OCR Text |
Show 546 WESTERN WILDS. how, as it was to move through a colder latitude, and, while waiting, Custer was summoned to Washington. The Belknap investigation was in progress, and Hon. Heister Clymer, Chairman of the House Committee, got it into his head that Custer could give important in-formation. In vain did Custer dispatch that he really knew nothing about the case, and Terry urge that his call to Washington would delay and imperil the expedition. Clymer was all the more certain Custer had important information, and should be brought before the committee and rigidly interrogated. On the 6th of March, Custer tel-egraphed a request that he might be examined at Fort Lincoln. This Clymer flatly refused. Custer had to go to Washington, and there it was found that he really knew nothing about the case, and had only, as was natural to one of his impulsive nature, talked freely about what he had heard. But Heister Clymer had the satisfaction of compelling a General to come before his committee, and delaying Custer's march after Sitting Bull a whole month. Then President Grant took hold. The grim, impassive, hard- to- change General Grant took it into his head that Custer's talk about the case had been an intentional affront to him why, no one ever knew. He refused to see Custer, though the latter repeatedly called at the White House, and once sent in a card asking in plain terms for a reconciliation. Custer then . called at the office of General Sherman, only to learn that the latter was in New York, and might not return for some time; then, on the night of May 1, took the train for Chicago. Next day Sherman returned, and telegraphed to General Sheridan at Chicago, that Custer " was not justified in leaving here witnout seeing me ( Sherman) or the President/' and ordered that Custer remain at Saint Paul till further orders. Somebody was evidently playing sad havoc with Custer's character and plans. He had, perhaps, talked too much that was his fault, if any thing but it is impossible for the non- military mind to see any other harm he had done. He was in genuine distress. He telegraphed at length to General Sherman, and then to President Grant ; and the final result was that, after a deal of red tape all around, he received permission to go with the expedition, in command of his regiment, the Seventh U. S. Cavalry. The Terry col-umn consisted of the Seventh Cavalry entire, three companies of the Sixth and Seventeenth Infantry, with four Gatling guns and a small detachment of Indian scouts, about eight hundred men in all. Gibbon was coming in from the west with four hundred men, and Crook had made another start from the south with fifteen hundred men. Thus there were twenty- seven hundred armed men, distributed on the |