Editing George Armstrong Custer (section)

===Posthumous legacy===
{{further|Cultural depictions of George Armstrong Custer}}
After his death, Custer achieved lasting fame. Custer's wife [[Elizabeth Bacon Custer|Elizabeth]], who had accompanied him in many of his frontier expeditions, did much to advance his fame with the publication of several books about her late husband: ''Boots and Saddles, Life with General Custer in Dakota'',<ref>Elizabeth B. Custer, Boots and Saddles, or Life in Dakota with General Custer. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1885)</ref> ''Tenting on the Plains, or General Custer in Kansas and Texas''<ref>Elizabeth B. Custer, Tenting on the Plains, or General Custer in Kansas and Texas. (New York, C.L. Webster and Co., 1887)</ref> and ''Following the Guidon''.,<ref>Elizabeth B. Custer, Following the Guidon. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1890)</ref> thus furthering a "Custer myth".<ref name=":02">{{citation |author=Ezra J. Warner |date=1964 |location=Baton Rouge |pages=110 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |title=Generals in blue: lives of the Union commanders}}<!-- auto-translated from German by Module:CS1 translator --></ref> The emergence of this myth was also supported by the secrecy of the Official Record of the 1879 Court of Inquiry, which was not released until 1951.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last1=Graham |first1=William Alexander |title=The Custer Myth: A Source Book of Custeriana |last2=Dustin |first2=Fred |publisher=Stackpole Company |year=1953 |pages=xii}}</ref>

The deaths of Custer and his troops became the best-known episode in the history of the American Indian Wars, due in part to a painting commissioned by the brewery [[Anheuser-Busch]] as part of an advertising campaign. The enterprising company ordered reprints of a dramatic work that depicted "Custer's Last Stand" and had them framed and hung in many United States [[Western saloon|saloons]]. This created lasting impressions of the battle and the brewery's products in the minds of many bar patrons.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Griske |first=Michael |title=The Diaries of John Hunton|publisher=Heritage Books|year=2005|isbn=978-0-7884-3804-2|pages=78–79}}</ref> [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]] wrote an adoring (and in some places, erroneous) poem.<ref>Connell (1984), pp. 380–391.</ref> President [[Theodore Roosevelt]]'s lavish praise pleased Custer's widow.<ref>Connell (1984), p. 325.</ref>

President Grant, a highly successful general but recent antagonist, criticized Custer's actions in the battle of the Little Bighorn. Quoted in the ''New York Herald'' on September 2, 1876, Grant said, "I regard Custer's Massacre as a sacrifice of troops, brought on by Custer himself, that was wholly unnecessary – wholly unnecessary."<ref name="b540">Barnett (1996), p. 540.</ref> General Phillip Sheridan took a more moderately critical view of Custer's final military actions.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=Graham|first=William A.|title=Colonel|publisher=The Stackpole Co.|year=1953|isbn=0811703479|location=Harrisburg, PA|pages=115–117}}</ref>

General [[Nelson Miles]] (who inherited Custer's mantle of famed Indian fighter) and others praised him as a fallen hero betrayed by the incompetence of subordinate officers. Miles noted the difficulty of winning a fight "with seven-twelfths of the command remaining out of the engagement when within sound of his rifle shots".<ref>Barnett (1996), p. 311.</ref>

The assessment of Custer's actions during the American Indian Wars has undergone substantial reconsideration in modern times. Documenting the arc of popular perception in his biography ''[[Son of the Morning Star]]'' (1984), author [[Evan S. Connell]] notes the reverential tone of Custer's first biographer Frederick Whittaker (whose book was rushed out the year of Custer's death).<ref>Connell (1984), p. 287.</ref> Connell concludes:

<blockquote>These days it is stylish to denigrate the general, whose stock sells for nothing. Nineteenth-century Americans thought differently. At that time he was [[Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard|a cavalier without fear and beyond reproach]].<ref name="c411">Connell (1984), p. 411.</ref></blockquote>In the same year, W.A. Graham stated in ''The Custer Myth'':<blockquote>But for the "blaze of glory" that formed the setting for his dramatically tragic departure at the hands of yelling savages, he would probably be just another name of a long list of names in our histories of the Civil War, in which as "The Boy General" he made an outstanding record as a leader of Cavalry, as did also numerous others who have been long since all but forgotten.<ref name=":1" /></blockquote>