coon is running the sutler stores too !'
At one of the posts, where Custer was placed in command, on the frontier, the post trader was one of the Belknap appointees, and after some months had passed, Custer, who was a very close-observing officer, and knew no other way than to do his duty faithfully, reported to the Secretary of War
that the trader in question was a man of intemperate and profligate habits, which fact had a demoralizing tendency among the young officers and private soldiers of the garrison.
The Secretary could not overlook nor pigeon-hole a communication of this nature and importance. The one thing he could not avoid doing to preserve outwardly the dignity and honor of his office, and that was to remove the trader. Custer had himself a record and influence that the War Office could not ignore, and with Custer's letter of information on record, the efforts of the venerable Simon Cameron, and the most influential men in Congress, were powerless to save the profligate trader whom he had denounced. He was removed and another trader was appointed to the post.
Custer had no preference in the matter of the post trader-ships, knowing he was likely to be ordered from one military post to another at any time ; but for the sake of the younger officers of the regiment, one of them his own brother, he desired that the example and opportunities of intemperance should not be furnished them in the store of the post trader.
Again months rolled on. Custer was engaged in making a private investigation in regard to some grain stolen from the Government warehouses. Before the end of his investigations was reached, a portion of the stolen grain was discovered in the warehouse of the post trader. Suffice this matter to rest here, by saying that Custer ordered the unfortunate trader off the reservation, on pain of arrest, which order was, of course, obeyed ; the trader leaving his partner to settle the business, and he never returned to that reservation while Custer was in command. Here it was that Custer showed a degree of leniency and warm-heartedness of which few people are aware ; and yet these were his characteristic qualities. He could have pursued the trader with criminal proceedings, had he so chosen. But he preferred to leave that duty to others, knowing that he had done his in ordering the trader off the military reservation, and feeling that humane considerations were not beneath the thoughts of any man, however great or powerful.
The reader will now readily perceive that in both cases against the traders, Custer had simply done his duty as an officer and a soldier, as his obligations to the service demanded that he should do. No other course, in honor, was open to him ; his duty unquestionably requiring him to perform it fearlessly, no matter what trouble or disappointment it might entail upon Secretary Belknap, who, in an unprecedented manner, had taken the tradership appointments in his own hands, and who was not the man to brook with equanimity the enforced displacement of two of his favorite post traders. Ten companies of troops usually wintered at this post, and the profits arising from the tradership business were not less than $15,000 or $20,000 per year. Hence arose the breach between the avaricious Belknap and the gallant* close-observing Custer, and it soon grew into a wide one. Custer was called to Washington by a Congressional Committee to testify in regard to the post tradership business. He exhausted all honorable means to avoid the summons of the Committee, but was compelled to obey their mandate. Custer's testimony, or rather the fact that he was called upon by the Committee, as probably conversant with the sales of post traderships, excited the ire of Belknap, and here it was that President Grant arrayed himself by the side' of Belknap against Custer. Belknap was a warm personal friend of the President's, and of his brother, Orville Grant, who will long live in the history of the Missouri River country as a successful speculator in the sale of frontier post traderships. Belknap was, moreover, a member of his cabinet, and Grant must needs sustain him-even had the family reputation not been involved through the speculative Orville.
The Belknap impeachment trial, although the criminal escaped deserved punishment by a precipitate resignation of his office, has no doubt had a great moral effect upon the different departments of the Government. Belknap now stands before the American people-not one of the leading officials of the country-not the honorable and dignified. Secretary of War he once appeared to be-but in the eyes of those who watched his career, he stands a disgraced man„
with ' none so poor to do him reverence.' He has lost not simply office and position, but character, reputation and the respect of the American people, who would have been glad to have held him in their highest esteem until this day, had he deported himself with honor.
Let his example serve to deter the future high officials of the land from deviating from the path of strict rectitude. The homely old motto, ' Honesty is the best policy,' is as well worthy the consideration of a politician and office-holder as of that of the average citizen.
CHAPTEE IV.
Custer Displaced from live Command of the Eastern Column, at
Fort Lincoln.
Custer was displaced from the command of the eastern column, then in process of organization, at Fort Lincoln, and forbidden, by order of the President, to accompany the troops on the march. General Terry was placed in command of the expedition, but afterward, in response to the earnest entreaties of Custer to be spared the humiliation of seeing the troops march without him, the President's order was so far modified as to permit him to go with the expedition, in command of the 7th Cavalry. Thus reorganized, the column left Fort Lincoln with 12 companies of the 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant-Colonel Custer, 3 companies of the 6th and 17th Infantry, 4 Gatling guns, and a detachment of 45 Indian scouts, under the Arickiree chief, Bloody Knife. The wagon train consisted of 114 six-mule teams, 37 two-horse teams, 70 other vehicles, ambulances, etc., with 85 pack-mule and 179 civilian drivers -a total force of 2,700 armed men-seeking the Sioux, and divided into three columns of 1,300, 400, and 1,000 respectively. These three columns started from the circumference of a circle with a radius of three hundred miles, under orders to concentrate and join their converging lines somewhere in the region enclosed by the Big Horn and Powder Rivers-where the enemy was supposed to be in force-there to enclose and crush out the desperate remnants of savage outlaws, their number being variously estimated at from 1,000 to 3,000. Later events proved the fallacy of this belief ; that between 3,000 and 5,000 Indians were massed in the fatal valley of the Yellowstone, awaiting in savage ferocity the coming of the troops, all of whom they could easily have annihilated with their superior arms and steeds, had the remainder of them come within their lines.
Who that lived in Bismarck in the year 1876, during the time that the ' Lincoln column ' of the great expedition was being fitted out across the river, will forget that it was matter of public notoriety that the savage hordes were gathering their clans from north and from south, to dispute the passage of the soldiers ; that even while their godly agents were crying aloud, 'All is well/' the Bed Cloud, Standing Hock and Spotted Tail agencies were being depopulated of their fighting material. Supply trains, with men, arms, ponies, provisions, ammunition and warriors, were rushing to that wild rendezvous on the Yellowstone, where the restless Sitting Bull awaited the tardy coming of the royal sacrifice. Each new accession to their ranks was hailed with acclamations of delight, and in the weird gyrations of the war-dance the blood-stained wretches recounted their gory deeds, and sought to stimulate each other to horrid acts of brutality and bloodshed. Who that heard them can forget those significant inquiries heard in the streets of Bismarck, by emissaries fresh from Sitting Bull's camp, during the sad days of Custer's humiliation under presidential displeasure, when the men waited in arms for the order to march, and their brave, outspoken commander chafed in bitterness of spirit under the undeserved disgrace of being ordered to stay behind. 'What are the dog-soldiers waiting for?' 'Are they tired before they start?' 'What is the matter with Custer?' 'Is the long-haired chief sick?' All these and more, coupled with direful threats and sickening messages of expectant revenge, from Bain-in-the-Face and his no less bloody followers, were repeated from mouth to mouth, and excited in many hearts sad feelings of foreboding relative to the fate of the gallant Custer, who in going forth to give battle to the merciless chieftain of the Sioux, left behind him, in the person of XL S. Grant, the chief executive of the land, a, foe no less relentless.
On June 21st Gibbon's column was sent from Terry's camp on the Yellowstone, at the mouth of Tongue River, to the mouth of the Big Horn River, where, after being ferried across by the supply steamer ' Far West,' that had followed by river from Fort Lincoln, it was directed to proceed to the forks of the Little and Big Horn, its future movements to be controlled by circumstances as they should arise, but with the hope expressed by General Terry that the Indians in the Little Big Horn region should be enclosed by Gibbon's column, in co-operation with the 7th
