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,
Last stand in accordance with their traditional and religious belief that duty is above all convictions. All 21 Sikhs were killed, together with approximately 600 Afghans. A siege may lead to a last stand by the defenders (see for example the Battle of the Alamo). Last stands at the end of sieges became less common after the Hague Conventions came in force. Before the 20th century, if a besieged garrison refused any offered terms of surrender and the attackers subsequently breached the defences, the defenders were only given quarter at the discretion of the attackers, something they were not likely to do