A Popular Life of Gen. George A. Custer
by: Whittaker, Frederick

Hardcover. NY, Sheldon & Company, 1st, 1876, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Major-General of Volunteers, Brevet Major-General U.S. Army, and Lieutenant-Colonel Seventh U. S. Cavalry. Hardcover, brown cloth with black and gilt design, 648 pages with index. Frontispiece portrait of Custer and 16 addition plates (portraits, maps, battle scenes). In the election year of 1876 the Battle of the Little Big Horn was horrifyingly fresh to opinion makers, who divided along political lines in assigning blame. The late General George A. Custer, who had been a Democrat with aspirations to high office, was more pilloried than praised by President Grant and influential editors of Republican newspapers. Coming to the defense of Custer was Frederick Whittaker, who less than six months after the disaster published this first biography of him. A Complete Life was the beginning of a legend, and Whittaker did more than anyone else except Libby Custer to make the flamboyant Boy General a permanent resident of the national consciousness. A bright, clean copy.