I realize that I have the greatest destiny of mankind before me and was chosen with TL to fulfill this at this worst moment in history, but all of the same, if I had my druthers I would have been a 22 year old graduate of West Point in 1867 and begun a career which would have saved General Custer from his murder.
The reality is the 7th had the finest of officers before the Battle of the Washita and the time after, excluding one developing problem in a Capt. Benteen.
General Custer at the winter campaign on the southern plains to punish the terrorist tribes there from their kidnapping, robbery, murder, rape and enslavement of white Americans, had on staff the finest of people starting with Captain Alexander Hamilton, the grandson of Alexander Hamilton.
Hamilton would be killed at the battle as a lead commander in the assault.
At the Washita the Indians lured an exuberant Capt. Joel Elliot beyond lines and then butchered him and his small force.
As Indians were arriving from other camps, General Custer repulsed them, actually sent out scouts to try and find Elliot's group, but eventually in not having winter coats as the Indians stole them, to secure his coming supply train, to deal with hundreds of Indian female and children taken into protective custody, the General resumed his back march.
At this, Capt. Benteen in contemptable fashion spoke to the press and besmerched General Custer in ruinous lies as Elliot was his friend.
The General upon reading the slander said he would horse whip the man who spread them, and Capt. Benteen acknowledged it had been his work.
The General retired from the conversation, but kept Benteen with the 7th and it was this event which caused General Custer and his command to be murdred at the Little Big Horn.
One must understand that if another officer had been at Washita, to modify the attack that Capt. Hamilton gave and to modify the chase beyond the lines, that Captain Elliot would have learned his lesson and would have given the 7th two fine officers, and while Benteen was brave, he was an ill tempered officer with contempt for other officers of notoriety which included the fine Colonel, Washington Irving Dodge, as Dodge recorded in his journals.
Hamilton and Elliot were exuberant officers and if they had survived, the results would have been so much different in 1876 in Montana.
Another fine officer chosen for a mission in Lt. Lyman Kidder, was murdered with his command by the Sioux in 1867. These three officers who were murdered in battle by terrorists, as the army was still learning of the tactics to fight Indians, if they had lived would have set a far different stage for June 1876.
June 1876 saw Maj. Marcus Reno, a complete coward and incompetent leading the main charge at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. He should have face court martial for alerting the Indians of the military's presence, but again he was on the field bringing disaster to the frontal assault in he withdrew in panic retreat, and then instead of finding his commander, took position on a hill and sat there.
This is where Capt. Benteen found Reno, and Benteen had orders to come to Custer's position, but Benteen also took position on the hill.
Both of these officers disobeyed orders in the least and caused the mass murder of their confederates, and at worst were part of a scheme to get General Custer and his command murdered, in retaliation over the General's Congressional testimony exposing the danger to Americans in the Indian traders as they gave weapons to the tribes while robbing them of money.
In June of 1876, Major Joel Elliot would have led the Reno charge, as Reno would not have been in camp.
In like manner the reprehensible Benteen would have been under the command of Elliot on the frontal assault and would have fought well as he was brave, but just an ill tempered low self esteem walking psychosis.
The Benteen scout would have been undertaken by Capt. Hamilton and Lt. Kidder and when ordered by the General to assist, would have of course immediately joined Custer and reinforced the Custer position.
The problem with Benteen's group was Benteen, as the officers and men were brave, but Benteen for nefarious reasons when ordered to move forward, instead halted for a rest, then stopped by Reno's position and never advanced.
Benteen was investigated over the Elliot matter if it was the reason Benteen did not join Custer and his command to "leave him die".
The reality is the regular army, no matter what Washington was covering up, did retaliate in they charged Reno and Benteen individually over the years and prosecuted them for other charges, as the Troopers in the Custer command were connected to the military power families in America.
In noting all of that, if I only could have put certain events in a better order in a few lives preserved, the miscreants who appeared at June 1876 would have not caused the murder of Americans and the subsequent punishing war in the winter the terror tribes faced, would not have caused them great harm.
If Hamilton, Elliot and Kidder had been in command with General Custer, the Little Big Horn would have ended the Indian menace on the northern plains.
The reality is by even a draw, the Indians would have had to have abandoned tipi, robes, goods in order to escape and that is something they could not have afforded.
If the squaws and children could have been captured as at the Washita, it would have made an end to the Indian resistance and brought them to the reservation as the Washita hostages did great service to quelling the resistance on the southern plains.
If only two men had died in the place of the two men who did, and if only General Custer had drummed out of service the contemptuous Benteen and never had placed in his command the unbalanced Reno, the Indians would have faced a better future with a living General Custer as he was always humane to Indians in and out of his custody.
Instead great travail ensued, but America had another fine officer arise in General Nelson Appleton Miles whose innovations brought the terrorists Geronimo to heal and was the catalyst for winning the Spanish American War.
It is all futile to try and save the dead, but it is the humane thing to do.
Lame Cherry
Yes even with the treachery of Benteen and Reno, I still could have saved the General with picket pins for the horses and short shovels for a trench.
I keep fighting the battle because Libby still has not had her justice.
Evil only lives because it has not been solved with death.
Lame Cherry.
I would have called Benteen out for the General in a dual and cut his head off legally with a saber stroke in 1867.
agtG
