JF Ptak Science Books Post 1630
“…I would offer no compromise except that which is offered at the point of a bayonet. I…favor a war of extermination. I would hang every human being who had a drop of rebel blood in their veins whether they be men, women or children…”–G.A. Custer in Richard Slotkin Fatal Environment…, Harper, 1985, pg. 384.
Here’s a bit of Custer legend that is true and seldom heard—if left to his own devices in a Custer-filled world, the general would have “exterminated” everyone in the South, every one (“men, women or children”) , “with an ounce of rebel blood” flowing in their veins, hanged dead. At that point the South would be free, and would be repopulated with the “loyal and patriotic” people,l presumably from either up north or Southerners loyal to the Union.a
This was part of a long letter (transcript below) to U.S. Senator Jacob Howard, written on 19th January 1864, in the field. Custer was feeling on the ropes at the time, needing to defend his loyalty to Lincoln and his policies, and needing to distance himself from Lincoln’s election contender and inferior general, George McClellan. (Richard Slotkin, in his fabulous The Fatal Environment, the Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 notes that Custer needed “to justify himself…(and) disabled his previous affiliations and the nature of his relationship with McClellan…’)
Custer’s relationship–real and imagined–with McClellan was putting him in a stench void, creating the possibility of distance between himself and the powers that be–particularly with Senators like Howard and Zachariah Chandler, “who controlled army promotions” (Slotkin, page 384), which meant distancing himself from the higher rank he thought he was destined for. Custer had been on McClellan’s staff, and had aligned himself with his war policies, though not necessarily so his presidential ambitions. Howard, a Republican from Michigan and member of the Military Affairs Committee, believed that Custer was a “McClellan Man” and set against Lincoln, and for that was set to block his promotion to brigadier general. Custer’s salvaging letter1 to Howard left no doubt about his supposed non-political feelings and where he stood on Lincoln, the Emancipation, and the treatment of the Confederates: