Monroe — Michigan’s Gen. George Armstrong Custer was once viewed as a Civil War hero, renowned for his fearlessness. But those years are long gone.
In 2021, the United Tribes of Michigan, a left-leaning organization, passed a resolution calling for the city of Monroe to remove the George Armstrong Custer monument on the corner of North Monroe and Elm Street. For the past few years, liberals have protested in front of the statue, appealed to city council for its removal, even placed billboards around Detroit calling for the Civil War General’s memory to be abolished from his hometown.
But the protesters are not only after his visage. They want Custer Elementary and Custer Street to be renamed. They want his name expunged from every stone and plaque.
Is Monroe insensitive, racist, and behind the times on Custer?
The history is more complicated. Custer was born in New Rumley, Ohio, but lived five of his formative years in Monroe with his sister, who had married a Monroe native. She was like a second mother to him. He attended Monroe Methodist Church and New Dublin School and later Stebbins Academy for Boys, where he read military romance novels during class and barely got by in school.
He then returned to Ohio where he ironically became a teacher. But his love of adventure eventually took hold and he made his way to West Point, where he was a horrible student but an excellent cavalryman. While at West Point, he read more novels with romance, Indians, and battles. It’s this allure to the battlefield and lust for glory that defined the man’s military life.
Many of Custer’s friends at West Point were Southerners who joined the Confederacy when the war broke out in 1861. So, what did he decide?
Everyone knows the image of Custer in his Union uniform with his red tie and golden locks. Yet, to the chagrin of Monroe’s modern-day protesters, Custer was still a Democrat. And that meant he was a Southern sympathizer.
As a Democrat of the era, Custer wasn’t necessarily against slavery. But he was loyal to his home state of Ohio and decided to join the Union.
So why is one of the nation’s finest equestrian monuments in Monroe of all places? Even though a small non-equestrian statue is in New Rumley, the Monroe monument is far superior, and this is because of Custer’s work in 1863 at the Battle of Gettysburg.
On the third day of the battle, when victory was necessary, he led the Michigan Brigade of 500 cavalrymen against 2,000 of Major General J.E.B. Stuart’s Confederate cavalry. Custer galloped to the front of his men, his saber drawn into the air, and he shouted, “Come on, you Wolverines!” He led the charge. After a few hours of bloody hand-to-hand combat and rushes of cavalry regiments into grey hordes of the enemy, Custer lost 219 of the brigade, but Stuart and his men eventually retreated.
The statue in Monroe depicts the general at the moment he sights Stuart’s cavalry coming toward him and his Michigan Brigade. This is the moment in our nation’s bloodiest war that America wanted to honor this general for. His victories at Gettysburg and the rest of the war were significant. After the Confederates surrendered at Appomattox in 1865, Major General Sheridan wrote a letter to Custer’s wife Libbie, saying “…there is scarcely an individual in our service who has contributed more to bring about this desirable result than your gallant husband.”
Those who fought with Custer said that he always strode in front of his men as they approached gunfire. He was confident that they would win the battle, and this invigorated his men to follow him. Stories of his future battles, even at Little Bighorn, make one think of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans facing swarms of Persians or Richard the Lionheart, his sword outstretched, running in front of his Crusaders into throngs of Turks. Custer fearlessness in the face of certain death made him a delight to fight behind.
And yet, history is complicated. He would go on to fight the Sioux in the West. There are rumors he did some awful things, which upon deep study are impossible to know for sure. What is certain is Sheridan commanded Custer to kill women and children at points, and he obeyed those orders. Because he was passionate, he often made poor decisions that cost him his men, got him court marshaled, and eventually led to his death along with 208 men in 1876.
What Michigan should think about Custer is what anyone should think about any hero. He was flawed. And yet, he was courageous.
Custer’s wife, Libbie, helped to honor her husband by writing books about his expeditions out West. Custer’s marriage to her helped establish his Monroe reputation. Being from Monroe, Libbie was proud to have the statue honoring Custer in her hometown.
In 1910, the equestrian monument was erected in front of the courthouse on the brick-paved intersection of First and Washington in a ceremony with thousands of attendees. President Howard Taft attended the event and spoke in Custer’s honor. It is important to note that the statue is not meant to honor Custer for his Western Sioux expeditions but for his feats in the Civil War. Modern critics ignore this point.
Since that glorious day when Monroe gained its finest landmark, the monument has been moved twice. Its current location is right in front of St. Mary’s Catholic Church.
Picketers and “No Kings” protesters gather here, and people dressed as Indians singing war songs on a yearly basis. This summer, there will be more with the arrival of The Battle of Little Bighorn’s 150th anniversary.
What a Michigander should think as he looks upon the modern statue of Custer, with scattered posters listing his actual sins and his supposed sins, is that none of this will solve the problem of history.
Custer was a man. He was a soldier. He killed people he shouldn’t have. And yet, he also rushed upon enemies with more courage than any man today could even imagine. If we had more Custers today, we would have more guts. That’s something we’ve been lacking for a long time.
Noah Wing is a contributing writer for Michigan Enjoyer.
