The Boy Generals of the Union Army

 

Wesley Merritt

There were notably young officers, often in their early-to-mid 20s, who rose rapidly to brigadier general, especially in the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac.

The most prominent group includes three cavalry officers promoted from captain to brigadier general in June 1863, skipping several ranks, often called the "boy generals."

George Armstrong Custer. Promoted at age 24, Custer was a flamboyant West Point graduate known for his bold charges and long hair. He commanded the Michigan Cavalry Brigade at Gettysburg and later led aggressively in the Overland Campaign, Shenandoah Valley, and Appomattox Campaign. His division played a key role in pursuing Lee's army. Post-war, he became famous (and died) at the battle of the Little Bighorn.

Wesley Merritt promoted at age 27, Merritt was more methodical and professional than Custer, with whom he had a rivalry. He commanded a brigade and later a division in the Cavalry Corps. Key actions included Gettysburg, the 1864–65 Virginia campaigns, and the final pursuit to Appomattox. He had a long, distinguished post-war career in the Indian Wars and the Spanish-American War.

Elon J. Farnsworth promoted at age 26, Farnsworth was promoted alongside Custer and Merritt but was killed at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863—just days into his generalship. He led a controversial and costly charge against Confederate infantry and was mortally wounded. His death symbolized the risks of youthful, aggressive leadership.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

Custer’s Last Stand Re-examined

General William T. Sherman and the Indian Wars

 

General William TecumsehSherman stands as one of the most polarizing figures in American military history. Celebrated for his ruthless “March to the Sea” during the Civil War, which helped break the Confederacy’s will to fight, Sherman turned his attention westward after 1865. As commanding general of the U.S. Army from 1869 to 1883, he directed the military campaigns that subdued the Plains Indian tribes and opened the American West to railroads, settlers, and mining interests. His application of total-war tactics—destroying an enemy’s resources and capacity to resist—proved as effective against Native Americans as it had against the South. By the time he retired, the once-dominant buffalo-hunting cultures of the Great Plains had been shattered, and thousands of Indigenous people were confined to reservations.

Born in 1820 in Ohio and named after the Shawnee leader Tecumseh—an ironic detail given his later career—Sherman graduated from West Point in 1840. He served in the Mexican-American War, left the army for civilian life, and rejoined at the outbreak of the Civil War. His friendship with Ulysses S. Grant propelled him to prominence. When Grant became president in 1869, Sherman succeeded him as commanding general, overseeing a vast territory between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. With fewer than 25,000 troops scattered across frontier posts, his primary mission was to protect the transcontinental railroad and wagon trails while facilitating white settlement.

Initially, Sherman supported diplomatic efforts. As a member of the Indian Peace Commission, he helped negotiate the Medicine Lodge Treaty (1867) and the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), which established reservations for southern Plains tribes and the Sioux. He also arranged the return of Navajo people from the Bosque Redondo reservation to their homelands in New Mexico. Yet Sherman viewed treaties as temporary measures. When the Medicine Lodge agreements collapsed in 1868 and raids continued, he authorized his subordinate, Major General Philip Sheridan, to launch a winter campaign against the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa. The resulting Battle of the Washita River in November 1868 destroyed a Cheyenne village and set the tone for future operations. Sherman’s strategy was clear: strike when tribes were vulnerable, in winter, when food and mobility were limited.

Sherman’s private correspondence revealed a harsh worldview. After the 1866 Fetterman Massacre, in which 81 soldiers died in an ambush by Sioux warriors, he telegraphed Grant urging “vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children.” In 1867 he told Grant that the nation would not allow “a few thieving, ragged Indians” to halt railroad progress. He believed Native resistance obstructed civilization and that military force, not negotiation alone, would decide the West’s future. Yet he also criticized corrupt Indian agents and speculators who exploited reservation tribes.

