|
Post by PhillyBlair on Jul 16, 2006 9:06:46 GMT -6
DC...I very intentionally did not want to have a religious discussion. All I am saying is that modern research into nearly anything begins with the premise that what we've always been taught is wrong. I happen to agree with much of what you wrote, but I was only using the theological point (and more importantly, how the press, academic and religious communities responded to it) to show that what is happening in LBH studies is happening everywhere. We seem to be using revisionism to counter the previous revisonism in all phases of historical research. That's what troubles me. Whatever happened to starting with the known evidence and building from there?
|
|
|
Post by elisabeth on Jul 16, 2006 9:18:47 GMT -6
Thanks, AZ; nice to pin that one down.
DC, I could be wrong, but I thought Lee only became "a tool of Mrs Custer and her clique" in later life. As for not abandoning the wounded being a "romantic notion" -- that makes today's US Army a bunch of hopeless romantics too, does it not? "Leave no man behind" and all that. Maybe they are, at that. But actually, it's pretty pragmatic, I'd have thought. How well is a man going to fight if he gets the idea he'll be abandoned if wounded?
There had already been widespread shock-horror throughout the army after one wounded man was left behind at the Powder River fight. And the fate of those left behind in the valley after Reno's "charge" to the bluffs -- visible and, probably worse, audible to the survivors -- left the rest in no doubt that the Indians were hardly going to send in the Red Cross and stretcher-bearers for them. Terry's parting remark to Custer -- "for God's sake, hold onto your wounded" -- may well have been apocryphal, but none the less must convey the attitude of the time; no-one thought it particularly bizarre.
You ask: "when did the mission become Saving General Custer?". Fair question, especially when they (allegedly) didn't know he needed saving. Was it, though, necessary for the two mission objectives to exclude each other? After the event, inevitably, "saving" became the issue. But in purely mission terms they were failing Terry's objective, as well, by doing nothing. The Indians were left free to vacate the field in their own good time and scatter -- exactly as feared. Whether a timely entrance to the fray on the part of Benteen and/or Reno's remnants would have made any difference is something we've all debated endlessly; but lack of same guaranteed mission failure ...
|
|
|
Post by AZ Ranger on Jul 16, 2006 9:26:28 GMT -6
DC As you can do so eloquently you deflect your answer just slightly off target. You posed the idea that it may have not been well known that Indians picked up cartridge cases and Recorder Lee may have interjected the thought.
In this case, no pun intended, it is fact by General Order 13 in February of 1876 and not something calcified into fact by starting with Recorder Lee and then those repeating it afterwords into fact.
There was no plan in the General Order 13 to supply Indians with firearms and ammunition on June 25, 1876 to alleviate the need for the Indians to reload cases.
As far as the well knowns, things haven't changed all that much over time. Intelligence is gathered and you make the best of it. Sometimes it leads to drawing the wrong conclusions. Reno recognized it as he charged down the valley. They weren't running and he changed his attack.
|
|
|
Post by elisabeth on Jul 16, 2006 9:31:10 GMT -6
Blair,
I do agree (for what that's worth). I've a nasty feeling that commerce is behind it, consciously or unconsciously. "Sensational new evidence" ... "Overturns the accepted view" ... Etc. A headline such as "A modest and sober development from a theory first posited in 1876" doesn't quite cut it in today's world. Which is a great pity. Instead, the new revisionism counters the previous revisionism; then the new revisionism becomes the new orthodoxy; then that in turn is overturned; and the whole thing, as in a game of Chinese Whispers, gets further and further away from the original base. Good that you've reminded us to be wary of that.
|
|
|
Post by PhillyBlair on Jul 16, 2006 9:50:31 GMT -6
Elisabeth, I'm nominating you for a top 10 profound quote of the year:
"...the new revisionism becomes the new orthodoxy."
You managed to say, rather succinctly, what it took me two pages to blabber on about. Thanks!
|
|
|
Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 16, 2006 10:14:04 GMT -6
Sorry, Philly, just saying that people should be able to talk and argue without blood on the walls, about religion as anything else. We're in total agreement: you start with known facts (after subjecting them to the acid test) and carry on from there.
