… Custer (Jeffry D. Wert)
"At daylight on April 9, 1865, the hard-pressed infantry of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia advanced against the Union Army's 3rd Cavalry Division near Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Supported by artillery, the Confederate soldiers came on for a final time–proud and defiant. Once invincible, the Southern ranks had been severely thinned by desertion and death, and they were now no match for the Federals.
Federal infantry that had reached the front during the night opened fire, while blue-clad cavalry regiments repulsed an enemy sortie and prepared to charge. The cavalry commander watched from a nearby ridge as his troopers wheeled into formation. His name was George Armstrong Custer.
The 25-year-old brevet major general had commanded the 3rd Division since the previous autumn, and under his leadership the 3rd had become one of the finest combat units in the Union Army. Personally fearless, Custer had instilled an aggressiveness into his cavalrymen that had placed them in the forefront of numerous battles.
The renowned "boy general" of the Union Army was where he had always wanted to be, where he had dreamed of being since his youth. He had been in the Union debacle at First Manassas, when the Yankees had fled in disarray from the Confederates. Now he would be in at the end. Behind Custer, his troopers insolently carried a cluster of captured Rebel battle flags, a flamboyant gesture typical of the general.
At one time, Custer was the youngest general in the Union Army, and his name had become a household word in the North. The fame he enjoyed was reserved for few others in the Union Army.
For Custer, however, there was no acclaim without controversy, no middle ground. His men were devoted to him, and his superiors praised his dash and fighting spirit, but his fellow officers resented or envied his fame, his showmanship and his well-publicized "luck."
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Amicalement
Armand