America’s Civil War: George Custer and Stephen Ramseur

Custer too had been active. Although still nominally a staff officer, he had taken impromptu command of three leaderless regiments at Brandy Station in June and led them to cut their way out of trouble, and close to two weeks later at Aldie, on the way to Gettysburg, he again shone in a tangle with some of Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry. With typical recklessness he led a charge into the gray ranks of his old friend Colonel Thomas Rosser’s regiment, only to find himself cut off and virtually alone. He attributed his survival to his broad-brimmed straw hat, exactly like that worn by the rebels. His inadvertent disguise created enough uncertainty about his identity for him to escape.

General Pleasonton, seeking to put some fire into his oft-defeated cavalry, now promoted three promising young captains — George Custer, Wesley Merritt and Elon Farnsworth — directly to brigadier general. Acting captain Custer returned to his mess late one night to find a letter addressed to Brigadier General George A. Custer. At first he thought it a joke, but the letter was real. He had made it after all. The boy general — at 23 the youngest man ever to hold the rank — got a tough Michigan brigade in the bargain. He showed up in a garish outfit, consisting of velveteen trousers and a jacket dripping gold braid with a red sailor shirt underneath, a huge slouch hat topping his shoulder-length blonde curls, and a red silk scarf that trailed behind him when he rode. Although he reminded one of his men of a circus rider, they soon learned that there was steel underneath all that brass.

On July 2, three days after taking command, Custer met Brig. Gen. Wade Hampton’s horsemen near Hunterstown, Pa. His recklessness again got him into trouble when he was unhorsed in an ill-advised charge and nearly captured. But his men fought off Hampton’s counterattack, delaying Stuart’s attempt to join Lee. The next day at Gettysburg, Stuart tried to push aside the Union cavalry and take the Federal army in the rear while Maj. Gen. George Pickett attacked the front. The Confederates drove back Brig. Gen. David Gregg’s outnumbered 2nd Cavalry Division, but suddenly Custer appeared on their flank at the head of the 7th Michigan, yelling Come on, you Wolverines! Unfortunately the brash young general had failed to scout the path of his charge, and it ran up against a stone wall that stopped his riders cold. A Rebel counterattack drove them back, with the loss of a quarter of his command. Then, as Stuart prepared to mount his final grand assault of the day, Gregg launched a preemptive charge of his own, with Custer and his Wolverines in the forefront. The Southern attack collapsed, and Stuart’s cavaliers barely avoided being driven from the field. I challenge the annals of warfare, boasted Custer, to produce a more brilliant or successful charge of cavalry.

After the Confederate retreat from Pennsylvania, military affairs settled down to wary maneuvers and occasional skirmishes that continued well into the winter. In late October, Dod Ramseur married Nellie Richmond and spent a blissful three months — a cozy, comfortable, spooney time, as he put it — in camp with her at his side. He treated his men considerably more harshly, however, and had some shot for desertion. Meanwhile George Custer went home, and in February 1864 married his true love, Elizabeth Libbie Bacon.

This pleasant interlude ended for both men when Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant crossed the Rapidan River in early May, precipitating the Battle of the Wilderness. While Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell’s II Corps grappled with the Yankees on the Orange Turnpike, another separate battle developed with Lt. Gen. A.P. Hill’s III Corps on the Orange Plank Road. The next day, Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside began slowly pushing his IX Corps into the gap between them, threatening Ewell’s flank. Ramseur was, once again, the sole Confederate reserve, and gamely advanced to meet Burnside’s corps in the tangled thickets. The fight showed Dod Ramseur at his audacious best — backed by a couple of guns, he strung out his entire brigade into a skirmish line and attacked. With the woods hiding his true numbers, Ramseur’s thin gray line overlapped that of his enemy and sent them tumbling back in confusion.

Ramseur’s real moment of glory came several days later at Spotsylvania when a pre-dawn May 12 attack by Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock’s Union II Corps broke through Confederate positions at the Mule Shoe, threatening to split Lee’s army in two. Ramseur’s brigade left its position on the west side of the salient and was thrown into a counterattack in which the young brigadier — looking like an angel of war,as one soldier put it — led his men to retake the works and hold them for 20 hours of desperate fighting. There, Ramseur lost another horse and suffered a painful wound (again in the right arm) but stayed with his men at what would be forever known as the Bloody Angle. When they finally withdrew to a new line early the next morning, half his men were dead, wounded or captured. Ramseur and his brigade were the heroes of the day, and he received the personal thanks of General Robert E. Lee.