I have much respect for the Fox and Scott work, and they aren't the ones making the sweeping claims with whom I have a beef, although they're cheerfully allowing them to be made uncontested. They offer plausible theories. In their shoes, no doubt I'd do the same. But there is a huge CSI/magic mentality that equates, as AZpointed out, to 'proof' in the layman's mind, and in the case of Custer and the myriad factions attached, it's being utilized to dubious end.
I threw a tantrum about the History Channel and the way they inflate stuff on another board years ago, and there seems to be a real effort to make every wobbly issue of every historic "mystery" sensational and, probably inevitably, interjecting falsehoods.
AZ, you're right. But while the Army had no plan, the US government was certainly, as Reno put it, supplying and arming two separate armies to fight it out. I just wonder if that well known fact about the cases, while well known, was really a fact, whatever the Army thought. Is all.
And Reno. They'll run, and everyone'll be there to support you. None of that happens.
|
|
|
Post by AZ Ranger on Jul 16, 2006 10:54:42 GMT -6
It would require that the firearm had a centered rather then rim firing pin. A black powder cap would be placed inside the case along with powder,and a bullet. Then one hopes that the firing pin would hit it. Not the best for combat but would work for hunting purposes except you might go hungry.
|
|
|
Post by d o harris on Jul 16, 2006 11:00:40 GMT -6
One more of which I am dubious---Reno proposing to abandon the wounded. All this traces back to Benteen. When Benteen discovered Godfrey was preparing his version for Century Magazine Benteen seemed concerned, perhaps even fearful, that Godfrey would publish the story as Benteen had related it. Godfrey didn't. It is possible Col. Graham had the right view of this. Reno, talking things over with Benteen, says, "The only way we can get away from here is to abandon the wounded," and Benteen says "We can't do that."
|
|
|
Post by mcaryf on Jul 16, 2006 11:09:41 GMT -6
I seem to remember that Custer supposedly had 17 cartridge cases about his body. Was this just a story of Custer selling his lefe dearly? If it was not how come the Indians do not collect Custer's cases but gather up lots of other ones?
Regards
Mike
|
|
|
Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 16, 2006 12:36:27 GMT -6
Greenpheon,
With what are you taking issue? While never in service, and never having experienced losing friends and men - perhaps due to hesitation or incompetence on my part - I obviously cannot relive anything I never lived in the first place. For which I'm grateful and those who potentially would have served with me are grateful. I have no delusions of military adequacy. I cheerfully claim cowardice.
You don't have to live it to understand it, though. Anyone would "understand" the importance of taking care of the wounded. For morale, one, and for your own preservation were the roles reversed, two, and because in the long run and harsh light of reality it makes no material sense to lose trained men unnecessarily. Three. And that's all before personal attachment.
I'd submit those are not all that different from those rushing into flaming buildings to save aged parents, spouses, children, dogs, beyond the issue that they could not live with themselves without trying. And generally never trained for it, either.
In any case, I think most people grasp the concept, and that no unexpected lights go off above heads in the civilian population when listening to combat vets explain the obvious.
This issue is whether those who proclaim this attribute about themselves actually do it as religiously as they want to be honored for it. You touch on the issue yourself when you say "So, let it go and accept the fact that the dead were abandoned only reluctantly and where possible the wounded were never deserted." Well, yes, accepted because it's obvious.
The question is whether the decision to abandon was sufficiently reluctant and whose verdict on that decision is the correct one.
At the Battle of Midway, when the Yorktown didn't sink as expected and there was a two day hiatus to try and save her after she'd been abandoned, salvage crews went aboard and found wounded still kicking in the hospital. They'd been abandoned. And they were abandoned yet again. It was only decades later, of course, this came out. Horrible and all that, but they couldn't prolong ship to ship transfers in a battle zone with enemy subs, one of which did eventually sink the carrier. If the destroyer taking off the wounded went down as well, where was the greater crime?
Then Bataan, MacArthur's 'escape', and numerous CIA type stuff where they neither go back for the dead or acknowledge they're CIA or American in the first place.
