The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer (review)

BOOK REVIEWSI59 would ever see the notation, or so Lincoln thought—perhaps I should say, only his secretary, Lincoln, and all of us fortunate enough to share this and the treasures in the ZaIl book. Frank J. Williams The Ulysses S. Grant Association The Civil WarMemories ofElizabethBacon Custer. Edited by Arlene Reynolds. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Pp. 208. $24.95.) Elizabeth Bacon Custer, widowed at age thirty-four when her husband, Gen. George Armstrong Custer, died at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, spent the remaining years of her life shaping, magnifying, and preserving the public memory of her husband's military career. She delighted audiences with stories of life in the West, and generations of Americans grew up admiring the exploits of Libbie's "warrior bold" in her three books describing Custer's participation in the western Indian campaigns. Now, Arlene Reynolds has taken Libbie's notes and diaries and reconstructed a memory book of the first years of the couple's marriage and the last years of the Civil War. The immediate concern in a book of this nature is its authenticity and integrity with regard to the original author. Although Libbie had planned just such a book, she died leaving the materials scattered and often undated. Reynolds has done an exceptional job in organizing the entries and editing the work for continuity and style. Libbie wrote that her reminiscences were very personal and contained "no information that would be valuable to a historian" (1). While the former is true, one suspects that especially Libbie knew the significance of an insider's glimpse of life on the move in the closing days of battle in that brutal war. Libbie recounts Custer's love of West Point and days filled with youthful escapades and enduring friendships. This sets the stage for recollections of his daring as a cavalry commander and explains the respect and continued goodwill exchanged among officers of both sides. More interesting than the memories of her husband's heroism were her own adventures as a camp follower and her interpretation of the unfolding events. The pampered only child of doting parents, her marriage to the "boy general" threw Libbie into a complex world of military and governmental structure, intrigue, and power. She was sought-out by junior officers, entertained by ambitious politicians, and evaluated by the Washington elite. In spite of her protestations of innocence, historian Shirly Leckie has amply demonstrated Libbie's skill at using these opportunities to ingratiate herself and further her husband's career in Elizabeth Bacon Custer, the Making of a Myth. Libbie's memories of overland flights in a closed ambulance, journeys along mined rivers, and makeshift quarters in confiscated Southern homes behind the lines ring true, encased as they are in her understanding of the proper role of a ?6?CIVIL WAR HISTORY nineteenth-century lady. Readers will also be fascinated by her relationship to Eliza, a former slave hired by Custer to take care of his wife, as well as Libbie's comments about slavery and the war's impact on that institution. The key to understanding Elizabeth Bacon Custer's books lies in a revelation near the end of The Civil War Memories. Many years after the war, Libbie read a biography of Jefferson Davis written by his wife that changed her opinion of him. Libbie wrote, "Her defense of her husband's character . . . made me feel how clever is wifely tact and devotion that would put in all truth and earnestness her husband's better nature before strangers, and make them over as she did me" (148). Libbie made a lifetime career ofthis sentiment, and both the general reader and the historian will find much to enjoy in this book about the Custers' Civil War years. Linda Williams Reese East Central University Ada, Oklahoma Blockaders, Refugees, & Contrabands: Civil War on Florida 's Gulf Coast, 1861-1865. By George E. Buker. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993. Pp. ix, 236. $29.95.) By conventional standards, events in Florida were hardly central to the Civil War. Barely one full-scale military engagement occurred within the state—the minor Battle of Olustee. Accordingly, traditional surveys usually allot...