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From Boy General to Paragon of Southern Chivalry: The Changing Southern Image of George Armstrong Custer
Conference presentation

From Boy General to Paragon of Southern Chivalry: The Changing Southern Image of George Armstrong Custer

Christopher J Levesque
Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery Conference (Colorado Springs, CO, 03/18/2010–03/20/2010)
03/2010

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Abstract

When Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led the Seventh Cavalry into battle at the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876, the country was in the midst of a heated presidential campaign. Both parties had just chosen their candidates and anticipated a close contest with Southern states chafing at the continued military oversight of state elections. Custer’s death provided Democrats, especially Southern Democrats, a new line of attack against the Republican Party. Democrat leaning newspapers and politicians in the North in addition to some in the so-called “Liberal” Republican faction blamed the Grant administration for allowing corrupt officials and businessmen to maneuver Native Americans into open war with the United States. Southern Democrats agreed, but also used Custer’s defeat at the Little Big Horn to further their own goals. Southern efforts to end Reconstruction, thus became embedded in the larger Democratic struggle against the Grant administration, and made use of both the massacre at the Little Big Horn and charges of corruption to achieve that end. Before this could happen, Southern editors and politicians had to overcome a profoundly negative image resulting from his actions as a cavalry commander serving under Philip Sheridan during the Civil War. Southern newspapers revealed a great deal of animosity between Custer, many of his battlefield opponents, and Confederate civilians while a cavalry commander during the Civil War. During the course of the conflict, Southern editors could not decide whether to portray Custer as a danger or as a clown. This paper traces Custer’s transformation from reviled enemy to paragon of Southern Chivalry.

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