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,
Battle of Slim Buttes June 17, 1876, beat off the Indian attack, driving the Sioux northward as contemplated in Sheridan's plan. From that point of view it was regarded as a victory. Crook had seriously wounded men to care for, His supplies of food and ammunition were used up. Therefore, he fell back to Goose Creek to reorganize." Custer's 7th Cavalry regiment was a major component of General Terry's column. Custer ascended the Little Big Horn in search of an Indian village and attacked on June 26, 1876. "No one had any idea that all of the Indians would be found in one spot