The cornerstone of Sherman’s campaign was economic warfare. He recognized that the buffalo—source of food, clothing, shelter, and spiritual life for Plains Indians—was the foundation of their independence. Rather than ordering soldiers to slaughter herds directly, Sherman encouraged civilian hunters. In an 1868 letter to Sheridan, he suggested inviting “all the sportsmen of England and America” for a “Grand Buffalo hunt” to sweep the herds away. Professional hunters like William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and hide merchants responded enthusiastically. By 1873, vast stretches of the Plains were littered with rotting carcasses. Colonel Richard Irving Dodge described the scene: where “myriads of buffalo” had roamed the year before, now only “a dead, solitary, putrid desert” remained. Congress attempted to protect the herds in 1874, but Sherman helped convince President Grant to pocket-veto the bill. Within a decade, the buffalo were nearly extinct in the wild—fewer than 325 remained by the early 20th century. Without their primary food source, tribes faced starvation or surrender.

Sherman’s oversight extended to major conflicts of the 1870s. He reorganized frontier forts and supported operations during the Modoc War in California and Oregon, the Great Sioux War of 1876 (which included the Battle of the Little Bighorn), and the Nez Perce War. In 1871, after narrowly escaping the Warren Wagon Train raid by Kiowa and Comanche warriors in Texas, he insisted that captured chiefs Satanta and Big Tree be tried for murder in a civilian court—the first such trial of Native leaders in U.S. history. These campaigns, though often led by subordinates like George Custer, Ranald Mackenzie, and Nelson Miles, bore Sherman’s strategic imprint: relentless pursuit, destruction of villages and supplies, and winter attacks that exploited Native vulnerability.

By the late 1870s, the free-roaming warrior societies of the Plains had been broken. The once-mighty Sioux, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa were confined to reservations where they depended on government rations. Historian David D. Smits noted that, with their economic base destroyed, Indigenous people had “no choice but to accept a servile fate on a reservation.” Sioux leader Sitting Bull later reflected that “a cold wind blew across the prairie when the last buffalo fell—a death-wind for my people.” Sherman retired on February 8, 1884, at the mandatory age of 64, having achieved the nation’s goal of securing the West for railroads and settlement.

Sherman’s legacy in the Indian Wars remains contentious. To many 19th-century Americans, he was a pragmatic hero who tamed a “savage” frontier and enabled national expansion. To Native Americans, his policies amounted to cultural destruction. He never uttered the infamous line “The only good Indian is a dead Indian”—that phrase is usually attributed to Sheridan—but his writings and actions reflected a willingness to use extreme measures when resistance persisted. His middle name, drawn from a Shawnee chief who once united tribes against American encroachment, underscored the irony of his career.

In the end, Sherman’s western campaigns completed the work begun in Georgia: the application of total war to achieve political ends. The railroads he protected crisscrossed the Plains, towns sprang up beside them, and the buffalo were gone. The Indian Wars under his command marked the closing chapter of armed Indigenous resistance on the continent and the triumph of industrial America over the nomadic cultures that had thrived there for centuries. Sherman died in 1891, remembered primarily for the Civil War, yet his quieter, more methodical conquest of the West reshaped the nation just as profoundly.

Arizona Legends and Lore

Why the Crow allied with Custer

 

The Crow tribe allied with Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the U.S. Army during the 1876 Great Sioux War primarily because of long-standing intertribal warfare with their traditional enemies: the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho.

For decades, these powerful groups had raided Crow lands, stolen horses, and pushed into prime buffalo hunting territories in the Powder River country and Bighorn region—territories guaranteed to the Crow by the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie. The Lakota expansion threatened the Crow's survival and way of life, creating deep enmity.

Crow leaders, including visionary chief Plenty Coups, saw alliance with the United States as a strategic way to counter this existential threat, gain military protection, and preserve their territory against stronger rivals. The Crow were generally at peace with Americans and viewed the U.S. Army as a lesser danger compared to ongoing Sioux and Cheyenne incursions.

Traditional Crow warriors exemplified the fierce independence and martial culture that drove their decision to fight alongside the Army:

By siding with Custer, the Crow aimed to expel the Sioux from their reservation lands. After the broader defeat of the Lakota, Crow chief Plenty Coups noted his people could finally sleep without fear of raids—a direct outcome of this pragmatic alliance in a complex era of survival.

Custer’s Last Stand Re-examined

Legends of the Superstition Mountains

Custer's Scout Curly

 

Curly a young Crow scout born around 1856, served with Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry during the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876. He was one of six Crow scouts attached to Custer's command, but he did not participate in the fighting; instead, he was dismissed before the final engagement, observed parts of the battle from a distance, and became the first to report the defeat to U.S. forces aboard the steamboat Far West. Over the decades until his death in 1923, Curly provided multiple accounts of the events, often through interpreters, which varied in detail and sometimes conflicted—likely due to memory, media sensationalism, and cultural differences.

