Book Review: Nathaniel Philbrick - The Last Stand

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull,and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick (2010)

     “Before Custer became the mythic figure we know today, he was a lieutenant colonel desperate to find a way to salvage his reputation after a run-in with President Grant.  Custer did not stride through history doing what he wanted; he, like any military man, spent most of his time following orders.” (Philbrick, 101)  Custer was on the brink of professional and financial ruin.  If he could catch the Indians all would be well again. In his most hopeful fantasies he imagined a draft Custer for President Movement at the Democratic convention which was to open in St. Louis on June 27.  More realistically he could expect accolades at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and big box office receipts for a lecture tour for which he was already booked. (Philbrick, 119)

     The villain of the Battle of the Little Bighorn (June 25, 1876) was General Alfred Terry and his flawed battle plan.  According to Philbrick, General Terry “wanted Custer to attack if he found a fresh Indian trail.”  He says, everyone knew perfectly well what Custer was going to do once Terry, “, in the words of Major Brisbin ‘turned the wild man loose.’”(Philbrick, 99)  General Terry was protective of his own military reputation however and was spinning an invisible and cunning web.  “Terry had a lawyer’s talent for crafting documents that appeared to say one thing but were couched in language that could allow for an entirely different interpretation should circumstances require it.”  Terry’s ambiguously worded orders to Custer, allowed him to protect his reputation no matter what happened.  “If Custer bolted for the village and claimed a great victory, it was because Terry had the wisdom to give him an independent command.  If Custer did so and failed, it was because he had disobeyed Terry’s written orders.”  Philbrick continues, “As Terry would have wanted it given the ultimate outcome of the battle, Custer has become the focal point, the one we obsess about when it comes to both the Black Hills Expedition and the Little Bighorn.  But, in many ways, it was Terry who was moving the chess pieces.  Even though his legal opinion launched the Black Hills gold rush and his battle plan resulted in one of the most notorious military disasters in U.S. history, Terry has slunk back into the shadows of history, letting Custer take center stage in a cumulative tragedy for which Terry was, perhaps more than any other single person, responsible.” (Philbrick, 102-103)

     In 1886, some ten years after the massacre of Custer and 225 men of the Seventh Cavalry, the well-respected Terry was promoted to the rank of Major General.

Paperback edition

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

For almost one hundred and fifty years, Custer has been a Rorschach test of American social and personal values. Whatever else George Armstrong Custer may or may not have been, even in the twenty-first century, he remains the great lightning rod of American history. This book presents portraits of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn as they have appeared in print over successive decades and in the process demonstrates the evolution of American values and priorities.

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George Armstrong Custer: Manufactured Hero?

Six months after the Battle of the Little Bighorn (June 25, 1876), Frederick Whittaker’s A Complete Life of General George A. Custer was published.  Whittaker’s book made no pretense to objectivity, this was a canonization which presented Custer as a dashing and brilliant military leader abandoned to his fate by lesser, disloyal, treacherous, and cowardly men.  Whittaker borrowed generously from Custer’s own book My Life on the Plains, as well as on his own imagination, which was fulsome, since Whittaker was a professional writer of nickel and dime novel fiction for a leading publisher.

Whittaker quoted (or manufactured) the testimony of one of the Indian scouts, Curly, who claimed to have escaped from the field of battle.  When Curly saw that the party with Custer was about to be overwhelmed, he begged Custer to let him show him a way to escape.  “…Custer looked at Curly, waved him away and rode back to the little group of men, to die with them.”  Why, Whittaker asks, did Custer go back to certain death?  “Because he felt that such a death as that which that little band of heroes was about to die, was worth the lives of all the general officers in the world….He weighed, in that brief moment of reflection, all the consequences to America of the lesson of life and the lesson of heroic death, and he chose death.” 

Paperback edition


Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

For almost one hundred and fifty years, Custer has been a Rorschach test of American social and personal values. Whatever else George Armstrong Custer may or may not have been, even in the twenty-first century, he remains the great lightning rod of American history. This book presents portraits of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn as they have appeared in print over successive decades and in the process demonstrates the evolution of American values and priorities.

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The best reading experience on your Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows 8 PC or tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.

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Colonial America mystery writer Andrew Mills

Interview with mystery writer Andrew Mills, author of the Archibald Mercer Colonial Detective series.  Archibald Mercer, America's first detective, solves crimes in colonial and Revolutionary era America.  Books in the series include: (1) The Female Stranger, (2) The Stolen Sash,(3) The Gambler's Debt, (4) The Stolen Election, and (5) The Burning Palace.

