George Armstrong Custer

George Armstrong Custer graduated dead last in West Point's class of 1861 - 34th of 34 - yet outranked every one of his classmates by war's end. Generals McClellan and Pleasonton saw something in him as a cavalry leader, and at 23 he was made brevet brigadier general of volunteers. Days later, in July 1863, he commanded the Michigan Brigade at Gettysburg and beat J. E. B. Stuart's Confederate cavalry on the battle's third day despite being outnumbered. He rode with Sheridan through the Shenandoah in 1864, crushed Jubal Early at Cedar Creek and again at Waynesboro, then blocked Lee's final retreat from Richmond in April 1865 and received the first flag of truce from the collapsing South. After the war he was sent west as a lieutenant colonel to fight the Lakota and other Plains tribes. On June 25, 1876, leading five companies of the 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn in Montana Territory, he and every soldier with him were killed. His widow Libbie spent six decades shaping his legend; the arguments over his life have never stopped.