Seven

Libbie

 

On Thanksgiving Day, George Armstrong Custer attended a party at the Young Ladies’ Seminary and Collegiate Institute in Monroe, and was introduced to Elizabeth Clift “Libbie” Bacon—and his life would never be the same again.

Twenty-year-old Libbie Bacon had that effect on countless adoring boys who dreamed of being chosen as her romantic suitor. To call her merely attractive would be doing an injustice to this refined and spirited young lady. She stood a willowy five feet four inches tall with a dangerously thin waist and a well-rounded bustline. Her ivory face was framed by thick chestnut-brown hair and highlighted by luminous light blue-gray eyes that flashed with humor and mischief. But Libbie was more than just a rare beauty in terms of physical appeal. She was highly intelligent, strong-willed, properly educated—especially in literature and the arts—and was comfortable engaged in either serious conversation or whimsical flirtation. It was no wonder that she was considered the prettiest and most eligible young lady in that Lake Erie town.

From the above description, it would appear that Libbie Bacon had enjoyed a special upbringing of happiness and contentment, but, in truth, her early life had been far from idyllic.1

Libbie was the only child of Daniel S. Bacon, one of the most influential and respected citizens of Monroe, Michigan. Daniel, a descendant of the Plymouth Colony, had been reared on the family farm in Onondaga County in upstate New York, but departed at the age of twenty-four to seek greater opportunities. He carried with him a teaching certificate and dreams of finding a community where he could invest in cheap land and then fulfill his political ambitions. By the spring of 1823, his journey exploring small towns by stagecoach and steamship brought him to Michigan Territory, where he taught school by day and read law at night in a small settlement called Monroe.2

Daniel Bacon soon invested his money in a ten-acre parcel of land along the river Raisin, and planted apple, peach, and plum trees. In time, he passed the bar examination and opened a law office in town. With a partner, Levi S. Humphrey—whom Bacon had taught to read and write—he continued to buy government land, subdividing it into city lots and selling it for profit.

In 1831, Daniel entered politics and won election as county supervisor. A year later, that victory was followed by his election as inspector of schools, and in 1835 and 1836 as the Whig representative to the Fifth and Sixth Territorial Legislatures. Now that he had achieved an element of financial success and had earned the esteem of the community, Daniel decided at age thirty-nine that he could support a wife and family.3

The object of his affection was Eleanor Sophia Page, the twenty-three-year-old daughter of a nursery owner from Grand Rapids who had recently arrived from Putney, Vermont. Abel Page and his wife had the distinction of successfully marketing the “love apple,” a decorative fruit that had long been rejected as being poisonous. Page had transplanted this fruit to his vegetable garden, bravely bit into a sample as an experiment, and thought it delicious. The love apple soon became known as the “tomato,” and became a specialty of Page nurseries.4

Following a proper courtship, in June 1837 Daniel asked the Pages to sanction his engagement to their daughter, promising “protection and affection due from husband to wife.” The couple was married in September, and honeymooned with a visit to Daniel’s family in Onondaga County.5

Shortly after the nuptials, Daniel suffered his first political defeat when he ran for lieutenant governor. On the positive side, he took advantage of the recently passed free banking law to establish himself as president of the new Merchant and Mechanics Bank, and also assumed the position as assistant judge of the Monroe County Circuit Court.6

The Bacons’ first child, Edward Augustus, was born on June 9, 1839. Soon after, the bank became a victim of the national economic depression and closed, but due to circumstances that did not tarnish the reputation of its president. Daniel was then elected to the Michigan Senate, and by November 1840 had risen to associate judge of the circuit court. Real estate may have been risky at the time, but the Bacons built a fashionable Greek Revival–style home on South Monroe Street in the center of town.

It was in this house that three daughters were born—Libbie, on April 8, 1842, and Sophia and Harriet, both of whom died in infancy. In 1848, the Bacons suffered another tragedy when their son, Edward, died from disease, likely cholera or diphtheria. With the death of Edward, six-year-old Libbie became an only child.7

No doubt the Bacons doted on their only surviving child, although Libbie was taught values and virtues and punished when necessary. Her mother, Sophia, as she was called, was a quiet woman who was involved with the Presbyterian Church as a Sunday school teacher, perhaps finding solace for her losses in her belief in God’s will. Libbie may have been strong-willed, but she went out of her way to please her parents and was an obedient child.

