14. The Custer legend continues to grow today
Following the release of the first Custer biography and the military investigation into Marcus Reno’s behavior at the Little Big Horn in 1879, which exonerated him, interest in Custer and the battle began to wane. Libbie Custer began a concerted effort to honor her late husband on a national scale, and to keep him in the public memory as one of its greatest military heroes. It was an effort which had actually begun in 1877 when she pushed her friend Phil Sheridan to have Custer’s body removed from its burial site and reinterred at the Military Academy at West Point, an institution from which he had barely graduated in 1861.
Libbie then worked to have a statue erected in honor of her husband, overlooking his grave at West Point, which she later had removed, concerned over the effete appearance of her husband’s likeness. She also convinced the town of New Rumley, Ohio, where Custer was born, to erect another statue of him, as well as the town of Monroe, Michigan. Libbie then began work on books of her own, and embarked on speaking tours describing her husband, her own observations of the army and the frontier, and the conditions of the native tribes and the reservations to which they were sent. Libbie’s efforts included lobbying Congress and testifying (in writing) on the corruption in the Indian Agencies.