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,
1st Michigan Volunteer Cavalry Regiment 2705 men on its muster rolls. The regiment suffered 14 officers and 150 enlisted men killed in action or mortally wounded and 6 officers and 244 enlisted men who died of disease, for a total of 414 fatalities. 1st Michigan Volunteer Cavalry Regiment The 1st Regiment Michigan Volunteer Cavalry was a cavalry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It was a part of the famed Michigan Brigade, commanded for a time by Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer. The 1st Michigan Cavalry was organized at Detroit, Michigan, between August 21 and September 6, 1861. Among