Libbie was also immersed in the church, often attending services twice on Sundays, and freely offering her opinion regarding sermons. By her tenth birthday, she also attended other churches—Catholic and Methodist, in particular—as she searched for truth among the various faiths. Libbie attended Boyd’s Seminary primary school during the week, and played with her friends after school, mainly in her own backyard, where Daniel had set up a swing.8

Her father had given Libbie a diary on her ninth birthday with the inscription: “to be kept and preserved by her as a wish of her Father Daniel S. Bacon.” He had also admonished her to be sure to write legibly. After a year, she felt confident enough in her handwriting and thought process to begin making entries.

Her observations displayed a youthful eye for reporting details of local news. “It has been more like Spring today than any we have had this month,” she wrote. “A dissipated german by the name of Mr. Aulwringden living near the depot committed suicide by hanging himself this after-noon near tea time.” She would write about P. T. Barnum coming to town with little person Tom Thumb, and noted that the stands collapsed under the weight of so many people in attendance. She chronicled one person’s failed trip to the California gold fields, remarking about the hardships of travel across the Plains and observing that California was not the Promised Land after all.

This diary would also become her confidant for personal thoughts and dreams as she struggled with the ideals and morals suitable to a good Christian girl. She would copy down favorite lines of poetry and possibly song lyrics.9

Twelve-year-old Libbie’s journal was the recipient of a sorrowful entry on August 27, 1854, “When I last wrote you my Mother sat comfortably in her dear rocking chair by the fire. My dear mother is sleeping her last great sleep from which she never will awake no never! Not even to correct my numerous mistakes. Two weeks ago my mother was laid in the cold ground, & as I stood by that open grave and felt—oh! God only knows what anguish filled my heart. O! Why did they put my mother in that great black coffin & screw the lid down so tight? I hope the Lord will spare me to my father for I am his only comfort left.” Before the casket had been closed, Libbie slipped the wedding ring off her mother’s finger and clipped a lock of her hair.10

Sophia had died from “bloody dysentery, the second case in town.” Daniel wrote to his family, “My poor wife is no more. Her physicians were unacquainted with the nature of her disease. She bore sufferings with great composure and Christian fortitude.” Before Sophia had lapsed into a coma, she had been gazing lovingly upon a portrait of her daughter.11

Soon after her mother’s death, Libbie was sent to live with Sophia’s sister, Loraine Richmond, in Grand Rapids, while Daniel moved into a room at the Exchange Hotel. Libbie would be in the company of two cousins, Rebecca and Mary, who could help comfort her. After several months, however, this arrangement did not suit Libbie, and Daniel brought her back to Monroe.

In November, Libbie was enrolled in the Young Ladies’ Seminary and Collegiate Institute, a boarding school established by and for prominent Monroe citizens. The principal, Reverend Erasmus Boyd—who also ran Boyd’s Seminary primary school—demonstrated great sympathy for Libbie. He gave her special privileges, such as a room on the third floor with spectacular views of Lake Erie and the surrounding city, which she shared with a teacher, Miss Thompson. Boyd also offered the girl a small garden where she could tend flowers as a diversion to her gloomy thoughts.

Libbie soon learned that she could take advantage of others as “poor motherless Libbie Bacon.” She wrote years later, “How shamelessly I traded on this. What an excuse I made of it for not doing anything I didn’t want to do! And what excuses were made for me on that score.” Part of her exploitation of sympathy was the fact that Daniel had left for New York and Vermont, leaving her “quite lonely all alone.”12

In spite of the misery brought on by circumstances, Libbie was an excellent student. She performed quite well in literature and mythology, but had problems with math and French. Although talents such as needlepoint and music were emphasized, the girls were not taught domestic skills. They were from the upper class and would be hiring cooks and servants. The curriculum was centered on the belief that the educated young lady would make her home comfortable for her husband.13

