num_pages: 312
description: The Benteen-Goldin Letters on Custer and His Last Battle, the original 1974 limited edition, edited and introduced by Carroll, is an important primary source for anyone interested in Custer. Two veterans of the Battle of the Little Big Horn exchanged a remarkable series of letters between the fall of 1891 and the summer of 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 be- tween 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.
language: English
title: The Benteen-Goldin Letters on Custer and His Last Battle
titlecomplete: The Benteen-Goldin Letters on Custer and His Last Battle
genres: History
ratings_count: 9
publisher: University of Nebraska Press