 Curly's earliest known account was given shortly after the battle. Curly, hidden in a ravine with limited visibility, estimated the fight began around 2:30–3:00 p.m. and lasted until nearly sunset. He vividly portrayed the intense, continuous firing as "the snapping of the threads in the tearing of a blanket." The troops repelled several charges until ammunition ran low, leading to a final Indian assault where soldiers were killed at close range, many with arrows.

Curly claimed Custer animated his men until mortally wounded about an hour before the end. Curly escaped by wrapping his blanket like a Sioux warrior and passing through their lines during the chaos, possibly mistaken for an ally.

Near the end of his life in 1923, Curly provided what was described as his "last story".  After Reno split off; Custer and his men rode to a hill, then down a ravine, and briefly surveyed the valley from a high point, seeing Reno's men advancing amid rising dust. Custer proceeded down Medicine Tail Creek, halted, and sent the gray horse troop ahead while turning north.

Curly’s accounts are valuable for their Native perspective but show inconsistencies. Claims like hiding in a gutted horse or high Sioux casualties likely stem from media embellishments. Despite this, his descriptions of Custer’s movements, the village’s size, and the warriors’ tactics align with archaeological evidence and other accounts, making his early reports particularly useful when cross-referenced.

Custer’s Last Stand Re-examined

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

The Death of Isaiah Dorman: Battle of the Little Bighorn

 

Video : The Death of Isaiah Dorman: Battle of the Little Bighorn

On June 25, 1876, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, five companies of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, under the direct command of George Armstrong Custer were wiped out. 

Amid the chaos of that day, one figure often overlooked emerges: Isaiah Dorman, the only African American killed in the battle. As a skilled interpreter for the U.S. Army, Dorman's life bridged worlds—Black, White, and Native.  His death encapsulated the brutal ironies of the Indian Wars.

Isaiah Dorman's early life remains shrouded in mystery. Born around 1832 in Pennsylvania, he was likely freeborn, with a father of African-Jamaican descent and a mother of mixed African and Native American heritage. By the 1850s, Dorman was in the Dakota Territory working as a trapper, trader, and laborer. He married Celeste St. Pierre, a young woman from the Santee Sioux band led by Inkpaduta, and integrated deeply into Native life. Dorman was described as a large, dark-skinned man. There are no authenticated surviving photographs of Dorman

In spring 1876, Dorman joined Custer's 7th Cavalry expedition against the Lakota and Cheyenne, hired as a civilian Sioux interpreter at a premium rate due to his expertise and connections, including friendships with figures like Chief Sitting Bull. The campaign aimed to force non-reservation tribes onto designated lands amid gold rush tensions in the Black Hills. Departing from Fort Abraham Lincoln, the force marched toward the Little Bighorn River, unaware of the massive Native encampment ahead—estimated at 7,000 people, including 1,500-2,000 warriors.

On June 25, 1876 when Custer divided his 600 men into battalions, Dorman rode with Major Marcus Reno's detachment of about 140 troops, tasked with attacking the village from the south. As Reno's men charged into the valley, they met fierce resistance from Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. Reno ordered a retreat across the river to defensive bluffs, but Dorman fell behind. Eyewitness Private Roman Rutten recalled seeing Dorman on one knee, methodically firing a non-regulation sporting rifle at advancing Indian warriors, shouting, "Goodbye, Rutten!" as the soldier galloped past. An Indian account described: "We passed a black man in a soldier's uniform... He turned on his horse and shot an Indian right through the heart. Then the Indians fired... and riddled his horse with bullets. His horse fell over on his back and the black man could not get up."