Libbie became a voracious reader, but not classics like Shakespeare or Milton; rather, her tastes were more common with modern authors—Fanny Fern and Grace Greenwood. Fern (real name Sara Payson Willis) wrote scandalous books, such as Ruth Hall and Rose Clark, that shocked readers by introducing an independent female protagonist and sermonizing against the notion that women must depend on men for economic, legal, and social protection. At the end of these novels, domestic virtue and female chastity triumphed over evil, and all wrongs were righted. Grace Greenwood (aka Sara Lippincott) also trumpeted the belief that women should be self-reliant and clever. Libbie no doubt was comforted in her aloneness by the belief that she could succeed and prevail over her tragedies and present condition by her own talents and will, just like the heroines in her favorite novels.14

At one point, Libbie listed her favorite things as part of a parlor game. Her favorite color was rose. Her favorite season was autumn. Her favorite animals were horses and dogs. Her favorite perfume was English violet. Her favorite poet was Tennyson. And her favorite book other than the Bible was her photo album.15

As the years passed, Libbie began to wrestle with her faith, believing herself to be wicked and inadequate as a Christian. She constantly questioned her character, and agonized over her faults, whether it was poor progress in French, or being too lazy with piano practice, or her relationships with others. “How wild I am getting,” she analyzed in her diary. “Oh! how discouraged I am with regard to doing right. God help me for I know I do wrong every day.” She made a conscious effort to become a better person and be more considerate toward others. Her doubts can be dismissed as simply teenage angst, typical of passing from childhood into womanhood.16

By 1858, at the age of sixteen, Libbie desperately longed to move back with her father and keep house for him. She also dreamed of visiting Mary Case, her aunt, and being part of a family again. Even with all the special privileges afforded her at the seminary, Libbie could not come to terms with her fate. She confided to her diary, “No one knows how much I lost but myself, when mother died.”17

In time, Daniel Bacon recognized his daughter’s inner turmoil and removed her from the seminary before the semester had ended. He took her to his sister Mary’s Onondaga, New York, farm, where she eventually boarded at the Young Ladies Institute in Auburn, New York. It was here that Libbie would come under the influence of the coprincipal, Reverend Mortimer L. Browne, who, along with his wife, would change her life forever.18

Libbie was not the only member of the Bacon family who had been lonely. Daniel had met a woman named Rhoda Wells Pitts, the widow of a former innkeeper from Canandaigua, New York. Mr. Pitts had been converted into the Presbyterian faith, left the inn business to become a minister in Tecumseh, Michigan, and had passed away in 1855.

Sixty-year-old Daniel courted Rhoda for a year and, after discussing the subject with Libbie, who approved, married his forty-eight-year-old bride in Orange, New Jersey, on February 23, 1859. Daniel and Rhoda boarded with friends while the Bacon home on South Monroe Street was repaired, refurbished, and repainted.19

In May 1859, Libbie left school and moved back in with her aunt at Howlett Hill. It was here where she reflected on her past, especially the kindness and counseling offered her by Mortimer Browne and his wife at the seminary. They had shown her that she was not wicked or worthless, that she had a place in the world and that her Christian faith was the basis for that place. Libbie would write that they had brought her to “the feet of the Savior,” and this “Christian example” would “guide and save and keep me.”

Libbie had undergone a conversion—she had been born again in both a spiritual and worldly sense—and was now confident that she was a person in her own right and could be of some benefit to society. The parental guidance shown by the Brownes had been the reason for her maturity as a person and in the Christian faith. “I went there a stranger—they took me into their hearts as if I were their child and ever ever will I thank them for it. I went there a child, but came away a woman. God be praised.”20

Libbie returned to Monroe from New York in June, and she and her father and stepmother moved into their residence and became a family. Rhoda, a devout Presbyterian, quickly won the heart of her stepdaughter with her sense of humor and engaging personality. Libbie joked that “Mother and I laugh and grow fat.” Cousin Rebecca Richmond visited her uncle’s house, and observed that her Aunt Rhoda “thinks as much of Libbie as Libbie does of her.” Libbie’s wish to be part of a loving family again had finally come true.21

Libbie reenrolled in the Young Ladies’ Seminary and Collegiate Institute, and would remain there for the next two years. She became lifelong friends with Annette “Nettie” Humphrey and Fanny Fifield, and the three of them moved easily within the upper social class of Monroe, each the subject of great interest by local young men.