In Reno's case, it's all how you phrase it. Do you increase the number of wounded by staying in a siege till the tipping point where it doesn't matter, you're too weak to fight and too few to save all the wounded who are mobile, anyway? They'd have to leave more immobile wounded the longer they waited. In that regard, his question was fair and valid and unanswered.
Whether he wet his pants and cried like a baby I don't know, but I think Benteen and Godrey took advantage and dropped kicked the guy more than he deserved. Benteen claimed this was the issue Lee sensed but was withheld from him, and I think while he really didn't like Reno he felt worse about him than Custer. Lot of people say Benteen was cut up with guilt for Custer, but don't think it more than the burden of combat command and all the might have beens, coulda-shouldas that bedevil the memories of combat leaders often enough.
|
|
|
Post by AZ Ranger on Jul 16, 2006 21:19:51 GMT -6
Mike-- Maybe they had enough live rounds as DC suggests to not worry about reloading for a while. A General order can't cover a circumstance where all the troopers die. Besides with all the new Springfields, Custer's .50-70s wouldn't fit.
|
|
|
Post by rch on Jul 16, 2006 21:46:28 GMT -6
darkcloud
I got out my map and compass and took a rough bearing from Custer Hill. The southernmost corner of the cemetery is a few degrees south of west; the northernmost is a few degrees north of west. Since the movement beyond Custer Hill, which I believe was possible, was conducted by two companies, I think a general reference to 'northward of Custer Hill' is fair. I can live with beyond Custer Hill as well. I don't like the idea that the move was conducted to round up non-combatants.
I think you were right to use the word "cartridge." Definition 1.a. in the American Heritage Dictionary is a tubular metal case containing propellant and primer. 2.a. adds the projectile.
I don't beleive 60% of Custer's force was inactive. Calhoun's company may have stayed in reserve on Calhoun Hill. Keogh's remaining companies may have moved into the draw formed by Custer Ridge and the high ground to the east, or he may have moved over that high ground itself.
I agree that amateur and professional historians often hang pretty big coats on pretty small hooks. Best guesses become established fact.
My invincible faith in an heroic last stand is not in at all dependent on a move beyond Custer Hill.
rch
|
|
|
Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 17, 2006 7:47:56 GMT -6
I suppose the issue is what is LSH. Most count the west and southern slope and end consideration at the monument, although it slopes north and east, if not as dramatically, but still the same rise. Sure, it's possible they headed north, and there is supporting evidence that could be interpreted for it. But that's it.
Why faith in a last stand? What is gained by this insistence? It may be true, but really, do the refurbishing of the markers: 20% off to Reno Hill, match the others to the early photos, extend the Custer group up and over the monument by united testimony, move Boston and Reed west. It looks quite different.
It's religion to insist upon a mythical template of sacrifice to be applied. That doesn't mean it isn't true, but it speaks to our needs rather than their deeds, and honesty is never inappropriate in history.
|
|
|
Post by Tricia on Jul 17, 2006 8:03:22 GMT -6
And why the insistence, DC, upon Custer getting either killed or mortally injured at somewhere near MTC, resulting in an *entire* battalion (or two companies thereof) going to pieces--psychologically--and scramming for LSH? For what reason? This was the army, dammit. I'm not a big believer in the Last Stand as Final Heroic Action in the Custer Battle, but I can't fathom your theory either.
|
|
|
Post by elisabeth on Jul 17, 2006 8:34:05 GMT -6
To be fair, while "heroic last stand" may be suspiciously close to the demands of mythology (which as you say, DC, doesn't mean it didn't happen) the notion of a "last stand" of some sort was founded on rational deduction by those who saw the evidence at first hand.
Elsewhere on the field, dead horses were scattered at random. At LSH, they were so placed as to form what could, conceivably, be construed as a barricade. Cavalrymen don't shoot their horses -- their means of escape -- until all hope of such escape is gone. Ergo, this had to be the place where the last-ditch defence took place. That it had some faint air of organisation about it allowed for the possibility that someone (not necessarily Custer, but someone) still had his wits about him and was thinking coolly at the end; that it so obviously was a last-ditch defence implied that those involved knew they were doomed, but went down fighting. So far, so rational. Mythology (or journalism) really only comes in with the addition of the gallant Custer as last man to fall, etc etc.
|
|