Question for the admin: What are your thoughts on the matter of Custer's knowing Annie Jones during the Civil War?
//I’m so glad somebody knows about this. I’ve read their relationship to have been anything from ‘sexual partners’ to basically ‘George demanding she leave camp.’ Annie supposedly said that she had ‘lived’ with and befriended several officers, specifically Kilpatrick and Custer, which started the whole trouble. One book reads that Annie herself said that General Kilpatrick may have been ‘jealous’ of Custer’s attentions to her, and that is why he charged her with being a spy for the South. Annie was charged several times with being a spy, which was dropped each time. Custer himself in his statement said that he never considered her a spy.
“So far as her statement in relation to General Kilpatrick and myself goes it is simply untrue. I do not believe she is or ever was a spy. This part of her reputation has been gained by her impudence.”
Like certain reports of his, this could just be George covering for himself. Fair enough. While I do not put it past Custer to have been flirtatious with her, and possibly even intrigued, she appeared to be more of a nuisance to him than anything else. From what I have been able to conclude, Annie was daring and after some show of such; one report I read said that she exposed herself to enemy snipers twice and essentially ran off to meet the enemy for two days before returning to Custer’s camp. Custer marked her deeds as ‘insane.’
“Her whole object and purpose in being with the army seemed to be to distinguish herself by some deed of daring; in this respect alone she seemed insane.”
In any case, Annie kept leaving and finding the camp again and again, and eventually George told her to leave by morning and not come back, unless she wanted to be escorted out again with a guard. Kilpatrick made no addition to Custer’s statement. Annie backtracked her earlier words later in a letter to President Lincoln, saying they were ‘utterly false and unfounded.’
I do not know their true relationship, if any. Custer replied to the allegation of being Annie’s ‘friend’ just after he had been married to Elizabeth six weeks prior. The accusation itself occurred while Custer was still writing letters to Elizabeth, as yet unengaged and unmarried. This gives ample fodder to the idea that George and Annie perhaps may have had some type of relationship, which could very well have been sexual, if it existed at all. However, both Custer and Annie denied such, and Kilpatrick said nothing. What was said could have been a coverup for an action on Custer’s part. But there is no evidence that I have found that marks their relationship as anything except that between (possibly) wrongly accused officer and (possibly) wrongly accused, reckless teenager. At worst, I’ll chalk it up to yet another case of Custer being a tad too flirtatious for his own good.
Tl;dr: I don’t know the stance of their relationship. It could have been sexual, it could have not been, if it even existed in the first place. Annie just seemed more like a reckless annoyance than anything else. Chalking this up to Custer maybe having been too flirtatious yet again.
titsay
theartofmadeline
stormborns
jacobvanloon
blakekathryn