At graduation, Libbie finished first in her class and delivered a speech as the valedictorian. Her speech, on a rather unusual subject, “crumbs,” where she explained the essential greatness in little things, as in larger ones, was judged by the Detroit Free Press to be “one of the best.”22

Monroe had been sending its share of young men off to war, which certainly limited the pool of eligible future husbands. These men would return on furlough wearing their uniforms and bragging about their exploits to impress the girls. Even Libbie Bacon had dreamed of marrying a soldier and running away with him. “We were obliged to hide from rebels in a pond of water,” she wrote in her journal, “and go through many perils all of which I was willing to do for my spouse.” Her dream continued the next night, until it “ended so beautifully, my cares and sorrows had vanished and I was walking with my arm in that of my dear man who forms the subject of the journal often.”23

Although she did not know it at the time, her fantasy dream soldier entered her life on Thanksgiving Day, 1862, at a party given by the Boyds at the seminary. Conway Noble, the brother of one of Libbie’s friends, introduced her to a young army officer with reddish-blond hair and intense blue eyes, who was named George Armstrong Custer. Noticing his captain’s bars, Libbie remarked, “I believe your promotion has been very rapid.” Custer replied, “Yes, I have been very fortunate.” Those were the only words spoken between them that night.24

Armstrong Custer had been predictably discouraged about his military status. He had been trying to make the best of being without a duty station, however, by sleighing with the girls and partaking in all the social opportunities available to a young war hero home awaiting orders. But on that night, although a barbed-wire wind blew across the lake and snow fell, Custer’s heart could not have been warmer. He had met a girl—not just any girl but literally the girl of his dreams. Armstrong was immediately smitten with Libbie Bacon, and swore that he dreamed about her that night—a classic case of love at first sight.

The Bacons, it must be remembered, were members of the upper class, and Custer was the son of the village smithy—and the two classes rarely socialized, much less courted and married. Not only that, but Libbie and her father had witnessed a drunken, boisterous Custer stagger past their house the previous year. Libbie had no way of knowing that Custer had reformed and had not tasted liquor since that night. Regardless, Daniel Bacon as a rule did not allow suitors in uniform to visit his daughter.25

Custer ignored this social disparity, and on the following day stood and watched as Libbie entered a seamstress shop. She noticed his attention, and later wrote, “Oh, how pleased I was.” Armstrong relentlessly courted Libbie by showing up wherever she happened to be and continuously strolling past her home. He even began attending the local Presbyterian church, and sat where the two could exchange glances during the services. Libbie jokingly scolded him after one service, saying, “You looked such things at me.” Custer would approach her after church or at her singing school and walk her home. On one cold night, they were walking, and “in spite of the rain and sleet he went solderlike without an umbrella, for which I admire him.”26

Libbie admired his perseverance, but was not quite sure what to make of this handsome army officer and remained standoffish to his advances. She refused to see him when he called upon her at her house. Libbie also declined to attend a seminary concert with him in favor of being escorted by her father. After the performance, however, Custer appeared and opened a gate that had become stuck to allow Libbie and her father to leave the grounds, to which she replied, “Thank you, sir.”27

Custer returned to Washington two weeks before Christmas. Libbie wrote in her journal, “I could almost have given way to the melting mood. I feel so sorry for him. I think I had something to do with his going.” She also admitted that she would miss seeing him stroll slowly past her house “forty times a day.”28

Custer had headed back to Washington to await orders. In the meantime, Ambrose Burnside had moved his Army of the Potomac to the outskirts of Fredericksburg, where he planned to cross the Rappahannock River, seize the town, and move on to attack Richmond. Bridges across the river had been destroyed, and it was seventeen days until pontoon bridges had been positioned to ferry his 120,000 men across the river. This delay afforded the Confederate army time to evacuate Fredericksburg and deploy seventy-eight thousand soldiers at strategic places in the surrounding hills.

Following two days of Union shelling, and despite the geographic disadvantage and the strength of the Confederate position, General Burnside attacked on the morning of December 13. The Union soldiers advanced twelve times, and each time the Confederates held their ground and inflicted catastrophic casualties on their exposed enemy. The battle, a monumental blunder by Burnside, was called a “tremendous slaughter,” and cost the Union army approximately 12,653 men as opposed to 5,309 for the Confederates—another devastating defeat for the North.29

Back in Monroe just before Christmas, Armstrong Custer, in true cavalry fashion, was executing a frontal assault on two fronts. The first one was an attempt to secure the colonelcy of the Seventh Michigan Cavalry, an endeavor that had fared poorly. The appointment involved political patronage, and the Republican governor took a dim view of Custer’s Democratic views and associations, such as his relationship with George McClellan. Apparently his Republican mentor from Ohio, Representative John A. Bingham, had not come to his aid in this case. Custer’s pursuit of Libbie Bacon, on the other hand, showed some promise.30

Custer had pledged his undying love to Libbie, which she rebuffed. He had even proposed marriage and exclaimed his willingness to sacrifice every earthly hope to gain her love.

