I just realized that FaceApp and other
programs that could have profound implications in a post-truth era fun image editing tools could allow me to generate a more appropriate picture for
everyone's favorite TL-191 character whose death we presupposed didn't occur at Little Bighorn.
George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839 - June 25, 1930) was an American military leader who served as a general in the United States Army. During his long military career, Custer served in the War of Secession, American Indian Wars, Second Mexican War and the First Great War, where he was instrumental in the eventual American victory in the North American theater of the conflict.
A native of Michigan, Custer attended the United States Military Academy and graduated in 1861 at the beginning of the War of Secession. During the conflict, Custer exhibited what would be his trademarks of daring military maneuvers and a penchant for seeking publicity. He served as an adjutant to George McClellan, whose disastrous leadership led to the American defeat at the Battle of Camp Hill and eventual Treaty of Arlington which ended the War of Secession with the recognition of the Confederate States of America.
In the Second Mexican War, Custer participated in the suppression of the Second Mormon Revolt under Brigadier General John Pope, who would become the first Military Governor of Utah. Custer would gain a brevet promotion and be placed in charged of the defense of Montana, where his role as the overall commander at the Battle of the Teton River made him a national hero alongside future president Theodore Roosevelt, although the two men would become political rivals following the battle. After the war, Custer considered running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in multiple contests between 1884 and 1908, but never made himself a candidate for political office.
After his rapid rise to brigadier general, Custer's military career stalled in the next two decades between the Second Mexican War and First Great War as a result of personal and professional conflicts between him and his superiors. As one of the few American military officers whose reputation was improved by his performance in the Second Mexican War, and with alliances with influential legislators in Congress, Custer was able to remain in the Army long after he reached the mandatory retirement age of 64 in 1903 despite concerns over his continued fitness for command.
In the First Great War, Custer was one of the main American commanders on the Kentucky front, commanding the United States First Army throughout the conflict. Alongside John J. Pershing, Custer led the slow American advance through Kentucky and into Tennessee during the first three years of the conflict. Secretly disobeying orders from the War Department, Custer masterminded the Barrell Roll Offensive beginning on April 22, 1917 that resulted in both the capture of Nashville and the discarding of the then-conventional military doctrine regarding the newly-invented barrels. With American commanders imitating the strategy Custer pioneered on other fronts, combined with the depletion of Confederate manpower reserves after three years of war, the offensive marked the beginning of the end of the Great War in North America and cemented Custer's reputation as an American military hero.
Following the war, Custer was promoted to the rank of general and served as the grand marshal for the 1918 Remembrance Day parade, the first to be held since the United States won its first declared war in seven decades. He was given his final assignment, to serve as the military governor of Canada (1919-1922) following the promotion of Hunter Liggett to the United States General Staff. Finally forced to retire in 1922 at age 82, Custer survived the second of two assassination attempts by Canadian terrorist Arthur McGregor during his farewell tour of occupied Canada, throwing McGregor's own bomb back to him and killing the would-be assassin and several bystanders.
Having served in the United States Army for 61 years, Custer remains the longest-serving military officer in American history and holds several distinctions related to his long service. He was the last veteran of the War of Secession to remain in military service in either the United States or Confederate States, and was the only official military veteran of all three wars fought between those countries from 1861 to 1917 (although there were documented instances of War of Secession veterans acting as civilian auxiliaries during several engagements during the First Great War).
Custer was given a state funeral upon his death in 1930 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He is the only person interred there who fought against Robert E. Lee, the Confederate hero of the War of Secession and former owner of the land that now makes up the cemetery.
Widely admired in the United States during his lifetime thanks to both his victories and talent for self-promotion, Custer nevertheless had contemporary detractors, who criticized both his personal conduct and his military leadership during the First Great War. In the decades following the Second Great War, Custer has become widely criticized as a stand-in for the "futility and carnage of the First Great War" (in the words of the United States Military College) for his reliance on frontal assaults that produced millions of American casualties for little or no gain prior to 1917, a criticism enhanced by the publication of former Custer adjutant and Second Great War general Abner Dowling's memoirs. Custer's role as a mentor to both Dowling and Irving Morrell, the most decorated American military officer of the Great War period, has become an increasingly prominent part of his reputation and legacy among the general public and historians in the decades after his death.
Since the 1980s, Custer's reputation and legacy have been further reevaluated by historians who argue that public association of Custer with the high casualties and outdated strategies of the First Great War failed to recognize important innovations by Custer and his subordinates that preceded the Barrell Roll Offensive, and that high casualties were a consequence of strategical and tactical realities at the time. Simultaneously, Custer's conduct in both the American Indian Wars on the Great Plains, and his role in formulating and implementing harsh occupation policies in Utah and Canada have become widely criticized.
