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,
Elizabeth Bacon Custer the Bacon home or to permit her to meet Custer outside it, much less get married, as Custer proposed in the final week of 1862. Custer was from a poor, undistinguished family, and the judge hoped Libbie would have better than the life of an army wife. After Custer, just prior to the Battle of Gettysburg (where he played a significant role), was promoted to Brevet brigadier general, Judge Bacon finally relented and they were married in Monroe at the First Presbyterian Church on February 9, 1864. Libbie and George had a loving but tumultuous relationship. Both were stubborn, opinionated,