Libbie told her cousin Rebecca that she only cared for him as an escort, but his persistence had softened her heart to the extent that she wrote in her journal, “He is noble, brave and generous and he loves, I believe, with an intensity that few know of or as few ever can love. He tells me he would sacrifice every earthly hope to gain my love and I tell him if I could I would give it to him. I told him to forget me and he said he never could forget me and I told him I never should forget him and I wished to be his true friend through life but it is no use to offer myself as a friend for he will never think of me otherwise than his wife. Oh, Love, love, how many are made miserable as well as happy by the all powerful influence.”31

Libbie became even more confused about this relationship when Custer began seeing Fanny Fifield, a friend from the seminary. Armstrong began escorting Fanny to parties and calling upon her at home. They were even seen strolling together in public. Fanny—which oddly enough happened to be one of Custer’s nicknames at West Point—was openly attracted to the young army officer. Libbie brushed off the relations between Custer and Fanny to her friends, but there was no doubt it had a troubling effect on her.32

Judge Bacon, who had noticed Custer’s interest in Libbie, did not fancy his only child married to a common military man—especially one whom he had witnessed in an intoxicated state the previous spring. The judge made Libbie promise to not see Custer again or write to him when he returned to duty. Libbie secretly gave Armstrong her ring at a party, but soon afterward informed him that she must abide by her father’s wishes and never see him again. Judge Bacon might have thought that he had succeeded in saving his daughter, but had perhaps underestimated the determination of a young man in love—particularly a young man like Armstrong Custer, who relished a seemingly impossible challenge.33

Libbie went to visit friends in Toledo, twenty miles south of Monroe, and who appeared on the train platform to help with her bags but Armstrong Custer? It was a wonder that Custer did not accompany her on that train, but she had already warned him to forget that notion. Judge Bacon was furious about Custer’s presence at the train station. He wrote to his daughter in Toledo, reminding her that she had promised not to see the army officer again.

Libbie replied, “Father, I told Mother to tell you of my interview with Captain Custer. I never had a trial that made me feel so badly. I did it all for you. I like him very well, and it is always pleasant to have an escort to depend on. But I am sorry I have been with him so much, and you will never see me in the street with him again, and never at the house except to say good-bye. I told him never to meet me, and he has the sense to understand. But I did not promise never to see him again … He has many fine traits, and Monroe will yet be proud of him … You have never been a girl, Father, and you cannot tell how hard a trial this was for me … And Monroe people will please mind their own business, and let me alone. I wish the gossipers sunk in the sea.”34

On January 25, 1863, President Lincoln reacted to the debacle at Fredericksburg by replacing army commander Ambrose Burnside with Major General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker. This new leader was a vain and assertive commander whose name made a contribution to the American vernacular with his policy of permitting “camp followers” into his soldiers’ camps. He would spend the next few months reorganizing and equipping his troops in preparation for a spring campaign.

Custer and his West Point comrades suffered a painful loss in March 1863. On the morning of March 17, Union Brigadier General William W. Averell and 2,100 cavalrymen crossed the Rappahannock at Kelly’s Ford and were advancing toward the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. Jeb Stuart’s cavalry had rushed to confront Averell, and during the ensuing engagement an artillery shell burst near Major John Pelham. Fragments from the shell struck this gallant artillery commander in the back of the head, and he died the following afternoon without regaining consciousness.

The resolute Federals had been repulsed, but Stuart had lost his beloved subordinate, and Custer had lost his West Point friend. The Confederate cavalry commander wept over Pelham’s body, then kissed his forehead and whispered an emotional “Farewell” before turning away in anguish. He ordered his troops to wear a black mourning cloth around their left arms, and renamed his headquarters Camp Pelham.35

“Gallant” John Pelham—as he would be referred to from then on—lay in state for several days in the Confederate Capitol Building in Richmond. Sallie Dandridge traveled from Martinsburg and kneeled at his coffin, spending one last moment with the man she so dearly loved and had planned to marry. Pelham would later be buried in Jacksonville, Alabama.

