Custer, George Armstrong, U.S. Army Officer

Autograph letter signed ("G. A. Custer | BtMGen") and initialed ("G.A.C.") in pencil, 1 page (9 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.; 248 x 198 mm) on a leaf of blue-ruled machine-laid paper, "Fort Lincoln, D[akota]. T[erritory]," 31 March 1875, to Major John Carland; some small stains and pinholes at horizontal creases, mounting remnants on verso.

Sotheby's, 1 November 1993, lot 43 (undesignated consignor)

cf. Whittaker, A Complete Life of General George A. Custer (1876), pp. 523–24

Autograph letter signed ("G. A. Custer | BtMGen") and initialed ("G.A.C.") in pencil, 1 page (9 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.; 248 x 198 mm) on a leaf of blue-ruled machine-laid paper, "Fort Lincoln, D[akota]. T[erritory]," 31 March 1875, to Major John Carland; some small stains and pinholes at horizontal creases, mounting remnants on verso.
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Custer orders the arrest of a private citizen. "As his employer will be arrested on similar charge ... I have seized several government missiles concealed near Apple Creek by Bisrk. Cause his arrest also on this charge," Custer instructs Carland. Although the year is not given in the letter, the incident probably occurred during the spring of 1875, about the same time that grain stores began disappearing steadily from Fort Lincoln. With justice still being dispensed pell-mell in the chaotic frontier town of Bismarck, and under orders not to make arrests outside the military reservation, Custer was hampered in his efforts to stop the robberies. Assisted by Carland, an officer with the Sixth Infantry who had formerly worked as a lawyer, Custer was determined to root out every thieving culprit. Here he speculates that if the man sought by Carland "could be placed here [Bismarck] for safe keeping by the Marshall I think information of value could be obtained."

Carland was a close confidant of Custer, who supposedly told the junior officer during the planning of the Battle of the Little Big Horn that he did not want the support of the Second Cavalry and Gatling guns because he wanted "all the glory for the 7th." Carland and General A. H. Terry discovered Custer's body on the battlefield.