Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America By T.J. Stiles

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Books,History,Americas Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America T.J. Stiles

4,5

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Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for HistoryFrom the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Book Award, a brilliant biography of Gen. George Armstrong Custer that radically changes our view of the man and his turbulent times.In this magisterial biography, T. J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer’s legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer’s historical caricature, revealing a volatile, contradictory, intense person—capable yet insecure, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (he was court-martialed twice in six years). The key to understanding Custer, Stiles writes, is keeping in mind that he lived on a frontier in time. In the Civil War, the West, and many areas overlooked in previous biographies, Custer helped to create modern America, but he could never adapt to it. He freed countless slaves yet rejected new civil rights laws. He proved his heroism but missed the dark reality of war for so many others. A talented combat leader, he struggled as a manager in the West. He tried to make a fortune on Wall Street yet never connected with the new corporate economy. Native Americans fascinated him, but he could not see them as fully human. A popular writer, he remained apart from Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, and other rising intellectuals. During Custer’s lifetime, Americans saw their world remade. His admirers saw him as the embodiment of the nation’s gallant youth, of all that they were losing; his detractors despised him for resisting a more complex and promising future. Intimate, dramatic, and provocative, this biography captures the larger story of the changing nation in Custer’s tumultuous marriage to his highly educated wife, Libbie; their complicated relationship with Eliza Brown, the forceful black woman who ran their household; as well as his battles and expeditions. It casts surprising new light on a near-mythic American figure, a man both widely known and little understood.

At this time of writing, The Mobi Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America has garnered 8 customer reviews with rating of 5 out of 5 stars. Not a bad score at all as if you round it off, it’s actually a perfect TEN already. From the looks of that rating, we can say the Mobi is Good TO READ!

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CusterThis biography is very good when it recounts Custer’s experiences in the Civil War. He is described as a superb warrior with an ability to size up a combat situation and swiftly and calmly take the appropriate steps to gain control and prevail. He was not the reckless battlefield maniac that is too often portrayed in media today.Custer’s courage and swift action may have prevented the Union army from losing the Battle of Gettysburg, a battle the North could not afford to lose if the Union was to be preserved. Operating to the rear of the Union army Custer spotted a large mass of Confederate Cavalry on the way to getting behind the Union lines and into a position to attack. Already closely pressed, an attack in the rear could have collapsed the Union position at a critical moment. Even though he was heavily outnumbered, Custer charged knowing that surprise was on his side and also knowing that the Confederate maneuver had to be blunted. He just might have saved the Union that day.Custer was promoted from a lowly officer all the way to the rank of general without stopping at the intervening ranks because of his battlefield performance. No other American soldier I am aware of has made such a dramatic leap since Nathaniel Greene was promoted from private to general (without intervening ranks) in the Revolutionary War.Where the account collapses into nonsense is where the author looks at 19th Century behavior through the lens of 21st century social justice. At best that blurs our picture of the past and at worst it gets things completely wrong. The worst happens often in the latter part of this book. Surprisingly that happens often even when his own narrative provides information that belies his thesis. Having said as much, it is only fair to provide some examples.In a hand-wringing statement he declares that the Indians were put in ‘internment camps’. I assume he is referring to the Indian Reservations.The Navajo ‘internment camp’ is greater in area than the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined.The Crow ‘internment camp’ is greater in area than Delaware.The Hopi ‘internment camp’ is greater in area than Rhode Island.There isn’t a lot of development in many of those ‘internment camps’. In fact, they look a lot like Phoenix and Tucson did before European settlement. They were intended to be areas where the Indians could continue their traditional lives with their own tribal government and police. Chief Sitting Bull was killed by tribal police, not by the Cavalry.In many cases Indians have elected for improvement on reservation land. You can spot the reservations by the big, bright casino signs showing the way. How many ‘internment camps’ normally have casinos? When I took a bus tour through Santa Barbara we were told that the local Indian casino paid $45,000 a month to every member of the tribe.The Indians were not trapped in the Reservations. When they wanted to they could join the rest of American society and many of them did.The author is trying too hard to find a grievance here.He is also at pains to say that the Indians are victims of ‘cultural appropriation’. That is a ridiculous and childish concept that could only have emerged from today’s university culture. But it should be addressed. Most of the ‘cultural appropriation’ was from Europeans in favor of Indians. The Plains culture depended upon horses, but they had no horses before the Spanish brought them to the Americas. All of the Indians quickly took to European beads, fabrics, metals, tools, knives and guns. In one famous picture of the Apache war chief, Geronimo he is wearing a cotton print shirt, a cloth scarf, beads, and carrying a rifle—all cultural appropriation from European culture. They liked it, they wanted it, and they got it. Perhaps we should put the nonsense of ‘cultural appropriation’ to rest. I don’t think modern Indians want to give up their casinos either.The author bemoans the movement of whites and blacks into Indian lands. Certainly the Indians could, and did, complain, but in the same volume he lets on that the Sioux and Cheyenne were warrior tribes that took their land by conquest from other Indian tribes. That is the reason Custer had so many Indians eager to join him fighting the Sioux. They had been victims of Sioux aggression. Basically, when the Grantor in your Deed of Ownership is ‘Conqueror’ you do not have a strong moral claim when someone else uses the same mechanism of property transfer.Attitudes toward race were different then, but the author wants to label Custer as a racist for believing the skull measurement studies of Samuel Morton, a naturalist who determined that different races had, on average, different skull sizes. The author relies on the report of Stephen Jay Gould in The Mismeasure of Man, for debunking Morton’s thesis. Gould even did a video in which he showed how Morton’s bias led him to reach his erroneous conclusions. But it was Gould who was biased and in error. A few years ago the original Morton skulls were re-measured using advanced techniques and it was discovered that Morton’s measurements were very good and Gould had fudged a result he wanted, either consciously or unconsciously. This author is too eager to embrace a conclusion that confirms his own bias.The author extends his racism grievance when it comes to the cook in the Custer household. She was a runaway slave taken in by Custer and who worked in the household for many years. When she was fired for being ‘insolent’ that was seen as a clear sign of racism. Yet, the author himself tells how the cook was passing out supplies from the Custer kitchen to gain favor with others in the camp and how she had become so dominant in the kitchen that Custer and his wife had to take turns braving her when they had a request. Regardless of race, few employers would put up with that from an employee indefinitely. I would have fired her sooner.Last, the author insists on calling the Confederates ‘conservatives’. In fact, it was the North that was willing to abide by previous agreements to leave the South and its ‘Peculiar Institution’ alone. Lincoln said as much in his inaugural address. The Democrats in the South broke with the understanding and demanded that slavery be extended to new territories acquired by the Federal government. They rebelled. The clue that they were not ‘conservatives’ lies in the fact that they were called Rebels, people who wanted to break with agreements and tradition. I think the author just believes that anyone he doesn’t like must be a conservative.He dropped the ball on the Battle of the Little Big Horn too.

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