AMERICA LIKES HIGHLY VISIBLE COUPLES. The public likes to think that their heroes—whether presidential, military, or even artistic—somehow manage to have admirable, fun marriages, unlike (usually) their own. There’s Ike and Mamie, Jackie and Jack, LBJ and Lady Bird, Pat and Dick, and, of course, Nancy and Ron. And I’ve already mentioned Jesse Benton Frémont, whose role in her husband’s life was enormous.

Libbie Custer, somewhat in the same mold, was probably the leading professional woman of her time. She tirelessly took up the cudgels against her husband’s many critics.

Supporters of Major Reno were particularly likely to draw down a tirade from Libbie.

Defending the man was one thing, actually living with him quite another. The 1860s ended. The Custers were always highly social. Since they were stationed mainly at Fort Leavenworth, St. Louis was a handy place to get away, where usually they stayed at the Southern Hotel, where one day Libbie snapped; she unloaded on Armstrong, leaving a mass of criticisms on his head. Custer would never forget her “distressing words.” In time he would respond, in a letter quoted by Shirley Leckie in her excellent biography of Libbie. By this time the Custers had been married about six years—they were at the halfway point. In attempting to answer Libbie’s attacks he brings up his own feelings, noting, to begin with, an absence of fervor—that fervor and that joy. He makes his laments, mentioning that her lovemaking had become mechanical, depriving him of the warmth he had become dependent upon.

Then he voices the fear that Libbie will never love him again as she had, though “while I am absent you may think kindly of me and remember much that is good in me, but when I return the spark of distrust which I alone have placed in your mind will be rekindled and little burning words will be the result.” He goes on to say that his love for her is unquenchable, as unquenchable as his life.

We are long accustomed to thinking of Custer entirely in military terms; it requires a shift in focus to think of the hero Long Hair coming to grips with the fact that his wife is slipping away. He probably cheated on Libbie, and he constantly broke promises, but he did seem to love her and he clearly did not want to lose her.

Frederick Benteen, critical as ever, said that Libbie was the coldest woman he ever knew; since he thought Custer was also cold the couple may have been in that respect well mated.

Marriages are notoriously opaque—it is hard to know exactly when Libbie began to distance herself from George. By the 1870s it was observed by many that the couple mostly traveled alone, rather than—as had once been the case—together.

Officially the vice that most distressed Libbie about George was his gambling. He was very fond of faro, and, like most compulsive gamblers, really needed the risk.

Maybe he fought for the same reason: the risk.

Gambling, of course, took him into low company, which may have been what Libbie hated most about her husband’s vice. She knew her husband well enough to know that he would not be likely to put up much resistance to some advance from some beauty of the demimonde.

Army posts in Kansas and elsewhere were notorously plain and usually deadly boring. Flirting was one of the few admissible diversions. Libbie herself made a decision not to flirt, but she could not find it in her heart to criticize those who did.

The Custers, when the 1870s started, were neither more or less happy than most couples in their position. They socialized a lot and traveled when opportunity came their way. After their years on the plains they finally got a quiet posting in Kentucky, close to the racetrack: something for Armstrong to bet on.

All parties, though, knew that the 1870s were merely the calm before the storm. And not even very calm—the Red River War came in the early 1870s and the finale in the middle of the decade.

The buffalo were now being slaughtered by the millions; Custer went back to the plains for a celebrity hunt now and then.

In the councils of the Sioux and the other plains tribes there was dark foreboding. The whites were crossing in ever greater numbers. Red Cloud made his treaty and the three forts vanished from the Bozeman Trail. But General Sherman’s view slowly prevailed: the red man must be killed or securely confined. The general himself was lucky—twice lucky in fact: the first time was in Texas, when the Kiowa could have had him had they been paying closer attention: he passed right in front of a war party that, later in the day, massacred seven teamsters. The second lucky escape was in the newly established Yellowstone Park. He was picnicking with his family and was nearly swept up in the famous retreat of the fighting Nez Perce. Sherman thought the Indians were putting on a show for himself and his family, when in fact they were busily murdering Montanans.