Elizabeth Bacon Custer led the Seventh Cavalry in pursuit of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne who refused to be confined to the reservation system. After her husband's column was wiped out at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in June 1876, many in the press, Army, and government criticized Custer for blundering into a massacre. President Ulysses S. Grant publicly blamed Custer for the disaster. Fearing that her husband was to be made a scapegoat by history, Libbie launched a one-woman campaign to rehabilitate her husband's image. Her assistance to the author of the first Custer biography,
Thomas Custer towards his brother Armstrong's personal battle flag and handed the captured flag to one of Armstrong's aides while declaring, "Armstrong, the damned rebels shot me, but I've got my flag." Custer turned his horse to rejoin the battle, but Armstrong (who had only seconds before seen another of his aides be shot in the face and fall from his horse dead) ordered Custer to report to the surgeon. Tom ignored the order and his brother placed him under arrest, ordering him to the rear under guard. Until 1948, official references for the date of actions for which Thomas Custer was