3
" From the Civil War through his two battles on the Yellowstone, he proved decisive, not reckless; shrewd, not foolish. In every other regard, he danced along the emerging modern world, unable to adapt to it. He failed in the new sphere of finance, rejected new thinking about equality, and wrote antiquated prose. He offended his military superiors, mismanaged subordinates, alienated civilian authorities, meddled inappropriately in politics, endangered his marriage, and gambled away his estate. Again and again he saved himself through his ability to fight. And yet, ironically, we now remember him as a bad commander. "
― T.J. Stiles , Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America
5
" Yes, high politics and historic issues produced the conflict; yes, decisions by politicians and generals changed the course of events. But it was only a war in the first place because the American people wanted to fight. They volunteered by the millions for years of combat; they demanded offensives and decisive battles. Even those who never enlisted applied themselves to logistics, military transportation, and weapons technology—inventing ironclad ships, new pontoon bridges, and repeating rifles, for example. Then there were African Americans, who conducted what one historian has called the greatest slave rebellion in history. They risked death to desert to Union lines by the hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands. In the end, what happened on factory floors and plantation fields, in town-square meetings and polling places, mattered more than any general’s orders.44 "
― T.J. Stiles , Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America
