil War hero met with him to discuss the possibility of publishing his memoirs of his Civil War campaigns. Custer much later published instead a work entitled My Life on the Plains, describing his adventures during the Indian campaigns following the Civil War. Whittaker borrowed from that work liberally.
He also received much of his information from Libbie Custer, though she denied supporting the work on its publication. The Complete Life was a highly laudatory, almost fawning account of Custer’s life and exploits, including some information which could only have come from Libbie, and was the first work which created the image of Custer as the golden-haired cavalier. In praising Custer, Whittaker went to great lengths condemning both Reno for his incompetence and Benteen for his disobedience, implying cowardice on the part of the latter. The book sold well for many months, and Whittaker engaged in a written campaign to have Reno brought to a court-martial to answer for his actions on June 25, 1876.