Accounts of his final moments vary but paint a grim picture. One narrative claims Sitting Bull, recognizing his old acquaintance, dismounted, offered water from a buffalo horn cup, and said, "Don't kill that man, he is a friend of mine," before riding on. However, many are skeptical of this story. Moving Robe Woman (Eagle Robe), shot him in revenge for her brother's death, after which a group of Lakota women tortured him with stone hammers and knives.  His body was mutilated—arrows embedded, slashes across the face and body, and a 16-by-2-inch strip of skin removed as a war trophy by his wife's niece, Iron Antelope, later preserved in a North Dakota museum. Private William Slaper described finding the corpse "with many arrows shot into his body and head, badly cut and slashed." These acts reflected Native beliefs that wounds would carry into the afterlife, punishing Dorman for siding with the "bluecoats" against his adopted people.

Custer's Dead Officers: First Lieutenant William Van Wyck Reily

 

First Lieutenant William Van Wyck Reily was one of the youngest officers in the 7th Cavalry Regiment and among those killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.

Born on December 12, 1853, Reily came from a naval family.  Reily himself entered the Naval Academy in 1870 but resigned in 1872 after academic difficulties. He later joined the 10th U.S. Cavalry as a Second Lieutenant in 1875 and transferred to the 7th Cavalry in early 1876, just months before the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

He was described as a “dashing and handsome officer,” though some accounts suggest he was still learning to ride when the regiment departed on the final campaign.  His a signet ring was later recovered from a captured Cheyenne warrior in1877 and returned to Reily’s mother. His remains were reinterred at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

Sneak Attack! (Four Alternative History Stories)

Wars and Invasions (Four alternative history stories)

Custer’s Last Messenger: Battle of the Little Bighorn

 

Giovanni Martini was born in the winter of 1851-52 in southern Italy and abandoned at an orphanage on January 28, 1852.  He immigrated to the United States in 1873, working as a laborer in New York City.  One year later he enlisted in the United States Army under the name John Martin.

By 1876 Martini was attached to the U.S. Seventh Cavalry under the command of George Armstrong Custer.  On the morning of June 25, 1876, Martini was temporarily assigned to serve as one of Custer's three bugler-orderlies. On that day at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, five companies of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, under the direct command of George Armstrong Custer were wiped out.  Martini survived.  General Alfred Terry later said to him, “Well, you are a lucky man.”

As the attack unfolded and Custer first viewed the enormous size of the village he gave his orderly, Martini, a verbal message for Captain Benteen to bring his battalion forward with the pack train containing the reserve ammunition as quickly as possible. Adjutant Cooke stopped Martini and scribbled a written message to reinforce Custer's order to Benteen.  Cooke apparently felt Martini, who had a thick Italian accent, needed a written message to clarify Custer's order. Cooke's scribbled message read:

“Benteen, Come on.  Big village. Be quick. Bring packs.  P.S. Bring packs.”

Martini started back on the trail in search of Captain Benteen.  He met Boston Custer riding to join the command. Martini was later fired on by Indians who wounded his horse in the hip. 

Martini rode on and met Benteen.  According to Martini, Benteen asked: "Where is General Custer?" Martini said: "About 3 miles from here." Benteen said, "Is Custer being attacked or not?" and Martini said: "Yes, he is being attacked" and said no more. Benteen was later to testify that Martini told him that the Indians were skedaddling.  Martini told later chroniclers that he did not tell Benteen ... that the Indians were skedaddling.  Some say that Benteen prevaricated after the battle, others say that remembering many years after the battle an old and feeble Martini just got it wrong.  Yet, another mystery of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Martini and the remaining Seventh Cavalry companies not riding with Custer defended Reno Hill for 36 hours until rescued by General Terry’s column.

After the battle, Martini remained in the army, transferring to the artillery.  He served in the Spanish American War and retired as a sergeant on January 4, 1904.  He died on December 24, 1922 in New York City.  He married in 1879.  His eldest son was named George, in honor of George Armstrong Custer.

Custer’s final message to Captain Benteen to “Come quick, bring packs”, written down by Adjutant Cooke went missing for decades. 

 

In the 1920’s one of Custer’s early biographers, William Graham tried to locate the missing document, only to be told by Benteen’s son that all his father's papers had been destroyed when their house had burned down many years before.  This turned out to by incorrect. 

 

Captain Benteen had given the famous message to an army officer friend, Captain Price. The message finally came to rest in the hands of a New Jersey collector for fifty years, before being put up for auction.  By a happy circumstance Colonel Charles Francis Bates learned of the existence of the message and secured it for the museum at West Point, where it resides today.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time