Found in John Pelham’s personal effects was an undated note, “After long silence, I write. God bless you, dear Pelham; I am proud of your success. G. A. C.”36

In addition to the loss of Pelham, Colonel Tom Rosser had been severely wounded on those sanguinary fields at Kelly’s Ford. As the blue and gray riders had dueled with smoking pistols and scarlet-stained sabers, Rosser felt a minié ball slam through his boot and lodge in his foot. He refused to leave his regiment, however, and led them in several charges. Later, the bullet was removed from his foot, and in order to avoid infection, it was prescribed that he be temporarily relieved of duty to rest and recover.

During his recuperation, Rosser was a regular visitor at a house where earlier in the war he and several other officers had stopped for a drink of water. At that time, he had joked to the boy who accommodated them that he would return someday “and marry your sister.” A year later, Rosser once again stopped at the house, this time to borrow a pen and ink. The door was opened by that same boy, who yelled back into the house, “Sis Betty! Sis Betty! Here’s that man come to marry you!”

Nineteen-year-old beauty Betty Winston presented herself, and it was love at first sight. Rosser was seriously smitten. He began to court Betty, visiting when he could, and writing long letters when he was away.37

The former West Point roommates, Rosser and Custer, had each seemingly found the love of his life in the midst of a conflict that had torn the nation apart.

After Libbie Bacon returned from Toledo, Armstrong Custer’s campaign to win her heart resumed with the stealth of a reconnaissance mission behind enemy lines. Custer would escort Fanny Fifield to various functions, but only to be able to gain admittance to Libbie’s inner circle of friends without raising suspicions. Libbie and Armstrong would share private moments together at social gatherings or at church, and they had persuaded Libbie’s friend, Nettie Humphrey, to serve as a go-between for messages. The two would pass notes back and forth, and Libbie gave him an ambrotype—a thin photographic negative made to serve as a positive picture—of herself. Wherever Libbie ventured, Custer was sure to follow. And he never minced words—always promising her his undying love and affection.

Libbie wrote, “He acts it, speaks it from his eyes, and tells me every way I love you.” After he futilely attempted to kiss her, in her estimation for the four thousandth time, she confessed, “I long so to put my arms about his neck and kiss him and how often I lay my head on his breast—in my imagination—and feel how sweet it would be to make him entirely happy.”38

Caught in a web of conflicting emotions, Libbie tried to convince herself that she could turn away from the affections of Armstrong Custer. She wrote in her journal, “I was not in love—yes, I was perhaps, but I am sure that the deep feelings which I know have not been stirred by anyone—the chords of my heart were not swept by him. Yes, I like him so much now—no one knows how much—but I feel that it is proof that I do not really love for how could I silence so soon feelings that are always so deep.”39

By April 8—Libbie’s twenty-first birthday—when Custer boarded a train to return to duty in Washington, love had blossomed between them, although she still refused to allow him to kiss her—even when he hinted that Fanny Fifield had kissed him. But the future of their relationship had not by any means been settled due to Judge Bacon’s adamant opposition.40

First Lieutenant Custer arrived in Washington on April 10, and was informed that General George McClellan had requested his assistance in preparing the official reports of his tenure as commander. Custer traveled to New York, where he lived in the Metropolitan Hotel while working at McClellan’s “magnificently furnished” home. The task was completed by the end of the month, and Custer was assigned temporary office duty at the War Department.41

Custer would have been yearning to get back into the fight, but likely not as bad as he yearned to be back in Monroe, Michigan, in the arms of Libbie Bacon. He must have been battling with doubts about her sincerity and whether she was ready for a serious relationship. Distance may make the heart grow fonder, but it can also create an obsession that could serve as a distraction—to the average young man. George Armstrong Custer, however, was too dedicated a soldier to allow the thought of Libbie to get in the way of his ambition. Libbie would have been on his mind, but the prospects of his next assignment would have burned deeper within him. Personal glory could go a long way toward reaching goals—both professional and personal. And his next assignment would bring him closer yet.