In all the long history of West Point no cadets had gone forth into a more tragic world than the ones who left in the spring of 1861. Yet there were others, once well known, all still deserving of remembrance: and they were a fated group, for a pathetic conflict of loyalties and emotions was their lot when they left the Military Academy. He is just about the only member of his class who does come down to us! His classmates took one good look at his rather long, Hessian-yellow hair and joyously dubbed him “Fanny.” In the footnotes of the history books and in innumerable Western films he comes down to us as General George Armstrong Custer. His family and close friends had always called him Autie. Then he made the necessary inquiries reported to the necessary places, signed the necessary papers in a bold, splashing hand, and became that lowest form of animal life-a new cadet. He stood for a few moments, awkward and shy, more alone than he had ever felt in all his seventeen years more alone than he would ever feel again until his years had readied thirty-seven. Sun-drenched fields, dipping elms, indigo hills, and silver river spread out before him: the almost unbelievable beauty which would be the backdrop of his life for the next four years. He shouldered his baggage and climbed the steep path to the plain. It was just a century last summer since a tall, raw-boned Ohio farm boy stepped from the two o’clock boat to West Point’s South Dock.
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