CUSTER, POLITICS & PREJUDICE

n June 25, 1876, Custer finally played out what fate had seemingly had in store for him from the day he was born. As a child George echoed his family’s Jacksonian Democratic politics and once boasted he and his father could whip all the Whigs in Michigan. As an Army officer he remained a Democrat, as were many others. Custer was also a friend of George B. McClellan, the former commanding general of the U.S. Army who ran against Abraham Lincoln in 1864. By 1866 Custer had a newfound friend in President Andrew Johnson, another fellow