Custer statue base
- B. Nash at Custer statue in Monroe, Michigan
Close-up of Custer statue
The statue is huge! I could hardly get it’s entirety in a photo. It actually is 14 feet tall. Monroe, Michigan was the home of George Armstrong Custer, although he wasn’t born there. Custer isn’t buried in Monroe either. Anywho know where he is buried? The statue was dedicated June 4, 1910. Twenty five thousand people gathered to witness the ceremony. Mrs. Custer was there. So was President William Howard Taft.
The statue is entitled “Sighting the Enemy.” It was sculpted by Edward C. Potter. Custer is represented as the Civil War hero in action against J.E.B. Stuart’s Confederate Cavalry at Gettysburg. Union veterans who first gazed on the statue agreed it was an accurate work. Mrs. Custer also was pleased. It actually has been moved three times from it’s original site.
Though considered by some to be polictically incorrect to praise Custer today-because of the Little Big Horn-Custer deserves much acclaim for his service in the Civil War. He saw action at battles including Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. He also fought at Yellow Tavern where J.E.B. Stuart was mortally wounded. Although he had graduated at the bottom of his class (1861) at West Point, he proved to be a brilliant officer. In 1877, long after the war, what may have been Custer’s remains were disinterred from the Little Big Horn battlefield and given a military funeral at…West Point.
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