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,
Great Sioux War of 1876 actually been a village of Northern Cheyenne (led by Old Bear, Two Moons and White Bull) with a few Oglala (led by He Dog.) In the late spring of 1876 a second, much larger campaign was launched. From Fort Abraham Lincoln marched the Dakota Column, commanded by General Alfred Terry, with 15 companies or about 570 men, including Custer and all 12 companies of the Seventh Cavalry. The Montana Column, commanded by Colonel John Gibbon, departed Fort Ellis. General Crook commanded a third column that departed Fort Fetterman to head north. The plan was for all three columns to converge