On the afternoon of June 25, 1876, George Armstrong Custer led five companies of the Seventh Cavalry down
On the afternoon of June 25, 1876, George Armstrong Custer led five companies of the Seventh Cavalry down toward the Lakota and Cheyenne village on the Little Bighorn—the Greasy Grass—and within the hour none of them were left to tell what had happened. The news reached the eastern cities in the first week of July, while the country was still in the middle of its centennial celebrations, and for the rest of the summer the question of how it had gone so wrong crowded nearly everything else off the front pages. There was no wire service feeding the public a steady drip of dispatches, no class of professional commentators standing ready to explain the plains to readers who had never seen them. An editor who wanted a credible opinion needed a man who had actually ridden that country. A man who had fought alongside Indian scouts and against hostile ones, and who knew cavalry from the saddle. Such men were scarce east of the Mississippi in July of 1876. Two of them happened to be in Philadel...