“One can only wonder – as the warriors began to circle at Little Big Horn – if for a split-second Custer experienced a sense of déjà vu; a disturbing recollection of Trevilian Station.”

By Jim Stempel

WE’VE ALL HEARD of Custer’s Last Stand. It was June 25, 1876 when the flamboyant U.S. Army cavalry commander foolishly attacked a large Indian village along the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory.

Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors quickly gained the upper hand and drove Custer and his troopers up the slopes of what is now called Last Stand Hill, there to eventually surround and slaughter 270 men of 7^th Cavalry, including the general himself.

But Little Big Horn wasn’t the only time Custer found himself with enemies on all sides and fighting for his very life. It also happened more than a decade earlier in an engagement during the U.S. Civil War – on June 11, 1864, to be precise.

At the time, Custer was a 24-year-old brigadier commanding a full brigade of Michigan cavalry. His outfit was part of a Union force sent to rescue Ulysses Grant’s Army of the Potomac from a dire situation at Cold Harbor, Virginia.

Grant hoped to withdraw his troops without revealing his intentions to Confederate forces. To do so he needed to draw-off the bulk of the Rebel cavalry which, if left free, might discover the ploy. Grant sent General Philip Sheridan west with an enormous cavalry column numbering 10,000 sabres, accompanied by an entire brigade of horse artillery. Sheridan’s mission was to threaten the Virginia Central Railroad, which was Richmond’s lifeline to the food-rich Shenandoah Valley. It was a danger Grant knew Confederate General Robert E. Lee could not ignore.

Lee responded at once, ordering two divisions of cavalry – one under General Wade Hampton, another commanded by Lee’s own nephew Fitzhugh Lee – to find and stop Sheridan. In the early hours of June 11, the opposing sides collided at a whistle-stop on the Virginia Central named Trevilian Station. Sparks immediately flew.

Custer, commanding one of Sheridan’s forward elements, managed to bypass the main Confederate body, and inadvertently stumbled upon the rear of the Rebel position. Here he discovered Hampton’s lightly guarded supply train. Custer had already developed a stout reputation as a hell-bent-for-leather cavalryman whose modus operandi consisted chiefly of attacking anything and everything at first sight, leaving the details to be sorted-out later.

The sight of Hampton’s entire train – a tantalizing prize, to say the least, and a lovely feather for his cap – sent the “boy general’s” innate aggressiveness into instant overdrive. Without a moment’s hesitation, he ordered the 5^th Michigan Volunteer Cavalry to take the train. Four hundred mounted troopers thundered forward with sabres drawn. Moments later, the rest of Custer’s men joined the charge.

The initial assault on the wagon train was an overwhelming success; what few Rebels were present ran for the hills. It was a spectacular prize: fifty wagons, 40 ambulances, caissons and a string of more than a thousand horses. Custer knew that securing his plunder might prove difficult. As soon as additional Union riders appeared, he put them straight to work erecting a defensive perimeter to protect the loot. The men got busy tearing down fences, turning over carts to patch together a slapdash stockade. With the crude fortifications in place, the troopers pulled their carbines from their saddles and took positions along the line.

Custer’s gambit had been observed by Hampton, who watched the attack unfold from a nearby hilltop and promptly called for Rebel reinforcements. The task went to the Laurel Brigade, one of Lee’s finest cavalry units commanded by General Thomas Rosser, one of the South’s best officers. Interestingly, Custer and Rosser had been best of friends at West Point. That would count for little now. The Laurels roared into the open field bordering the wagons and immediately formed two lines. A thousand men pulled their sabres and drew their revolvers as Rosser gave the command to charge. Within moments, the grey riders rolled over Custer’s line, driving the Yankees out into the open.

A wild melee ensued. Pistols popped, sabres flashed, carbines rang-out and punches were thrown as more than a thousand men fought to the death. More Confederate cavalry rode in to join the fracas. Slowly, Custer’s Wolverines were forced back from the wagons toward a small knoll overlooking the killing ground.

Custer ordered them to halt on the high ground and form a rough line to prepare for the final enemy onslaught. Little did he realize the battle was only just beginning.

More Rebel riders swarmed the area. They seemed to be attacking from all directions. Custer’s horse artillery bounded to the top of the knoll behind him and rapidly unlimbered. They whirled a few pieces into place and opened fire. Amidst a hurricane of hissing cannister, the Confederates took flight.

It was a momentary respite. As his men braced for more, Custer scrambled topside for a look. From between the guns he could scan the horizon. In every direction he saw dust kicked-up by Rebel cavalry. Fitzhugh Lee’s entire division had arrived and was circling the Union position. There was nothing Custer’s Wolverines could do now except fight for their lives. And fight they did.

Throughout that long morning, the Michiganders fended-off charge after charge, their lines often breached, at times overwhelmed. Yet somehow, they managed to repulse every Confederate effort. Their success however had been a costly one; many of Custer’s troopers now lay dead or wounded. If help didn’t arrive soon, all might be lost.

Fortunately, reinforcements did appear. Captain Amasa Dana, an aide on General Alfred Thomas Torbert’s staff, got through the Rebel lines and found Custer. He was thunderstruck by the 5^th’s dire situation. Amazingly, the rugged, hilly terrain had masked the sound of the battle; no Union units beyond the Michigan brigade had even heard Custer’s fight.  Dana immediately slipped back out and sounded the alarm.

Upon getting word of the nearby battle, Wesley Merritt, one of Custer’s rivals in the cavalry corps, scrambled his entire brigade, and galloped to the rescue. With Union reinforcements now evening the odds, the Confederates withdrew to focus on the larger objective: securing the Gordonsville Road and blocking any move by Sheridan towards the Shenandoah Valley.

General Custer and his entire brigade, surrounded and on the brink of annihilation, had been rescued. One might think the boy general would have absorbed a powerful lesson from his close call at Trevilian Station; it seems the opposite was the case.

There is no denying that Custer was a bold and fearless warrior, a furious fighter, and that he always led from the front. During the entire course of the war, he’d have some ten horses shot out from under him, always directing daredevil attacks, often against prohibitive odds. While men fell around him in droves, George Custer escaped the war without a single wound, and that extraordinary streak of good fortune appears to have imbued him with a dangerous sense of invulnerability.

He emerged from the American Civil War an enormous national hero precisely because of his reckless, high-wire act, this making his sudden, bloody fall 11 years later virtually incomprehensible to a still-adoring public.

One can only wonder – as the warriors began to circle at Little Bighorn – if for a split-second Custer experienced a sense of déjà vu; a disturbing recollection of Trevilian Station, and its lessons never learned? Perhaps, then, he felt a twinge of regret – no matter how infinitesimally short and fleeting – for the many years he had failed to come to terms with the prospect of his own mortality. But I suspect not.

Jim Stempel is a speaker and author of nine books and numerous articles on American history, spirituality, and warfare. His newest book regarding the American Revolution – Valley Forge to Monmouth: Six Transformative Months of the American Revolution – will be released in November and is currently available for pre-order on virtually all online sites. This serves as a follow-up to his critically acclaimed book American Hannibal, an examination American General Daniel Morgan at the Battle of Cowpens. For a full preview, pricing, and pre-publication reviews of Valley Forge to Monmouth, visit Amazon here or visit his website www.jimstempel.com for all his books, reviews, articles, biography, and interviews.