Custer's Trials

Custer’s Trials is a biographical account of the life of General George Armstrong Custer, written by T.J. Stiles. The book received wide critical acclaim upon publication and was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History. In taking on the story of this man’s life, Stiles seeks to demolish the historical caricature that has been made of him, revealing the true General Custer, whom he describes as a complicated and volatile man, plagued with his own series of insecurities. Stiles paints the picture of a man full of contradictions, who is capable yet insecure, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, and ultimately a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military.

Unlike previous biographies of the General, Stiles chooses not to focus on the Battle of the Little Bighorn, giving it no more attention than a mention in the epilogue, whereas previous accounts of the man’s life would have centered on the event. Maintaining that there is more to the man than his actions in that battle, Stiles devotes most of his book to both the military and political aspects of the Civil War. He also makes mention of the crucial role that women played in the advancement of Custer’s career, most notably by his wife Libbie, and his African-American servant, Eliza Brown.

Custer always considered himself a lucky man, and life had always given him good reason to think so. He and his friends referred to it as “Custer luck.” Bullets literally bounced off him during the Civil War — he would have been hard to miss as he led from the front on horseback and sported a gaudy get-up. Nevertheless, he survived the war a Union hero, his romanticism about conflict largely intact.



At the beginning of the Civil War, he attracted the attention of General George McClellan. The two men shared similar anti-Lincoln views and a flair for style. This connection turned out to be a valuable one, as it allowed Custer to ascend from second lieutenant in the U.S. Cavalry to brigadier general in the U.S. Volunteers. This success was also made possible by his wife’s tireless lobbying of powerful politicians in Washington.

Stiles skillfully unpacks Custer’s character, showing him to be a gifted fighter and a natural leader, even if he did have a tendency to shoot his own horses. Stiles also writes of Custer as someone who strove for celebrity and wealth. Lusting over status, he enjoyed spending his time surrounded by the rich and notable. He was known to have a taste for the finer things in life, exulting in luxuries, as well as having a dark side as a womanizer, fervent gambler, horse thief, and an unwitting racist.

As Stiles tells the story, Custer’s most honorable traits surfaced during wartime, and once it was over, his negative traits began to predominate. He mistreated his men, even going so far as to abandon some, and was brought before a court-martial for the second time. He was an active supporter of President Johnson and his attack on black civil rights and, later, conspired against President Grant, openly engaging with politicians who sought to bolster white supremacy.



In 1867, Custer was tasked with subduing Indians on the Great Plains. Stiles describes him as being dressed in a buckskin suit with twin revolvers holstered at his waist and knee-high moccasins, stating that his comportment highlighted his incompetency as a plainsman. Custer repeatedly lost Indian trails, shot his own horse, and even mistook an elk herd for his enemy. With regard to the Little Bighorn, Stiles agrees that mistakes were made, but maintains that the battle was not lost by a reckless, incompetent Custer so much as it was won by the superior force of the Lakota Sioux, then at the apex of their power, in combination with the Northern Cheyenne.

It was a turn of infamous bad luck that finally led to the downfall of George Armstrong Custer. Outnumbered and surrounded by a force of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne, Custer and more than 200 of his troops were wiped out on June 25, 1876 at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Often referred to as “Custer’s Last Stand,” it remains a legendary and much-analyzed defeat. The man at its center has gone down in history as an arrogant fool who blundered into a rout, carrying out genocidal policies of the United States as it drove America’s indigenous peoples to near-extinction.

Through Custer’s Trials, Stiles paints the portrait of an enigma of a man, contradictory on all counts. He tried to make a fortune on Wall Street yet was unable to grasp the new corporate economy. He was fascinated by Native American culture but he was never able to accept them as fully human. A gifted writer, he remained apart from the iconic authors of his time, and never really reached his potential in that realm. Custer remains a mythic figure of American history, a man widely known and little understood.