Custer graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York , last in his graduating class of , although he finished 34th out of a starting class of candidates. Army officer in his class. McClellan and Alfred Pleasonton , both of whom recognized his abilities as a cavalry leader.
He was promoted in the early American Civil War β , to brevet brigadier general of volunteers when only aged Only a few days afterwards, he fought at the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in early July , where he commanded the Michigan Brigade. Stuart 's attack at East Cavalry Field on the crucial third day of the Gettysburg clash. In the last year of the war of , he destroyed or captured the remainder of Early's forces at the Battle of Waynesboro in Western Virginia.
Custer's division blocked the Southern Army of Northern Virginia 's final retreat from their fallen capital city of Richmond in early April and received the first flag of truce from the exhausted Confederates. Grant at Appomattox Court House , Virginia. On June 25, , while leading the Army's 7th Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the southeastern Montana Territory against a coalition of Western Native American tribes, [ 5 ] he was killed along with every soldier of the five companies he led of his regiment.
This event became known as "Custer's Last Stand". Custer's dramatic end was as controversial as the rest of his life and career, and the reaction to his life remains divided, even years later. His mythologized status in American history was partly established through the energetic lobbying of his adoring wife Elizabeth Bacon "Libbie" Custer β , throughout her long widowhood which spanned six decades longer into the mid- 20th century.
Custer's maternal ancestors were of English and Ulster Scots descent, having ancestries from England and Northern Ireland. According to family letters, Custer was named after George Armstrong, a minister, in his devout mother's hope that her son might join the clergy. His other full siblings were the family's youngest child, Margaret Custer, and Nevin Custer, who suffered from asthma and rheumatism. Custer also had three older half-siblings. Emanuel Custer was an outspoken Jacksonian Democrat who taught his children politics and toughness at an early age.
