Why is General Custer a hero?

Answer 1

One Answer:

G. A. Custer was considered a hero during the War between the States. He was reckless, flashy, brave, and a colorful leader of his unit of Union Troops. He made quite a name for himself during the Civil War.

Custer was one of the youngest men to gain the rank of General. He had been quite brilliant during his years of training and education at West Point. He had been classmate with many of the southern leaders of the war, though he had been much younger than most of them. He had entered the military academy later than men like Robert E. Lee, U. S. Grant, etc. Lee and Grant were already experienced soldiers at the beginning of hostilities.

His time in the Civil War was relatively short. He was impatient for a new command when he was assigned to an outpost on the Western frontier. He had gained only a few months of experience fighting in the War, but those months had been very remarkable, colorful, and quite brilliant on his part. He went to the western outpost expecting to be able to fight the Indians the way he had been able to fight against the Southerners.

Another Answer:

At the time, most Americans thought of him as a hero... but he was, by all accounts, a vainglorious opportunist, who happened to be audacious and brave in battle, although often at the expense of his men.

His developed a very effective tactic for combat against the plains tribes, who had no organized military and no order of battle... native Americans did not generally form lines, nor fronts, and fought in a very haphazard, freeform manner that made them difficult to defeat.

Custer determined that the one thing they would fight the most focally was to protect their actual villages. Custer's tactic was to divide his forces and have one half dismount outside the native village on one side and engage as a skirmish line.

This would force the Natives to gather on that side of the village and take position to defend the village. This created a front and defined the village as being the enemies rear.

At that point Custer would take his second detachment in a cavalry charge from the opposite side of the Village and seize the village... which seized not only women and children, but all their horses, teepees, food supplies, and material goods.

This tactic was extremely effective... up until the attack on the Little Bighorn, where the village was simply too large and Custer was taken out of action in the opening volley.

Another Answer

George Custer was no hero. In the War for Southern Independence he became involved in brutal conduct already outlawed but authorized by General Grant, who stipulated after he took control of the Army of the Potomac that members of Colonel Mosby's command were to be executed on site when captured.

Custer had to refrain from this vile behavior only after his men were also captured and treated in similar fashion, with several captured union soldiers being hung in Virginia as revenge for Custer's actions. Mosby made it clear that Custer's men would be treated in kind.

After the war Custer became one of the leading proponents of Sherman's scorched-earth policy against the Plains Indians in the west, as it was Sherman's policy of genocide to wipe out the Indian and move those who survived to designated areas. Custer was the villain who enforced that general order, and as such was the perpetrator of cruel and inhuman atrocity in order to advance the United States' understanding of "manifest destiny."

Answer 2

General George Armstrong Custer performed heroically during the Civil War, but is remembered for being stupid enough to divide his forces and lose every man in his command during the Battle of the Little Bighorn River.

Answer 3

General Custer is without a doubt a villain. His assaults on Native American villages were a key part of the overall strategy that would later move most Native Americans -- who occupied nearly half of the United States at the time -- into the reservations that they live on till this very day. I cannot see why a man who served such a ruthless and brutal role in this overall strategy of genocide could be regarded as a hero. He is responsible at least for the deaths of 210 Native Americans.

-DominiRican05-

Answer 4

Custer did heroic things in the Civil War, but the reason people came to think of him as a hero was because he acted stupidly in the Indian Wars and got his entire command killed. The fact that he died with his boots on is all that was remembered.