The Benteen-Goldin Letters on Custer and His Last Battle

Two retired veterans of the Little Big Horn exchanged a remarkable series of letters between fall 1891 and summer 1896. By that time they and everyone else who had been at the scene of Custer's defeat were part of legend. Captain Frederick W. Benteen of the Seventh Cavalry made history on June 25 and 26, 1876, when he came to the rescue of Major Marcus A. Reno's command. Private Theodore W. Goldin was with Reno during the battle and later helped to bury Custer and his comrades. Benteen and Goldin had retired from the army when their correspondence--rare for being between an officer and an enlisted man--began.

 

Benteen's letters, collected by John M. Carroll, are an exciting record of the Battle of the Little Big Horn and the Sioux War with tantalizing (and sometimes malicious) views of Custer and his wife, Libby; Reno; Generals Miles and Terry; and others. Goldin's replies to Benteen are lost, but Carroll has supplied revealing letters from him to the historians E. A. Brininstool and Fred Dustin touching on the same events. Also included are two accounts of the Battle of the Little Big Horn by Benteen, discovered after his death in 1898. The Benteen-Goldin Letters on Custer and His Last Battle, published in a limited edition in 1974 and edited and introduced by Carroll, is an important primary source for anyone interested in Custer.