George Armstrong Custer’s role in the Civil War Dallin Hodgkin Mountain View High School What does a man have to do to leave a mark in world history? What kind of man does he have to be? The truth is that there are many ways that a man can be remembered. Perhaps to be a man of this nature you must face trials most likely leading to your impending doom, or maybe you have to simply be the one to forget the odds and keep on fighting. Many soldiers in U.S. history are remembered for these exact reasons. They are thought to be strong, brave, and willing to fight to the last man for their country. One such man was George Armstrong Custer. He affected the Civil War with his spirit, fighting, and legendary image. Custer grew up …show more content…
Officers started to take interest in Custer and at age 23 he was promoted to brigadier general (Custer 2014). His skills and determination had to be higher than most to receive such a promotion. From this feat, he earned himself the nickname “The Boy General (Urwin n.d.). Custer went on to fight in the battle of Gettyburg and prevent a weakening to the Union army (Custer 2014). Custer had a huge impact on the civil war because of this battle alone. In battles to come, he would even change his uniform to add his own personal flare to it (Custer 2014). This shows how Custer rode the thin line between bravery and stupidity, but in all honesty, those can be defining characteristics of a great general. Towards the end of the war he fought with his men in a cavalry raid (McNamara, n.d.). More and more people began to notice Custer and an artist by the name of Alfred Waud started to draw pictures of Custer and print them (McNamara, n.d.). Waud wrote "Custer charged and charged again here capturing and destroying trains and making many prisoners.” Custer continued to fight and helped end the war by cutting off General Lee’s last escape route (Custer 2014). He was a general filled with energy and bravery that is hard to find anywhere these …show more content…
It reviewed many facts about Custer’s life and showed many pictures of Custer himself. Through this article I was able to better understand Custer and what he really wanted to be, but at the same time I learned how confusing he was. The website I received this from is called “about education.” The author of the article is Robert McNamara who is a 19 century history expert. He has worked on many magazines and studied history and journalism at New York University. There was no date to be found but once again I believe that everything indicates that it is up to date. Sifakis, S. (n.d.). George Armstrong Custer Biography. Retrieved April 04, 2016, from http://www.civilwarhome.com/custerbi.html This was another great article that had a lot of information on Custer during his service in the war. I found lists of his battles and how he came out victorious. It also gave me a little image of how the war looked afterwards. It was a basic overview of everything I needed to know about Custer. The author of this article is Stewart Sifakis. Sifakis is very well qualified due to several books he has written on the Civil War. They contain basic but helpful information on the Civil War. This article was published in 2014 and is clearly up to