The Film Archives's video: Touched by Fire: The Life Death and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer 1996

Read the book: https://amzn.to/3G9JHKw George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876) was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. Custer graduated from West Point in 1861 at the bottom of his class,[3] but as the Civil War was just starting, trained officers were in immediate demand. He worked closely with General George B. McClellan and the future General Alfred Pleasonton, both of whom recognized his qualities as a cavalry leader, and he was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers at age 23. Only a few days after his promotion, he fought at the Battle of Gettysburg, where he commanded the Michigan Cavalry Brigade and despite being outnumbered, defeated J. E. B. Stuart's attack at what is now known as the East Cavalry Field. In 1864, he served in the Overland Campaign and in Philip Sheridan's army in the Shenandoah Valley, defeating Jubal Early at Cedar Creek. His division blocked the Army of Northern Virginia's final retreat and received the first flag of truce from the Confederates. He was present at Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. After the war, he was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the Regular Army and was sent west to fight in the Indian Wars. On June 25, 1876, while leading the 7th Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana Territory against a coalition of Native American tribes,[4] he was killed along with all of the five companies he led after splitting the regiment into three battalions. This action became romanticized as "Custer's Last Stand". His dramatic end was as controversial as the rest of his career, and reaction to his life and career remains deeply divided. His legend was partly of his own fabrication through his extensive journalism, and perhaps more through the energetic lobbying of his wife Elizabeth Bacon "Libbie" Custer throughout her long widowhood. After his death, Custer achieved lasting fame. Despite some initial criticism, the public eventually saw him as a tragic military hero. Custer's wife, Elizabeth, who had accompanied him in many of his frontier expeditions, did much to advance this view with the publication of several books about her late husband: Boots and Saddles, Life with General Custer in Dakota,[113] Tenting on the Plains, or General Custer in Kansas and Texas[114] and Following the Guidon.[115] The deaths of Custer and his troops became the best-known episode in the history of the American Indian Wars, due in part to a painting commissioned by the brewery Anheuser-Busch as part of an advertising campaign. The enterprising company ordered reprints of a dramatic work that depicted "Custer's Last Stand" and had them framed and hung in many United States saloons. This created lasting impressions of the battle and the brewery's products in the minds of many bar patrons. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote an adoring (and in some places, erroneous) poem. President Theodore Roosevelt's lavish praise pleased Custer's widow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Armstrong_Custer Louise Barnett is the author of seven books, including a biography of General Custer titled Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer (1996). Barnett's best-known book, Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer (Henry Holt, 1996), won the 1996 John M. Carroll award of the Little Big Horn Associates for best book on Custer related studies.[2] The New York Times Book Review commented "There is much unusual and useful information about life on the plains, Indian warfare, the danger and fear of captivity by Indians, and especially, the relationship between Custer and his wife."[3] The book led to a number of television appearances by Barnett on the topic, including an A&E network Custer biography and the C-SPAN show Booknotes. Touched by Fire was reissued in 2006 in softcover by the University of Nebraska Press.[4] Most recently, Barnett has published Atrocity and American Military Justice in Southeast Asia (Routledge, UK, 2010) – a book which examines the prosecution of war crime trials in the Philippines and Vietnam. Bibliography The Ignoble Savage: American Literary Racism (Greenwood Press, 1976) New World Journeys: Italian Intellectuals and the Experience of America (Greenwood Press, 1978) Authority and Speech: Language, Society and Self in the American Novel (University of Georgia Press, 1993). Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer. Henry Holt. 1996. reprinted in 2006 ISBN 0803262663 Ungentlemanly Acts: The Army's Notorious Incest Trial. New York: Hill & Wang Pub. 2000. ISBN 0809073986. OCLC 42061102. Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women (Oxford University Press, USA, 2006) Atrocity and American Military Justice in Southeast Asia. Routledge. 2010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Barnett