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 Minnesota Volunteer Cavalry Regiment 1st Minnesota Volunteer Cavalry Regiment The 1st Minnesota Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, the "Mounted Rangers," was a cavalry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The regiment was mustered in at St. Cloud, St. Peter, and Fort Snelling for one year's service between October and December 1862, and the men were mustered out between October and December 1863. The 1st Minnesota Cavalry served entirely in Minnesota and the Dakota Territory, guarding the frontier against the hostile Sioux Indians. The 1st Minnesota Cavalry lost 2 officers and 4 enlisted men killed in action or died of wounds