Origin of the Breach between Belknap and Custer.
Inasmuch as there are but very few people in the country, even among those holding official positions in the army, and in military circles outside, comprehend f lly the causes that led the Belknap tradership business to such a sudden " burst of the bubble," the author thinks it proper, in connection with the foregoing history, to state here fully the facts as they came under his observation at the time of their occurrence. Several m amp;nths before the high court of impeachment was ordered to investigate the tradership business
of Secretary of War Belknap, there was, in one of the regiments belonging to the United States Army, a young officer who was placed under arrest in consequence of charges preferred against him. He was tried by court-martial, and by a preponderance of evidence against him, and an unfortunate combination of circumstances, was found guilty and sentenced to dismissal from the service of the United States. It was, however, generally considered among those conversant with the affair, that the charges originally preferred against him were frivolous, and were created and brought against him more from personal malice than from any zeal for the service on the part of his accusers. Through the regular military channels, the findings and sentence of the court-martial reached Secretary Belknap for his approval or disapproval. It was thought in army circles that the Secretary should have shown some leniency, and been governed by the precedents on record at the War Office in similar cases, at the time. A commutation of the sentence to suspension from rank and half pay for six or twelve months was confidently expected by the friends of the aforesaid delinquent officer, and would have been considered a reasonable punishment for the offense charged. Contrary to popular expectation, the sentence of the court was promptly confirmed by the Secretary of War, and the young officer left the service of the United States army in disgrace, but only to return in due time. He, however, immediately set himself to work to procure his reinstatement by a special act of Congress ; but the approval of the findings and sentence of the court-martial by Secretary Belknap, of course, made a very strong case against him. In the meantime, the young officer, who, while in the service, had excellent opportunities to observe the manner in which the tradership traffic was carried on under the Belknap rule, set himself to work collecting facts and evidence concerning the same, and by means of these, prevailed upon his friends in Congress to bring the matter before the proper committee. This was done, and the result was a high court of impeachment. The Secretary of War was arraigned at the bar of the U. S. Senate to answer the grave charges preferred against him, and only escaped the righteous verdict of an indignant nation by a hasty resignation, and as hasty an acceptance of the same by President Grant, of his high office. We may add in this connection, that the young officer who first set in motion the much needed investigation, was afterward reinstated to his place in the army, and assumed his former rank in the service.
Another matter upon which the people of the country, even those of high standing, both in civil and military life, are not enlightened, is the causes' that led to the ill-feeling existing between Grant and Belknap on the one side against General G. A. Custer on the other. It was previously a matter of record, and known all over the country, that Grant, Sherman and Sheridan were not only intimate friends and admirers of General Custer, but that they placed unlimited confidence in his fighting abilities and military skill.
Indeed, Custer was acknowledged to be the best Tndi^Ti fighter on the plains, by both Generals Sherman and Sheridan ; and on the 13th of August, 1869, at Fort Hays, Kansas, Brevet-Major-General S. D. Sturgis, Colonel 7th U. S. Cavalry, says, in an official communication to headquarters: " There is, perhaps, no other officer of equal rank on this line, who has worked more faithfully against the Indians, or who has acquired the same degree of knowledge of the country and of the Indian character."
Department commanders also paid high tribute to him as an Indian fighter and an officer of indomitable energy and skill in general military matters; while General Sheridan remarked at one time in the field, while Custer was, with a portion of his regiment, engaged with a band of wild warriors of the plains : " When I want anything done up quick, I can send Custer to do it, and can almost invariably rely upon the result." Such a remark from the Lieut.-General of the Army shows that the utmost confidence was placed in Custer, aside from the fact that he was frequently placed in command of the most important expeditions against the hostile Indians.
Now, in the name of a just Heaven, the author begs leave to ask of the highest military tribunal in the land, what had General George A. Custer done during the interval between the above date and the time of his fitting out his last expedition for that fatal march to the valley of the Little Big Horn, to warrant the harsh and humiliating treatment then bestowed upon him by President Grant and Secretary of War Belknap? The voice of the country speaks to-day, and says that Custer, the true soldier and gentleman, had forfeited not one iota of his well-earned fame or knightly standing; while Secretary Belknap, whose high position had already been degraded by the illegal sale of traderships, was still further prostituting his honorable office to gratify a personal ill-feeling against a gallant officer, who was the beau ideal of a soldier, the pride of the American cavalry. The author proposes to here explain briefly the occurrences that transpired to mar the friendly relations heretofore existing between Grant and Belknap on one side, and Custer on the other. During the year 1870, in the latter part of June, and at the closing of Congress, a certain law concerning post traders was very ingeniously framed, and embodied in what was known as the Military Bill, then pending before Congress, the substance of which is about as follows : " And the Secretary of War shall have power to appoint one or more traders at the military posts on the frontier, for the accommodation of freighters and emigrants." The reader will readily observe the ingenuity displayed in framing the above clause, and when the bill was printed and placed before the unsuspecting and unsophisticated members of Congress, most of whom had never been west of the one hundredth longitudinal line, its deep design escaped detection. The Congressmen felt, doubtless, that they were allying themselves to a liberal act, and making special provision for the wants of the freighters and emigrants, who are, after the army, the real pioneers of the far West. Little did these unsophisticated Congressmen think that in passing this seemingly beneficial act, they were making the Secretary of War the supreme judge and ruler over every post trader in the western country, and that he would with one stroke of the pen, in one sweeping order, turn them all adrift, regardless of their fitness or unfitness for the position, or the fact that they held their positions by the recommendation and with the consent of the Post Council and Post Commandant of the military stations where they were located. Under former regulations, as now, post traders were appointed by a council of the officers of the post, with the approval of the Post Commandant; Belknap made all subsequent appointments to suit himself, regardless of the wishes of'the officers on duty at the post where the trader was to be located.
