s downfall. His last campaign was fought under the
burden of an apparent official censure, galling to a man of Custer's
impetuous nature, all the more so as he knew it to be unmerited and
unjust. There is little doubt that this weight of wrong engendered a
spirit of recklessness, foreign even to his daring nature, and led
him to take risks he would not otherwise have accepted, simply
because he felt the necessity for action and believed that through
valor would come his speediest vindication. Had he been supported by
those he relied upon he might, even in the face of the overpowering
odds marshalled against him, have come off victorious, instead of
dying, an unnecessary sacrifice, like another Roland, and, if we
accept the legends, at just Roland's age. It is because that tragic
ending of a valiant life was, viewed from the picturesque
stand-point, its logical and dramatic conclusion, that American
tradition and popular applause will, in the years to come, remember
Custer, not so much for the dash at Winchester, the daring at
Waynesboro, or the valor at Five Forks, as for his immortal last
stand on the banks of the Little Big Horn, when he and his brave
troopers went down in death together.

General Custer was the born soldier in face and figure. Lithe,
broad-shouldered, and sinewy in frame, nearly six feet in height,
blue-eyed and golden-haired, he was the beau ideal cavalry
leader--alert, active, ready, and responsive, with an eye to all
details, a love for the picturesque in bearing and equipment, of
great endurance, abstemious, healthy, and strong, and as much at
home in the saddle and with the sabre as in his own little house in
Monroe or by his blazing camp-fire. He married, in February, 1864,
Elizabeth Bacon, a daughter of Judge Daniel S. Bacon, of Monroe. For
ten years his wife was his constant companion in camp and in
frontier service, and she has written many sketches of his active
life in the saddle and his characteristics as soldier and as man.

General Custer, at the time of his death, was engaged on a series of
"War Memoirs," and his articles on frontier life and army experiences
found ready acceptance and wide favor. He was, undoubtedly, America's
best cavalry leader, and won a place as "a perfect general of horse"
beside the world's dashing war-riders--from Hannibal's "Thunderbolt,"
Mago the Carthaginian, to Maurice of Nassau and the "Golden Eagle,"
Murat the Frenchman.

Fourteen of the thirty-seven