FHGIN THE SPRING OF 1861, THE DRUMBEATS OF WAR reverberated at the U.S. Military Academy, where cadets from North and South now had to choose sides. For John Pelham (1838–1863), the son of an Alabama planter who opposed secession but stood by the South, the choice was agonizing. Torn in his allegiance, young Pelham wrote Confederate President Jefferson Davis to ask what he should do. On April 22, eight days after Fort Sumter fell and just two weeks before his graduation, he left West Point to join the Confederate Army.
George Armstrong Custer (1839–1876) was one class behind Pelham. The son of an Ohio farmer, he excelled at military drills but neglected his studies and finished last in his class. Because the Union needed officers, Custer and his classmates graduated a year early. Most cadets remained loyal to the United States, but more than a quarter of those in the two graduating classes joined the Confederate Army.
Both Pelham and Custer became famous for the manner in which they fought and died. During the first two years of the war, Pelham led artillery in more than sixty engagements and was promoted to major by age twenty-four. “It is really extraordinary to find such nerve and genius in a mere boy,” Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson remarked. “With Pelham on each flank I believe I could whip the world.” Off duty when fighting erupted at Kelly’s Ford, Virginia, on March 17, 1863, Pelham rushed into the fray and was killed. His body lay in state at the Confederate Capitol in Richmond before burial in Alabama.
Custer rose even higher in the Union Army, becoming a brigadier general at twenty-three. Yet the “Boy General” remained controversial during and after the Civil War. In 1876 his reckless daring led to disaster at the Little Bighorn, where Sitting Bull’s Lakota warriors killed him and more than 250 of his men. FHG
George Armstrong Custer
John Pelham
SOLDIERS IN TRAINING Two ambrotypes portray George Armstrong Custer (FIRST IMAGE) and John Pelham (SECOND IMAGE) during their West Point days. Custer wears a cadet coatee similar to the one owned by Ulysses S. Grant (THIRD IMAGE), a member of the class of 1843.
