I knew Custer as a soldier when he was a brigade and division commander under Pleasanton and Sheridan, the successive commanders of the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac. Those who knew the estimate in which those great commanders held him—the tasks they committed to his soldierly intelligence and comprehension, his fidelity and skill—need no reminder that in nothing of all their dependence upon and confidence in him did he ever fail in letter or spirit. I know how absolutely loyal he was under the conflicting conditions which sometimes confront every subordinate charged with grave responsibilities, and which test the sense of duty to the utmost. He was true as steel. He was depended upon for great things because he was dependable. In temperament he was sanguine and ardent. He loved his friends; he was impatient of every form of inefficiency and of pretense; he did not highly esteem mere professionalism; he was impulsive and sometimes abrupt in manner, but kind of heart; he was sensitive only to unjust criticism; he despised intrigue, chicane and all meanness; he was independent in opinion and judgment, and frank in their expression; he was open in opposition, and fair to an enemy. And it goes without saying that such a man had enemies—men who were envious of his abilities, his achievements and his fame; men whom he never sought to placate, and who sought envy’s balm in detraction and hatred; men who could not measure him or be fair to him, but men who in a pinch would have turned to him with unhesitating trust, whether in his ability or his soldierly faith. Did this man, this soldier, whose service throughout the Civil War and a long career of frontier warfare was for eighteen years unequaled for efficiency and brilliancy within the range of its opportunities and responsibilities, who never failed his commanders, who never disobeyed an order, nor disappointed an expectation, nor deceived a friend—did this man, at the last, deny his whole life history, his whole mental and moral habit, his whole character, and wilfully disobey an understood order, or fail of its right execution according to his best judgment, within the limits of his ability under the conditions of the event; and, what is worse—and this is what his detractors charge—did he not only disobey, but did he from the inception of the enterprise plan to disobey—to deceive his commander who trusted him, in order that he might get the opportunity to disobey? To any man who knew Custer, except those who for any reason hold a brief against him, not only is the charge of premeditated, deliberate disobedience absurd, but it is a foul outrage on one of the memories that will never fail of inspiration while an American army carries and defends an American flag.