The Colonial Detective Mystery Series

Civil War Story of Brentsville, Virginia

“Came to Brentsville (Prince William County, Virginia), examined the place, found five houses occupied, including the jail. But two men reside in this town; the court-house has but a part of the roof remaining on; the houses are generally in ruins.”  So read, in part,  a letter of March 8, 1864, written by Captain Andrew H. McHenry of the 13^th Pennsylvania Cavalry.

Brentsville was the county seat during the Civil War. It was at the Brentsville courthouse that citizens met to vote on secession and where they came to enlist in the military. In response to John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859, the Prince William Cavalry (Co. A, Virginia Cavalry) was formed here on the courthouse lawn in January 1860. The Ewell Guards (Co. A, 49th VA Infantry), were also organized here and drilled on the courthouse lawn.

When Union General McClellan began his campaign to take the new Confederate capital in Richmond, southern troops were forced to evacuate their winter camps that were set up throughout much of Fairfax and Prince William Counties. Brentsville, then the seat of local government, was one of the first communities affected by invading Federal forces. Thousands of troops of both sides passed through Brentsville. Churches and private homes became hospitals after battles at Manassas and Bristoe Station. Many of the buildings were ravaged for bricks to build encampments. The roof of the courthouse was partially torn off and the adjacent clerk's office was totally destroyed. Most of the county's records were lost. A Union soldier wrote, “The documentary accumulations of more than two hundred years had been torn out of their files and scattered over the floors of the buildings to the depth of several feet.”

Brentsville sat in the midst of “Mosby’s Confederacy” as Confederate partisans harassed union troops throughout the war.  A soldier in the Tenth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry wrote, “Guerrillas were all about us, as was evident when a straggling member of the Tenth was fired upon….Oct. 6th, a squad of men went over to Brentsville, shire town of Prince William County, to get bricks for the General’s quarters.  They secured them, but at the expense of the buildings themselves.”


The Prince William Historic PreservationFoundation is currently raising money for museum exhibits and interpretive services for the “ Old Jail”, which is the final building to be restored at the 29 acres Brentsville Courthouse Historic Centre, an open-air museum centered around the restored 1820s courthouse. 

The Civil War Wedding

An entertaining look at the customs and superstitions of weddings during the Civil War era.

Wars and Invasions

General George S. Patton once said, “Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.” Here are four stories about the history of the world IF wars we know about happened differently or IF wars that never happened actually took place.

Gifts for Dog Lovers

Custer’s Last Stand - Reno’s Charge

On June 25,1876 George Armstrong Custer's Indian scouts identified what they claimed was a large Indian encampment along the Little Bighorn River.  Custer decided to attack despite the warning from Mitch Bouyer a veteran scout of French and Sioux descent that this was the largest gathering of Indians that he, Bouyer, had seen in more than thirty years.

Custer divided the regiment into three battalions.  Captain Frederick Benteen was sent south and west, to cut off any attempted escape by the Indians.  Major Marcus Reno was to charge the southern end of the encampment, and Custer rode north, planning to circle around and attack from the north.

Reno began a charge on the southern end of the village.  The Indians did not flee, but began pouring out of the village toward Reno like angry bees.  Reno halted, had his men dismount and formed a skirmish line.  Sioux and Cheyenne warriors in huge numbers began to flank Reno’s position and he beat a hasty retreat, or as he reported it “a charge to the rear”.  Barely escaping massacre, Reno established a defensive position atop the bluffs overlooking the river and made a successful stand against the attacking Indians.

Custer attempted to ford the river at the north end of the camp but was driven off.  Now, hundreds of warriors pursued the soldiers onto a ridge north of the encampment. Custer’s men were unable to dig in, however, because they had been outflanked by the Indians.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time e-Book edition
Paperback edition

For almost one hundred and fifty years, Custer has been a Rorschach test of American social and personal values. Whatever else George Armstrong Custer may or may not have been, even in the twenty-first century, he remains the great lightning rod of American history. This book presents portraits of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn as they have appeared in print over successive decades and in the process demonstrates the evolution of American values and priorities.

Download Free Kindle Reading Apps:

The best reading experience on your Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows 8 PC or tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.

Shop for Custer Gifts: