The lack of new information supporting Custer's early turn westward and the way the turn frustrated the plan of cooperative action strongly suggest that there was no "sufficient reason" for this deviation from Terry's orders.80
80 This is my current view of the matter, despite the warning by Graham "that between wilful disobedience of orders and justifiable disregard of instructions there yawns a gulf both wide and deep" and that the "Commander on the scene is entitled to the benefit of every doubt, if there be room for doubt." If my view is correct (and I must say that in the past I have felt differently), the question becomes, why did Custer disobey? This is a subject of endless fascination, and I can only list some of the theories:
(a) Custer and several of his officers wanted to finish with the Sioux quickly so that they could attend the opening of the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition on July 4.
(b) Custer was desperate for victory to protect his Army career. "Only a towering public reputation can protect an officer from the sort of Presidential displeasure Custer had provoked. Without some new military accompishment he was probably finished. . . ."
(c) Custer wanted to defeat the Sioux by himself because he was jockeying for the Presidential nomination of the Democrats, whose convention was about to open in St. Louis.
(d) Custer acted from his intense pride in the Seventh Cavalry and his conviction that it alone could whip the Sioux. This characteristic helps explain Custer's rejection, with the comment that the Seventh "could handle anything," of the offer of four companies of the Second Cavalry just before his departure up the Rosebud.
(e) Custer acted consistently with his nature. He had never been a "soldier to march away from the enemy's known position." "Every victory he had ever won had come from plunging to the attack." Colonel Gibbon later wrote, "'Poor fellow! Knowing what we do now, and what an effect a fresh Indian trail seemed to have had upon him, perhaps we were expecting too much to anticipate a forbearance on his part which would have rendered cooperation of the two columns practicable.'"
(Samuel W. Calhoun, "The Law and the Little Big Horn: What Beginning Law Students Can Learn from General Custer," Journal of Legal Education 36 [1986]: 403-19, at 417 [citations omitted])
