GENERAL GEORGE A. CUSTER.
KILLED IN THE INDIAN FIGHT WITH SITTING BULL.
A S this gallant soldier was engaged for some years
IR Lin successfully fighting the Indians on our frontier
and finally lost his life in the last great Indian battle
on the American continent, it seems proper that I
should briefly inform the reader who this hero was, and
how he became the terror of the red men of the plains.
He was the son of a hard-working Ohio farmer, active,
bright, amiable, with a fair English education, and who
at the age of sixteen years, taught school in his native
town. Once determined to go to West Point, he ap-
plied to the member of Congress from his own district,
and although unsupported by outside influences, he suc-
ceeded in gaining the position. His record at the
Academy was not a brilliant one, nor was his behavior
of the "goody-goody" style, for he was full of mis-
chief and hated restraint. He graduated at the foot of
a class of thirty-four. At the breaking out of the re-
bellion, Custer was ordered to report to General Scott,
and when active military events followed he was put on
duty with the army which was ingloriously defeated at
Bull Run.  He was on the staff of several Generals,
but finally took his position at the head of a cavalry
regiment, and here is where he exhibited those grand
traits of character which made him the Marshall Ney
of the American army. Nothing seemed to daunt or
check him. He swept down upon the foe with the im-
petuosity of a whirlwind, and the southern soldiers
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