"I know you know I love you without being told so every minute,
but I am a woman, and want to hear it constantly"
- in letter to husband, 1873
Mrs. Custer writes in "Tenting on the Plains" of her husband
after his death:
His own greatest battles were not fought in the
tented field; his most glorious combats were those
waged in daily, hourly fights on a more hotly contested
field than was ever known in common warfare. The truest
heroism is not that which goes out supported by strong
battalions and reserve artillery. It is when a warrior
for the right enters into the conflict alone, and dares
to exercise his will in defiance of some established custom
in which lies a lurking, deadly peril or sin. I have known
my husband to almost stand alone in his opinion regarding
temperance, in a garrison containing enough people to make
a good-sized village. He was thoroughly unostentatious about
his convictions, and rarely said much; but he stood to his
fixed purpose, purely from horror of the results of drinking.