George Armstong Custer

George Armstrong Custer was born on December 5, 1839 in New Rumley, Ohio. A graduate of West Point, he became the youngest general in the Union army at the time of his promotion to brigadier general at age 23. He was a nationally known cavalry officer in the Civil War long before the Battle of the Little Big Horn. At the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, General George Custer and his Michigan Cavalry Brigade, though outnumbered, defeated Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart and his forces, an action important in the Union army's victory at Gettysburg, a turning point in the war. During the war, Custer led numerous cavalry charges and had eleven horses shot dead beneath him. He was appointed to command the third cavalry division of the Army of the Potomac and became a major general at age 25. He and his division were the main reason General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, because Custer and his men blocked the Confederate retreat route to Appomattox Station and kept Lee and his army from trainloads of supplies. Custer received the first Confederate flag of surrender at Appomattox. The table on which General Grant wrote the surrender terms there was purchased and given to Elizabeth Custer by General Sheridan, who wrote that scarcely an individual had contributed more to bring about that result than her husband. She eventually donated the table to the Smithsonian Institute Museum. George Custer died at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Montana on June 25, 1876 and is buried at West Point, New York.

Monroe, Michigan · United States