@jasonwilliamson8416

I was on the staff at West Point and actually served in the modern 7th Cavalry for a bit so I've had plenty of exposure to the Custer lore. I in fact had the opportunity to read a couple of actual letters he wrote to Libby in which he seemed to object to the US governments treatment of the Native people and even expressed regret that his job required him to hunt them down, which was quite the opposite of what he would say publicly. His own writings also reveal that he didn't cope well with going from Civil War glory and national recognition to being reduced in rank and sent out west where nobody would notice him. I honestly believe it was his quest to prove that he had earned those generals stars that got him in the end.

@davidfinch7407

Custer was a brave soldier. Custer was a fool. Both things can be true at the same time.

@jeddunning7058

Sometimes the grass don’t grow, the wind don’t blow, and the sky ain’t blue. 
            Gary Owen starts playing in the distance

@Curtiz2008

The most accurate Custer movie is Custer’s Last Fight, made by Thomas Ince in 1909. Some of the Indians who took part in the film had, as young men, fought against Custer at Little Big Horn.

This was an excellent and well-balanced video. You don't hide Custer's faults but you also don't fall into the trap of making him into some sort of evil caricature like one sees in "Little Big Man" or later movies. As a US Naval Academy graduate and former USMC commissioned officer who has studied the Civil War and Indian Wars that followed for many, many years now, my assessment is that Custer had the necessary intellectual, emotional, psychological and physical tools to be an excellent combat commander. He proved that multiple times on Civil War battlefields. The post-Civil War US Army, however, was a shell of its former self and over time so was Custer. I would venture to say that Custer's most prominent character trait was his extreme need for recognition and attention. I'm going to go out on a limb here and opine that Custer was very aware that his father was a blacksmith and he was trying to create for himself a social position far above that start in life. He was ambitious in the extreme, and that often impacted his judgments in multiple situations, on and off the battlefield. As you rightly noted, he was a very young man when he became a household name during the Civil War. Being brevetted to Major General as such a young age only to revert his much lower substantive US Army rank after the cessation of hostilities had to rankle him, at least a little. It meant lower pay, fewer and less lucrative benefits and far less social recognition. Moreover, he was then forced to compete with other excellent US Army officers and combat veterans for a very small number of command positions and promotions in the much smaller post-war Army. I've always wondered if Custer conducted himself on the Little Big Horn campaign as he did because he realized that it might be his last chance to win a spectacular military victory that would regain him the fame he sought and (not unimportantly) a chance for promotion, as well as social and financial gains he otherwise would not have secured.

@biggeordie245

You never hear much about his brother, double Medal of Honour winner in the Civil War.

@japhfo

Excellent video, with all aspects and points of view represented. And, thanks to  its subject, so much visual reference!

@revolutionaryhamburger

I've been to the Little Bighorn battlefield dozens of times. It is an interesting place. Back when Custer visited, it was a desolate place far way from Washington, D.C., and life then was much removed from the conditions one finds sitting comfortably in front of a computer.

N/A

I was a 19D US Army Cavalry Scout and whenever I worked for a boss making a poor decision but refused to listen to input I'd say: "Custer didn't listen to his scouts either, look how well that worked out for him" 🤣

@mdstruction4832

Definitely interested in seeing a deep dive video on the Washita River Massacre

@abnmp7865

He grew up in a Army at war. Was a hero. Then the Army changed after the war as you pointed out. Unfortunately Custer didn’t adapt. This is why his men turned on him. He wanted to prove to everyone he deserved those stars. Was he over confident or seeking glory? We might never know. But he did make major tactical errors which led to he and his men being killed. It wasn’t an heroic stand, it was a failed operation that resulted in being cut off.

@Tadicuslegion78

The interesting thing about Custer is every adaption of Custer more reflects how the culture of the time viewed Custer than the man himself because of how he died that he basically became the writer's mouthpiece to reflect their biases. 
Now my personal opinion having read several books and even gone to The Little Big Horn (Absolutely worth it) and the Dakotas (also worth it) Custer was not the sharpest tool in the shed, however, in regards to the Little Big Horn, the army as a whole screwed up and Custer did make errors but Reno and Benteen did as well. the biggest and most fatal error being, attacking despite being told there was too many and not going back to Terry to have better odds. And the simple fact, the Native Americans won a fair fight against the US Army because they were better led, equipped, motivated, and had the numbers.
And yet this turned into a pyrrhic victory because they lost the war by giving the US motivate to chase them to the ends of the earth.

@JLMcCarty-m5j

Like other complex American military leaders, Patton and MacArthur come to mind, Custer was driven by his belief in himself and his talent as a combat leader, but handicapped by an overreaching ego, that in the end, was his undoing.  In the case of Custer it cost him his life and the lives of his troopers rather than just tarnishing his reputation as is the case with the other two.

@bradonchristian6017

Read his letters and his journals. He wasn't the monster our modern-revisionist-historians make him out to be.

@samdoss

Yes, a Battle of Washita video would be great.  Please do so, if you have time.

@koobs4549

8:35 She was a phony btw. Not a native woman at all, she was an impostor who lied about her heritage.

@lib556

Good video.  One comment.  People always like to point out that he was bottom of his class like that's a bad thing.  The reality is, he was a West Point graduate.  That is significant.  He got in. He finished. He graduated.  Something most citizens could not do. Someone has to be last.

@callumbignall1877

That was great, scary how young he was in those photos, people were built different back then.
I'm from the UK, and Custer is seen more as a villain here, but the UK has a clouded vision of native Americans , so I've never been sure about custer myself, I'd love to see a follow up video

@andrewyarosh1809

I’m no fan of Custer’s (and even less of a fan of his wife’s insistence on his apotheosis), but given what we now know about the trauma that combat inflicts (not to mention how many times people fell from horses onto their heads while becoming skilled riders) I wonder how much of his later in life behavior and increased recklessness, including at LBH, was a manifestation of CTE?

There are also scholars who suggest he might have been suffering from later stage syphillis.

@timothywilliams2252

I thought Son of the Morning Star was probably the most accurate