Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth (review)

book reviews167 voluntary labor sustained the Union army on the one hand, and the men of the Sanitary Commission on the other. Both of these studies could usefully be extended to follow the women they examine into the last half of the nineteenth century as a way of suggesting how lasting (or how ephemeral) the effects of the Civil War experience were. The Oxford University Press has done a good job of bookmaking, though it inexplicably failed to insist on an index, which will somewhat limit the usefulness of the book to scholars. But there is enough data here to stir some lively discussion if some of the two hundred Civil War roundtables—weary at last of refighting Gettysburg and Antietam, Wilderness and Petersburg— decide to focus their discussion on this new approach to their favorite topic. Anne Firor Scott Duke University Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth. By Shirley A. Leckie. (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. Pp. xxiii, 419. $26.95.) Do you doubt the power of nineteenth-century domestic ideology? Then read Shirley Leckie's biography of Elizabeth Custer. If ever a woman found fulfillment through her husband's public persona, it was Libbie Custer. As did many wives in the nineteenth century, she promoted her husband's professional advancement and prodded him to become a Christian and moral gentleman . More than most women, she found her own sense of self-worth only in the public perception of her spouse. Domestic ideology required a woman to live "a reflected life," and Libbie Custer carried that ideal literally beyond the grave. Widowed at thirty-four, she devoted her remaining fifty-seven years to the creation and sustenance of her "Boy General" myth. She succeeded to the extent that no one effectively challenged that myth until after her death in 1933. Leckie attributes Libbie Custer's personality to childhood circumstances. Losing her mother when she was twelve, Libbie was adrift, dependent on aunts, cousins, and boarding schools to provide some semblance of home. During those years, she developed a capacity to adapt, a strong religiosity, and a desire to please. She also learned to exploit sympathy and pity and became thoroughly imbued with the expectations for women as defined by domestic ideology. In recounting the travails of the Custer marriage, Leckie adroitly interweaves the progress of his public career, based on standard and reliable secondary sources, with the development of their private life, derived from Libbie's personal papers and letters. Her use of correspondence between Libbie and Custer is particularly effective. Although their marriage was far from perfect (she was something of a flirt and he a gambler and womanizer ), Libbie devoted inordinate effort to creating a facade of idyllic l68CIVIL war history contentment. Her tenacity went well beyond the ordinary; she was incapable of admitting that hers was anything other than a perfect marriage to a perfect man. The degree to which Libbie's construction of self was tied to her husband's image invites comparison to Jessie Benton Fremont. Both women channeled their ambitions into the creation of myths about their spouses; both married controversial figures with fatal character flaws; and both saw their men through rose-colored glasses. As widows, each attempted to support herself by writing about her adventurous life with a flamboyant husband. While Jessie fought poverty all her life, Libbie turned her widowhood into a profession , producing a quite comfortable living. What was the difference? It was in their abilities to manipulate conventional gender roles and expectations of a lady. Whereas Jessie was a little too aggressive and a little too much "General Jessie," Libbie remained firmly within the bounds of womanly propriety . That she so completely internalized the conventional ideal of womanhood evoked enormous sympathy, and no one dared to question the "Boy General" myth during her lifetime. Leckie gives us a solidly researched and well-written account of Libbie Custer's life. Although she admits that her subject "remained strangely illusive " to her, she provides a classic study of how expected gender roles could dominate an individual's life. There is a pathetic quality to Libbie Custer's story. For her, the only avenue to...