This unprecedented way of making appointments by one of the highest officials of the nation, was not confined in its discourtesy to the officers of the military posts in the West, but extended to Generals Sherman and Sheridan, and the department commanders as 'welL When an appointment was given to a post trader under the new regime, it was not, as before, forwarded through the regular military channels, but was sent at once direct to the commanding officer of the post where the trader was to locate, ignoring thereby the General and Lieutenant-General of the army, as well as the department commanders. Such open, bold, and highhanded discourtesy shown toward the general officer^ of the army, whose careerwas recorded as good in the minds of the American people, and who were known to be eminently conscientious and successful in the management of army matters under their control, and whose honor and fidelity to duty could not be questioned, of course had a demoralizing effect, and naturally caused a feeling of great distrust throughout the army toward this high official of the nation-Secretary Belknap. Even the rank and file of the army shared the feeling of discontent.
The private soldiers, when in their own club-room, known as " the soldiers' club-room," would at times say : " Well, boys, let's drink to ' old Bel;' he is not only Secretary of War, and the Supreme Boss over all of us, but the old coon is running the sutler stores too !"
At one of the posts, where Custer was placed in command, on the frontier, the post trader was one of the Belknap appointees, and after some months had passed, Custer, who was a very close-observing officer, and knew no other way than to do his duty faithfully, reported to the Secretary of War
that the trader in question was a man of intemperate and profligate habits, which fact had a demoralizing tendency among the young officers and private soldiers of the garrison.
The Secretary could not overlook nor pigeon-hole a communication of this nature and importance. The one thing he could not avoid doing to preserve outwardly the dignity and honor of his office, and that was to remove the trader. Custer had himself a record and influence that the War Office could not ignore, and with Custer's letter of information on record, the efforts of the venerable Simon Cameron, and the most influential men in Congress, were powerless to save the profligate trader whom he had denounced. He was removed and another trader was appointed to the post.
Custer had no preference in the matter of the post trader-ships, knowing he was likely to be ordered from one military post to another at any time ; but for the sake of the younger officers of the regiment, one of them his own brother, he desired that the example and opportunities of intemperance should not be furnished them in the store of the post trader.
Again months rolled on. Custer was engaged in making a private investigation in regard to some grain stolen from the Government warehouses. Before the end of his investigations was reached, a portion of the stolen grain was discovered in the warehouse of the post trader. Suffice this matter to rest here, by saying that Custer ordered the unfortunate trader off the reservation, on pain of arrest, which order was, of course, obeyed ; the trader leaving his partner to settle the business, and he never returned to that reservation while Custer was in command. Here it was that Custer showed a degree of leniency and warm-heartedness of which few people are aware ; and yet these were his characteristic qualities. He could have pursued the trader with criminal proceedings, had he so chosen. But he preferred to leave that duty to others, knowing that he had done his in ordering the trader off the military reservation, and feeling that humane considerations were not beneath the thoughts of any man, however great or powerful.
The reader will now readily perceive that in both cases against the traders, Custer had simply done his duty as an officer and a soldier, as his obligations to the service demanded that he should do. No other course, in honor, was open to him ; his duty unquestionably requiring him to perform it fearlessly, no matter what trouble or disappointment it might entail upon Secretary Belknap, who, in an unprecedented manner, had taken the tradership appointments in his own hands, and who was not the man to brook with equanimity the enforced displacement of two of his favorite post traders. Ten companies of troops usually wintered at this post, and the profits arising from the tradership business were not less than $15,000 or $20,000 per year. Hence arose the breach between the avaricious Belknap and the gallant* close-observing Custer, and it soon grew into a wide one. Custer was called to Washington by a Congressional Committee to testify in regard to the post tradership business. He exhausted all honorable means to avoid the summons of the Committee, but was compelled to obey their mandate. Custer's testimony, or rather the fact that he was called upon by the Committee, as probably conversant with the sales of post traderships, excited the ire of Belknap, and here it was that President Grant arrayed himself by the side' of Belknap against Custer. Belknap was a warm personal friend of the President's, and of his brother, Orville Grant, who will long live in the history of the Missouri River country as a successful speculator in the sale of frontier post traderships. Belknap was, moreover, a member of his cabinet, and Grant must needs sustain him-even had the family reputation not been involved through the speculative Orville.
The Belknap impeachment trial, although the criminal escaped deserved punishment by a precipitate resignation of his office, has no doubt had a great moral effect upon the different departments of the Government. Belknap now stands before the American people-not one of the leading officials of the country-not the honorable and dignified. Secretary of War he once appeared to be-but in the eyes of those who watched his career, he stands a disgraced man„
with " none so poor to do him reverence." He has lost not simply office and position, but character, reputation and the respect of the American people, who would have been glad to have held him in their highest esteem until this day, had he deported himself with honor.
Let his example serve to deter the future high officials of the land from deviating from the path of strict rectitude. The homely old motto, " Honesty is the best policy," is as well worthy the consideration of a politician and office-holder as of that of the average citizen.