George Armstrong Custer was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. Raised in Michigan and Ohio, Custer was admitted to West Point in 1857, where he graduated last in his class in 1861 (George). In many ways Custer embodied the adolescence of American development, serving first as one of the North’s heroes of the American Civil War and coming to symbolize the tragic conflict between Native Americans and European pioneers over the control of land as the United States expanded from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. In a sense, George Armstrong Custer became to represent both the best and worst virtues of American life. According to one Custer biographer, T.J. Stiles, “But as self-absorbed as Custer was, he wasn’t a fraud. He was genuinely brave, trusting to what he and his friends called “Custer’s Luck” to see him through” (Stiles).…show more content… He took an interest in frontline combat during the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861, thanks in part to his relationship with a few key commanders who helped his career as a soldier and due to his ability as a profoundly powerful mounted force administrator (Civil). Custer was made a brigadier general at age 23, proving his general sagger was matched by his bravery and frontline leadership at the Battle of Gettysburg where he directed ranger charges that kept Confederate mounted forces from assaulting the Union’s flank in the help of Pickett's Charge (Civil). He was injured in the Battle of Culpeper Court House in Virginia on September 13, 1863. In 1864, Custer was granted another star and brevetted to signify general rank (Meade’s). At the finish of the Appomattox Campaign, in which he and his troops assumed a concluding part, Custer was on duty at General Robert E. Lee's surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant, on April 9, 1865
