New Website on Custer & Little Big Horn

[mikegriffith1]

I have created a new website. It is titled General George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn. I will continue to add content to the website over the next few months, but there is enough content on the website now that I feel comfortable sharing it:

sites.google.com/view/custers-last-stand/home

If anyone has any suggestions for articles to link on the website, please let me know.

[mikegriffith1]

This morning I added a large amount of content to the website.

Again, if anyone has any suggestions for articles to link on the website, please let me know.

[mikegriffith1]

I have written a new article titled "Lieutenant Jesse Lee vs. Major Marcus Reno: Another Indictment of Reno’s Dereliction of Duty at Custer’s Last Stand" (LINK) and have uploaded the article to my Custer website.

[lakotadan]

A very interesting article.

I applaud your vast education and military service (thank you for your service).

Although your ego does not impress me.

But as far as placing blame on somebody (even though that blame may be well deserved) the battle at the Little Bighorn is over.

Blaming someone will not undo the end result of what finally occurred at the battle.

Everyone is long dead.

What happened, happened a long time ago.

Reno was eventually exonerated and is laid to rest at the Custer National Cemetery.

Maybe better to just let everyone involved in the battle (both Army and Native Americans) Rest In Peace.

Just my opinion.

[mikegriffith1]

Jul 28, 2024 14:24:27 GMT -6 lakotadan said:

A very interesting article.

I applaud your vast education and military service (thank you for your service).

Although your ego does not impress me.

But as far as placing blame on somebody (even though that blame may be well deserved) the battle at the Little Bighorn is over.

Blaming someone will not undo the end result of what finally occurred at the battle.

Everyone is long dead.

What happened, happened a long time ago.

Reno was eventually exonerated and is laid to rest at the Custer National Cemetery.

Maybe better to just let everyone involved in the battle (both Army and Native Americans) Rest In Peace.

Just my opinion.

Well, if that's the case, we should shut down this forum and stop talking about the battle. For that matter, historians and other scholars should have stopped writing about the battle decades ago. 

Reno's "exoneration" was a dubious PC-driven whitewash pushed by some of Reno's descendants in 1967. The '67 Army review board did not even consider Reno's 1877 court martial, in which he was found guilty of six counts of immoral conduct. The '67 review only looked at Reno's 1880 court martial, and its excuses and special pleading for overturning the 1880 court martial are an embarrassment. 

Even President Hayes, who had reduced Reno's punishment in his 1877 court martial to a mere 2 years of dismissal, concurred with the punishment in Reno's 1880 court martial (https://littlebighorn.info/Articles/reno86.htm). Yet, the so-called "review board" in 1967 decided that Reno had been treated unfairly in the 1880 court martial. The board said nothing--not one word--about Reno's 1877 conviction and even granted him a posthumous honorable discharge, in spite of his 1877 conviction, even though President Hayes had upheld that conviction but had reduced the sentence from permanent dismissal to a 2-year dismissal.

Let me tell you: In the U.S. Army that I served in, there was no way someone could get an honorable discharge with a single court martial conviction on their record, much less two convictions. In the Army I served in, if someone got kicked out of the Army for two years based on being found guilty of six charges of immoral conduct in a court martial, they would be very lucky to get a general discharge and would never get an honorable discharge.


 

[mikegriffith1]

Jul 28, 2024 14:05:19 GMT -6 mikegriffith1 said:

I have written a new article titled "Lieutenant Jesse Lee vs. Major Marcus Reno: Another Indictment of Reno’s Dereliction of Duty at Custer’s Last Stand" (LINK) and have uploaded the article to my Custer website.

I've revised the article to include two paragraphs on the 1967 Army review board's dubious exoneration of Reno.

[Bruce Robert]

Quote from above mentioned website:
"Most historians and scholars who have studied Custer's Last Stand now agree that Custer's conduct at the Battle of the Little Big Horn was not reckless or incompetent, and that his two chief subordinate officers, Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen, largely caused the defeat by failing to obey his orders." (italics added)

This one statement is an indictment on everything that follows it. No scholar worthy of the title or a possible PhD. would begin with such claptrap. You start from a conclusion, then work backwards fitting the facts to your ridiculous conclusion.

"Most scholars..."? "Custer's Last Stand..."?

Thanks for the invite to your propaganda site, but I'll pass.

[mikegriffith1]

Aug 6, 2024 12:09:51 GMT -6 Bruce Robert said:

Quote from above mentioned website:
"Most historians and scholars who have studied Custer's Last Stand now agree that Custer's conduct at the Battle of the Little Big Horn was not reckless or incompetent, and that his two chief subordinate officers, Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen, largely caused the defeat by failing to obey his orders." (italics added)

This one statement is an indictment on everything that follows it. No scholar worthy of the title or a possible PhD. would begin with such claptrap. You start from a conclusion, then work backwards fitting the facts to your ridiculous conclusion.

"Most scholars..."? "Custer's Last Stand..."?

Thanks for the invite to your propaganda site, but I'll pass.

My statement is perfectly accurate and valid. How about if you name some published historians or genuine Custer scholars in the last 20 years who argue that Custer was reckless and/or incompetent and that Reno and Benteen performed competently and did not fail to obey Custer's orders? If my statement is "claptrap," you should have no trouble naming published historians and/or scholars who agree with your view of the battle.

And, just on a point of logic, my website does not "start from a conclusion" and "then work backwards fitting the facts" to my conclusion ("your ridiculous conclusion," as you put it).

FYI, when I began to study the Last Stand, I was very anti-Custer and believed he had acted rashly and blunderingly at the Little Big Horn.